What is This Industrial Psychology?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 386, 15 November 1946, Page 7

What is This Industrial Psychology?

] Written for "The Listener" |

by

M.

WALMSLEY

cently enacted in this country is based on specialised research in Industrial Psychology. Since the appointment of lecturers in Psychology at several of our university colleges, interest in this topic has grown steadily. The possibilities latent in a specialised study of the human being were realised during the first World War. The Wer Office found that the time-honoured method of treating all men as equal availed little against Teutonic specialisation. Men who had been pushed into the trenches, had to be pulled out again and sent:home to keep furnaces glowing and wheels in motion. The Director of the Cambridge psychological laboratory, Dr. 'C. S. Myers, was able to persuade the authorities to let him try his skill on some of the more intricate problems of personnel. So absorbed did Dr. Myers become in Nhese challenges that with the ending of the war, he decided not to go back to the sheltered life of the university. He launched boldly out into the stormy seas of commerce. The Army Mental Tests On the other side of the Atlantic, a group of professors of psychology, fired with patriotic fervour, got together in Washington and decided to offer their services in a body to the. authorities. factory legislation re-

Looked at askance for a while, they finally succeeded in obtaining permission to try their hand at sorting out the sheep from the goats who flocked to the colours. Their joint labours brought forth the famous Army Mental Tests. Groups of recruits, to the number of perhaps 50, were given printed forms, told to listen carefully, then, at the word "Go!" to do what they had been instructed to the best of their ability until told to stop. With scoring keys, their efforts were rapidly marked by clerical assistants and their mentality graded. An examination of this type differs essentially from the old-time school test. It attempted to rate, not recollection or thought about some topic learned, so much as raw native intelligence. What Is Intelligence? On what intelligence is, no two psychologists seem to agree. One could do no better than say that intelligence is what the tests measure (!) But as a | professor once explained, of all that a man picks up as he goes through school and through life, a certain amount sticks, To gauge this is what an intelligence. test does. Tests of a certain type, it is

true, give the college man an advantage over one who has followed the plough. But skilfully choseri, they throw the spotlight on a Bobby Burns br an Ettrick Shepherd as unerringly as on an Oxford Don. Perhaps more so. For they are tied up with real life situations. In Punch’s well-remembered cartoon of 30 years ago, the greatest living authority on Greek particles was being put through his preliminary paces. Somehow he always got his wrong foot forward until the exasperated drill-sergeant seized the collar of his tunic, shook him angrily, and yelled: "Damn you, sir! Damn you! Use your brains-if you’ve got any!" (Such an unhappy predicament might have been avoided had the professor been assigned duty with keener discrimination born of a scientific means of selection.) The pencil and paper tests of the United States Army were supplemented by practical and manual tests; trade tests; and, in the case of rating scales .on personality; while those men who "caved in" or showed peculiarities of conduct were referred to psychiatrists, Where the most stable and brilliant men were grouped together, the companies and regiments they formed romped through their training. The dullards and misfits were given less exacting tasks where humble capacity might be fully utilised without continually getting in the way of their brighter fellows. In some cases the "sack" proved the first and best order. Far-reaching Results This experiment affected, directly, some .one-and-three-quarter million of drafted men. ‘Top-ranking officers, steeped in tradition and hog-tied by red tape, had in the early stages been stubbornly sceptical. At the finish they acknowledged, some with a tinge of enthusiasm, that the experiment had proved an unqualified success. In carrying general conviction that psychology had come of age and grown into a useful science, (continued on next page)

INDUSTRIAL PSYCHOLOGY

(continued from previous page) the indirect results have been far-reach-° ing. During the two decades between the world wars, this idea had "time and space to work and spread"; so that the British army, navy, and air force, the civil service, and considerable sections of industry have come to place in the hands of specialists, trained in well-tested psychological procedures, the selection of their personnel and its assignment to the tasks

_ that have to be done. Mountains of research have erupted in .a tremendous ‘variety of material. The fullness thereof is an embarrassment; so much so, that ‘even a professor of psychology ‘may throw up his hands with the exclamation: "Of the making of tests there is, no end!"

Application to Industry In England, Dr. Myers’s staff organised as the National Institute of Industrial Psychology, has collated what seemed the best of the methods for industrial application. Parallel and more official work has been doné by the Industrial Health Research Board, under the general auspices of the Medical Research Council. Since the problem of a given industry or plant are largely specific, a careful study of environing conditions is an essential preliminary. Experience has taught the necessity of obtaining the co-operation of the staff, from general manager to office girl. Gone are the Taylor Methods of earlier days. As engineers, Frederick Taylor, Gantt, the Gilbreths, and others, tried to "buy" a few workers by tempting wagers to do precisely what ‘they were told. Their movements were stop-watched and filmed, the components abstracted, modified, and refitted with a new pattern. Then pressure was applied to all and sundry to perform the work in the synthetic "one best way." With what results, a little story may tell. For a long while a time-study man, armed with a stopwatch, stood by an assembler who averaged 217% minutes, on each piece. Finally he said, "Now, you can do this job in 17 1-10 minutes, or beat it" (the time). The workman stormed off to the boss and demanded his "time." "Why," said the foreman, "what’s the matter?" "Well," barked the assembler, "you know that time-study fellow? He’s just told me I can turn out a piece in 17 minutes or get to hell out of here!" Workers at First Suspicious Such misunderstandings were apt to be frequent. For the workers were in constant fear lest they be speeded up beyond endurance, their rates cut, or some abridgment of their privileges foisted upon them. Not without reason. In America we saw machine-tenders and price-rate workers going like demons. Their pace would kill the leisurely New Zealander in a_ jiffy. The system, with some modifications, would appear to have been taken over in Russia. There, the fear of dismissal has been qualified by a variety of other incentives; team spirit,

general approval, patriotic fervour, Marxian dogma-or threat of starvation. This question of incentives has, in England, been gone into rather carefully, less from the ideological angle than the psychological, One room may have radio; one side be sunnier or better ventilated; one section of the staff may come later, leave earlier, or wear white collars; work may be too monotonous or its periods too long; bosses may play favourites; lighting may be too dull, or too glaring, and

so on. The job. of the industrial psychologist is to get on to easy terms with both management and workers; encourage them to "get it off their chest’whatever "it" may be-in confidence, of course; eliminate sources of friction and discontent; help folk grasp their use-

ful place in the scheme of things, so that their energies flow out without let or hindrance, and enable them to express in their work the best in their make-up. In such ways, the spirit of many an organisation has been transformed. Output goes up. Along with it, up go individual rewards and management profits. The rate of increase has shown wide variations with the circumstances of plant or industry; but in England some such percentage as 20 may express the typical increment. Nothing of this refers to the extraordinary spurts and reactions of war. It suggests what we might do under ordinary conditions in New Zealand. No Sentiment, No Slaye-Driving In all of this, there is neither sentiment, nor paternalism, nor slave-driving. It is simply a business-like understanding tosco-operate for the commion good-to "share the gravy" all around. Those who may wish to engage suitable specialist staff, can find it through the Division of Industrial Psychology, or Victoria or Canterbury University Colleges. But a man not over-burdened himself misses most of the fun if he does the job by proxy. A good text book, like Viteles’s Industrial Psychology would suggest many commonsense ways, of making a start. Once a staff perceive that management has given up the attitude of resistance to their demands-with grudging acquiescence under pressure-in favour of initiative toward co-operative enter‘prise, then the spirit of that staff changes from covert hostility to open enthusiasm: a transformation "devoutly to be wished." gS &f" *" ae -i i «> nme Lh