A Study of Human Nature
I
THERE have been many attempts to classify personalities. One of the first was a dissertation which appeared a generation ago, by Gelett Burgess, entitled Are You a Bromide? It divided men into what he called ‘bromides’ and ‘sulphites.’ The bromide was the commonplace man who did what one expected, while the sulphite was more unusual, more original, and apt at any moment to do the unforeseen. Bryn Mawr girls at one time had a slang phrase for much the same notion. They divided their men friends into ‘goons’ and ‘jiggers.’ Again the goon was the man who did what the girl expected, whereas the jigger did not.
A German physiologist has classified men in a more scientific manner by separating the species into what he called ‘cycloids’ and ‘schizoids.’ The cycloid was the round, fat, jolly individual, the man who might lose his temper, but who would quickly realize it and recover his self-control. The schizoid, on the other hand, was the long, lean, lank individual with long, thin, dangling arms and spindly legs, the man who might bear a grudge for years without allowing it to come to the surface. Yet, despite the scientific names, even this was not a truly scientific classification, for one could not place a man on the scales and know, if he weighed one hundred and eighty, that he was a cycloid, or, if he weighed less, a schizoid.
At the Human Engineering Laboratories of Stevens Institute of Technology, we were experimenting with ways and means of isolating and evaluating the mental trait ‘creative imagination’ when we stumbled by accident upon a mechanical device for measuring a difference in personality which one instinctively feels among one’s own friends — the difference in attitude toward life between the group worker and the individualist. The vice president of a large corporation manufacturing delicate engineering instruments had said to me that, although he had under him several thousand designing engineers and research workers, really fundamental advances in design were made by only a handful of men, and that his company owed its beginning and its success more to a few original and imaginative individuals than to the remaining thousands. Yet he added in the next breath that these men were for the most part queer personalities, almost freaks, insistent upon their own peculiarities; men who, if they had not already proved themselves valuable, would be discharged without hesitation because of their idiosyncrasies. He wondered how many young men were asked to leave the organization because of unwillingness to follow rules because of so-called insubordination, who, if they could be retained on the pay roll, would later be recognized as creative geniuses. It was with the notion that we might be able to spot and measure creative imagination among apprentices and recent college graduates that we first used the free-association test which will be described in this article. The test did not even remotely indicate the originality we were seeking, but it proved to be successful in separating the individualist, the nonconformist, the schizoid, from the group worker.
The test, which had already been used extensively by psychiatrists and psychologists, consists of saying a word to a man — for instance, the word ‘tiger’ — and asking him to respond with the first single word which comes to his mind connected with ‘ tiger,’ suggested by it, associated in some way with it. When I said ‘tiger’ to a New York friend, he instantly answered ‘milk.’ I had trained myself to keep an immobile face, but in this instance I did not live up to my training, for he said: ‘You look surprised.’
‘I am sorry; I tried not to.’ Then he explained his answer: ‘Almost every Christmas a friend in Washington sends me a case of Scotch. Nowadays when one ships Scotch one cannot exactly mark it Scotch, so this friend always writes in bold letters across the package, “Tiger’s Milk.”’
This man is a marked subjective type. He is what the psychoanalysts have designated as an introvert. His first instinctive reaction is his own Scotch, his own Christmas, his own friend in Washington.
It happened that the next man whom I tested responded to ‘ tiger ’ with the word ‘butter’ —another surprising and unusual response. It appeared that he had been reading aloud to his youngster a book called Black Sambo, which describes in great detail an imaginary substance called tigerbutter. This was again a personal reaction.
When I said ‘tiger’ to still another man, he answered ‘tiger,’ and I was well enough acquainted with him to know that he was a student of Blake and was thinking of the poem beginning:—
In the forests of the night . . .
