A Notable Experiment in Applied Psychology
NEWS AND COMMENT.
There will be opened on June 1, 1916, in affiliation with the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, a Bureau of Salesmanship Research. A fund amounting to $75,000 for the support of the Bureau for the first five years has been provided by a group of business concerns to whose initiative the organization of the bureau is due. Among these cooperating concerns are the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, the H. J. Heinz Company, the Armstrong Cork Company, the Equitable Life Assurance Society, the Ford Motor Company, the Carnegie Steel Company, and others. Offices, psychological laboratories, and equipment have been provided by the Carnegie Institute of Technology.
The aim of this bureau is to secure a broader basis of established fact for use in improving present methods of selecting and training salesmen, by accumulating and systematizing information concerning the methods now used by successful firms, by applying psychological tests to the analysis of the mental traits of successful and unsuccessful salesmen, by carrying on experiments in the selection and training of salesmen in cooperation with various firms, and by publishing the results of these studies through appropriate channels.
The activities of the bureau will be guided by a scientific staff, on which Dr W. D. Scott, Professor of Psychology in Northwestern University, serves as director, and Professors W. V. Bingham (Carnegie Institute of Technology), J. B. Miner (Carnegie Institute of Technology), and G. M. Whipple (University of Illinois), will serve as cooperating psychologists. The scientific staff will comprise, in addition to the foregoing, a research assistant and several research fellows.
The fellowships, yielding from $300 to $500, will be awarded to graduate students of superior intellectual ability, personality and leadership, who intend to fit themselves for careers as employment managers and supervisors of per90 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC. sonnel. There will be opportunity also for students of psychology who wish to prepare doctors’ dissertations in the fields of mental tests, vocational analysis, statistical method, etc. Inquiries may be addressed to Prof. W. V. Bingham, Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, Pa.
Prizes offered for Research in Eugenics.
Mr. Casper L. Redfield delivered an address before the Chicago Medical Society on February 2, 1916, in which he announced money prizes amounting to one thousand dollars for pedigrees fulfilling certain conditions. Among other things Mr. Redfield said:
“If you will look in your dictionaries you will see that ‘to acquire’ means to obtain by effort, by exertion, by the performance of work. Hence an acquired character is a dynamic development of an organ obtained by exercising it. A mutilation is not an acquirement. When the tails of mice are amputated, the acquirement is in the muscles of the amputator, not in the mice.
” Mutilations are not inherited. If they were, human beings would be little more than heads and trunks covered with scars representing the mutilations their ancestors received. Lamarck told us that long ago, but those who pretend to give us information about his theory appear to be wholly ignorant of the matter. Lamarck also said very distinctly that the action of the environment upon the parent had no effect upon the offspring, a fact which shows that the literature about Lamarck’s theory is largely rubbish.
“The strength or power of organs is developed by exercising them, and such a development is strictly an acquirement. In acquiring development by exercise, time is an element. A man who goes into a gymnasium acquires more development in a week than in a day; more in a month than in a week; and more in a year than in a month. Similarly, a man who performs mental labor gains more mental development in ten years than he does in one, and more in twenty years than he does in ten, and so on as long as mental development is a possibility.
“If an acquired development is to be inherited, the parent must make the acquirement first and get the offspring afterwards, not get the offspring first and make the acquirement afterwards. A rational consideration of that fact makes it evident that it is necessary to take into consideration the age of parents in any investigation involving the inheritance of acquirements. This I have done for many hundreds of eminent men and have published the results. Those results show that eminent men are usually produced by old fathers, and always by slow breeding extending over a century or more of time. The fact that the age of parents affects the quality of the progeny is now acknowledged, even by those who balk at the interpretation of that fact.
“The number of individual pedigrees of men, horses, dogs and cows which I have investigated and published now amounts to thousands, and they all show the same results. But it has been charged that I have used selected cases to support a preconceived theory, and have failed to give the facts in regard to contrary cases. The charge that I have given no contrary cases is true, and the reason it is true is because there is no such thing as a contrary case to be given. Doubt it? Well, I have deposited $1000 with the American Genetic Association NEWS AND COMMENT. 91 of Washington to be paid out at their discretion when contrary cases are produced. This is divided into five sections.
“1. A prize of $200 if it can be shown that an intellectually superior man was ever produced by breeding at the rate of four generations to the century. “2. A second $200 if any very great man (intellectually) was ever produced by breeding at the rate of three generations to the century. (The average for three generations is about 97 years).
“3. A third $200 if improvement ever occured in any kind of an animal when the amount of acquirement per generation for three generations was below the average or standard for the breed.
“4. A fourth $200 if a decline in powers ever failed to follow acquirements below the standard.