A cartoonist, knowing no more of these three men than their three individual reactions, could portray each one as vividly and radically different from the others, could make one see each as a distinct personality. The man who receives a case of Scotch from a friend in Washington, the man who goes home evenings and reads aloud to his youngsters, the lover of Blake — each is a unique individual. Among 1000 men we measured in this way only one answered ‘tiger-milk,’ only one ‘tiger-butter,’ and only one ‘tigertiger’; but, out of this same 1000, 280 answered ‘tiger-animal.’ The fact that 280 made the same response signifies an impersonal, objective attitude toward life. These 280 men instinctively gave answers which were not affected by their own personal interests or their own individual experiences. The experimenter’s first thought is that the man who consistently replies with the tiger-milk or tiger-butter type of response is the unusual, original, creative sulphite, who differs from the multitude, whereas the tiger-animal type of man is the commonplace, ordinary bromide, similar to 280 others in every thousand. That was our first thought and our primary purpose in giving the test; but it proved not to be a correct explanation.
The first preliminary skirmish with the test was to administer it to an executive of marked originality, one who could always suggest a new point of attack on any problem. He replied consistently with commonplace, objective answers. The originality which I knew he possessed did not show itself in his responses to this particular test. Instead, it was his executive side, his objectivity, which was uppermost. I went to another and then another executive whose past accomplishments indicated creative ability, and they responded consistently with unimaginative, commonplace answers. It is true that many inventors gave strange replies, but the cause proved to be, not their originality, but their subjective, individualistic attitudes toward life. We soon discovered, therefore, that the test really separates the individualist from the group worker, very nearly the introvert from the extravert, more precisely the inhibited, repressed person from the uninhibited, irrepressible one — not the sulphite from the bromide, not the inventor from the unimaginative man.
II
We have used the free-association test in a number of experiments, each planned to throw its own light upon the meaning of the outcome, with the hope that the results would fit with one another like the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, and give a complete picture of the significance of one score as contrasted with another. One of the early experiments was the measuring of a group of 80 house-to-house commission salesmen for whom accurate sales records were available. Purely on the basis of the free-association-test results, we divided the group into those who scored extremely subjective (that is, the tiger-milk, tiger-butter type of individual), those who scored somewhat subjective but not extremely so, those who scored somewhat objective, and finally those who scored extremely objective (that is, the tiger-animal kind of man). We then tabulated the sales of each group and found that the extremely subjective men had averaged, in the previous six months, 32 sales per man. The somewhat subjective group had averaged 45 sales per man in the same period. The somewhat objective group had averaged 65 sales per man; whereas the extremely objective group, the tiger-animal group, had averaged 92 sales per man. In other words, as one went from the extremely subjective scores to the extremely objective ones, the actual sales per man increased from 32 to 45 to 65, and finally to 92.
In work of this type, as in all research work, there are individual exceptions. In this particular experiment the outstanding salesman of the organization, the one whose sales were the highest of the group, scored subjective — not extremely so, but clearly on the subjective side. As one met him he was obviously of the sales type. Every indication showed him objective with the exception of the test, and I have no notion why he scored subjective, but he did. Yet the average sales of the subjective group of which he was one were only 45 per man — half the average of the extremely objective group.
It is these exceptions which interpose disheartening difficulties in applying the results of modern psychological tests to individuals. Yet at the same time the exceptions give the problem its fascination. One must use test results with care and judgment. Ten extremely objective men will almost certainly average higher sales than ten extremely subjective men with similar opportunities; but any given one of the former group may not be as successful in sales as any one of the latter. A sales manager who selects his force with the greatest possible care and good judgment, and at the same time hires only extremely objective men, will invariably show higher average sales than a sales manager who uses only his own judgment and does not employ modern psychological methods. On the other hand, a sales manager who uses modern test results to replace his own judgment and his years of experience loses as much as he gains. Psychological tests can measure only here and there a valuable characteristic; they cannot as yet measure the whole integrated individual. Test results, therefore, indicate only a single factor in the total complex situation.
III
A second experiment with this same subjective-objective technique was to measure a group of foremen in a factory where there was what was called a plan of representation. This provided that any worker who felt that a foreman had been unfair in a decision could apply to a committee of six men and appeal the foreman’s ruling. We divided the foreman group on the basis of the free-association-test results into subjective and objective halves. On going back over their records as foremen, we found that the subjective foremen had had twice as many complaints made against their decisions as the objective group.