“5. A fifth $200 if there could be found any group of animals in which the improvement or decline in animal powers was not proportional to the amounts of acquirements in previous generations. “This challenge is based squarely and unequivocally on the inheritance of acquirements, and the appeal is to facts of record. If those who deny the inheritance of acquirements have any foundation for their statements it will not be necessary for them to do any work to capture that money. All they will need to do is send in their evidence and make their claim. If they do not do so promptly, the public will have no difficulty in understanding the reason why. It will be either because they have never investigated the matter and know absolutely nothing about it, or because they have misrepresented the results of their investigations. In either case their statements are worthless.” Details of the offer may be had by applying to the American Genetic Association, Washington, D. C., or to Mr. C. L. Redfield, 525 Monadnock Block, Chicago, 111.
Dependent Children examined Medically and Psychologically. The New England Home for Little Wanderers in Boston, has just published a report by Dr William R. P. Emerson of his medical examination of the first fifty children received since the inauguration of the plan October 1, 1915. “Each one,” he says, “had previously been examined in a routine way and pronounced well, meaning that the child’s heart, lungs, nervous system, etc., showed no evidence of disease. In other words, these children were considered mentally and physically able to attend school and engage in the recreation usual for normal children.” A case of striking interest was a little girl five years of age who had been sent from another institution without history of any illness. “Fortyeight hours before admission,” remarks Dr Emerson, “she had been given a rather hasty examination in the evening by a physician who pronounced her free from any contagious disease and certified that her heart, lungs, and other vital organs were normal. On admission the child was examined under favorable conditions, namely, in a quiet room with a good light,” and the following diagnoses were made: adenoids, pediculi capitis, otitis media, cerumen, eczema, enuresis, vulvo-vaginitis (gonococcus), and mental retardation of one year plus. “This case was exceptional,” Dr Emerson observes, “in the number and severity of the affections exhibited,” nevertheless a chart shows that among the fifty children 187 defects requiring treatment were found. Inspection of the diagnoses shows that these defects, even when slight, are by no means of minor significance to the children concerned. “The early detection of spinal curvature and of defective vision is,” as Dr Emerson notes, “of the greatest importance,” and the correction of enuresis is “of consequence in the placing out of the child. Pathological processes as carious teeth, abscess of the gums and acute endocarditis endanger the life of the child, while contagious affections as intestinal parasites, pediculi, scabies, and vulvo-vaginitis are diseases from which well children have a right to be protected.” He is fortunately able to add, “More than 75 per cent of these abnormal conditions are being remedied by proper treatment.”
On the first of September Miss Rose M. Hardwick began giving mental examinations to children in the Home. She reports that “more than a hundred individuals have been studied,” but she does not tell us by what method. It would be interesting to know what tests were used and how the various mental levels were distributed among these hundred cases. “A few,” she says, “are unmistakably feebleminded.” A scientific report of the work which Miss Hardwick is doing would be very welcome. It would probably help in the introduction of clinical psychology into other homes and asylums where it is greatly needed.
Community Drama in St. Louis. St. Louis will celebrate the Shakespeare tercentenary with an outdoor production of “As You Like It,” June 5 to 11, inclusive, by a cast of 1000 persons, headed by Miss Margaret Anglin. A natural auditorium is being prepared in Forest Park with seats for 9912 people. The principals beside Miss Anglin will be professionals selected by her, but the other members of the cast will be St. Louis amateurs. Actors, dancers and singers from all sections of the city who wish to enter the cast are applying at the headquarters of the St. Louis Pageant Drama Association. The success of the association’s new enterprise, from the standpoint of community interest, is already assured. The play itself will have a setting in the form of an Elizabethan prologue and epilogue, to be enacted by three or four hundred persons, attired in costumes of Shakespeare’s time, who before taking their places to view the play, will dance and sing. They then will be seated as a Shakespearian audience. The recent St. Louis visit of Cecil J. Sharp of London, an authority on English folk song and dancing, was arranged in order that the dancing and singing of these “Elizabethans” might be typical of the Shakespearian period.
The improvements for the “As You Like It” performances are to be permanent. By virtue of a special ordinance passed by the Board of Aldermen, the Pageant Drama Association is defraying all expenses in connection with the improvements and is to be permitted to charge admission, but after the Shakespearian celebration the auditorium is to become the property of the city without any outlay whatever by the city. Park Commissioner Nelson Cunliff, who also is chairman of the Committee on Stage and Auditorium of the Pageant Drama Association, has announced that the auditorium will be available for any form of wholesome entertainment to which no admission fee is charged and that several applications for such use of it already have been received.
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