Furthermore, on looking up each decision which had been made by the committee of six, we discovered that the decisions of the subjective foremen had been reversed 80 per cent of the time, while those of the objective group had been confirmed 70 per cent of the time. It is difficult for the subjective man to put himself instinctively in the place of another individual and to make a decision which seems fair to the latter or to others, whereas the objective man almost invariably sees the other man’s point of view.
This distinction between a subjective and an objective attitude toward life applies only in dealing with other men, and apparently does not enter into the solution of engineering and scientific problems, or into the making of decisions which involve material facts. Most of the scientific group, most of the designing-engineering group, most of the research group, score subjective in this particular test, — often extremely so, — and yet these men see material facts objectively and impartially.
One hundred men, known to be successful laboratory research workers, scatter as individuals over the entire scoring scale, but cluster sufficiently at the subjective end to average, as a group, extremely subjective. One hundred designing engineers, and the professional groups as a whole, again scatter as individuals, but average subjective — not so extremely subjective as the research group, but distinctly more subjective than men in general. One hundred business executives scatter widely as individuals, but average objective; one hundred salesmen, especially the commission group, again scatter, but average extremely objective. That is, as one goes from the extremely subjective to the extremely objective end of the scale, one goes from the laboratory research worker to the designing engineer, to the executive, and finally to the salesman.
It is curious to note that this scale also corresponds to the order of frequency with which these four types of workers meet others. The research worker enters his laboratory in the morning, closes the door, sees no one during the day, and does better work than when jostled by others. The designing engineer and the professional man meet other individuals to some extent, and yet much of their work is isolated, away from the bustle of the world. The executive obviously comes in contact with other individuals, not only singly, but in the mass; his work, however, is not by any means limited to contacts with people. The salesman’s whole life consists of making new acquaintances.
IV
Of the seven mental traits1 which, in the last ten or a dozen years, we have learned to measure and isolate from one another, this attitude toward life, at least in the mature man, is the easiest to recognize without test data. Yet even here one cannot always be certain. A man of thirty-five came to the Boston laboratory to try the tests. Over the telephone he had spoken in so low a voice that it was impossible to get his name. As he entered the laboratory he stood in the doorway waiting for us to make the first advance. Almost before we had started he apologized for having had very little schooling. I explained that a majority of the tests measure aptitudes and not knowledge, except in the case of vocabulary, and that while in this particular one he might be handicapped, he would not be in the others. He was still hesitant about bothering us and had all of the surface indications of the extremely subjective individual with a low vocabulary. He scored, however, extremely objective and made but four vocabulary errors, whereas the average Harvard graduate will make twenty-one in the same test. His sense of inferiority because of his lack of formal education had completely altered his surface mannerisms.
In the long run, over a period of years of floundering about, many, perhaps most, subjective men gravitate to subjective occupations, and most objective men to objective ones. But there are exceptions, wasted years, hopeless discouragements, augmented by the fact that during the school and college years the subjective and the objective types can be only uncertainly identified without modern psychological laboratory technique.
Tn measuring college students we expected to find the objective boy holding a majority of the class offices and joining fraternities more often than his subjective companion, and playing more striking parts in all activities. We expected, in other words, to find the objective student acting the same part in school and college as in his later career. To our surprise, there was little difference in external actions between the subjective and the objective youth in this period. After graduation, those who scored objective as freshmen drift one by one into executive and sales and group-contact positions, whereas those who originally tested subjective become designing engineers and scientific research workers — that is, individual workers in contradistinction to group workers. There is something about the school and college atmosphere which makes it difficult to tell from a boy’s activities whether he should have the type of training valuable to a successful sales and business executive or that type most valuable to a technical and individual worker.
Even high marks in a business course do not differentiate the objective from the subjective personality. We have recently measured the student body in a well-known business administration course, and, upon collating the freeassociation scores with school success, have found both objective and subjective types doing equally well. The extremely objective student receives good marks because he is the type for whom the course was organized and for whom it is conducted. He adapts himself readily to the executive situations discussed. The extremely subjective boy does equally well by a different mental approach. He is the studious type, the individual worker, who gets high marks by constant reading and persistent study. Those who test between the extremes do less well. A graph showing the personality score plotted across the bottom, extremely subjective to the left, extremely objective to the right, and school marks vertically, is U-shaped; the two extremes stand high scholastically — for totally different reasons, however. Although in every field of human endeavor there is room for both sales and research efforts, from the measures which we have made of successful executives it would seem as if the extremely subjective boy, who has no particular interest in business and no definite position awaiting him, would, despite high marks in a business course, be better off in one of the professions or in a research atmosphere.
V
One extremely subjective freshman in such a course asked me to tell him the duties of an executive. He said: ’I am studying business, and planning to be an executive, but I have no idea what an executive does. I hardly know what the word means. And although I realize that I shall find out in the next four years of college work, I begin already to feel that I am in the wrong place.'
‘But why did you come to this particular school to take this course with so little knowledge of what it is all about?’
‘My chum was coming, and we have always been together ’ — an all too frequent answer.
Not many years ago, as one counts historical time, most sons followed in the footsteps of their fathers. The son of a silversmith became a silversmith; the son of a mason learned to be a mason. The practice had distinct advantages. Under this arrangement a boy had an excellent opportunity to see in advance something of his father’s work. From the beginning he studied with a specific aim in view. Furthermore, a boy tended to inherit some of his father’s characteristics, to resemble him in enough respects to be suited, to some extent at least, for his father’s work.
To-day, too many fathers are themselves out of place for their choice to serve as a criterion for their sons. How, then, is a boy to choose? It is impossible for him to learn enough about each occupation, its requirements, its satisfactions, its rewards, to make an intelligent decision. Must this vital choice forever be left to mere chance, as it too often is to-day? I think not.
Manufacturers have learned, in building an automobile, to use one metal for the cylinders, another for the piston rings, another for the filament of the headlights, and still another for the windings of the instruments. They do not attempt to make cylinders of copper, or piston rings of cast iron, or filaments of steel, or instrument windings of tungsten. They have even learned that chemical elements out of place are not only useless but harmful. Sulphur, an essential ingredient in the manufacture of matches, they eliminate with the most painstaking care from certain types of steel. Each part of every mechanism makes special demands which are best satisfied by some particular combination of chemical elements, and almost every known element or combination has its place and is of value if correctly used.
There is to-day little waste of materials in industry; and yet there is still a vast amount of human waste in every department of life. Many of the largest colleges boast of the fact that they cull out 50 per cent of their freshmen as human scrap before the class reaches its senior year. The standard of many an organization which deals with human beings is judged by the percentage of human scrap which it produces: the greater the percentage, the higher its standing, although the same organization would not dream of allowing an equal waste of mere materials. Both colleges and the world must learn not only that each occupation has its individual requirements, but that every human being has his specialized function. It is with the aim of helping each individual to steer himself toward that position in which he will be most valuable to society, and where he can at the same time make use of his complete range of aptitudes, that modern psychological tests are being developed.
VI
How can a boy or girl profit by such tests? A school system which is handling annually tens of thousands of youngsters is at the moment appealing to us for some type of group test which will help guide this vast army, many of whom have not the slightest idea what they want to make of their future lives. We have been at work on this problem of group administration for several years, and with the exception of the English vocabulary test, which will be mentioned incidentally later in the article, and which measures an acquired characteristic, not an inherent trait, we have succeeded in devising no valid group measures. This particular free-association personality test cannot in its present state of development be given accurately to groups of students.
My own feeling is that for the safety of the youngster to be tested, who would probably be unduly influenced by the results, psychological tests in their present stage of development should be given only in a psychological laboratory devoting itself exclusively to what is now called psychometrics — that is, the science of psychological measurements. At present, tests should not be given as a part of the school curriculum, for three reasons.
First, most psychological tests must be given to individuals, not to groups; and they are extremely difficult to administer accurately. The administrator must be able through his experience to put each youngster at ease. The slightest feeling of nervousness or uneasiness destroys completely the value of the results. Fifteen or twenty minutes, or even half an hour with some persons, must be spent in giving a background of test development, arousing an interest before any test is administered. In describing the freeassociation test at the beginning of this article, I gave only the single word ‘tiger’ as an illustration. Actually one hundred such words are used. To administer the test successfully, the administrator must know by heart these stimuli, and, in addition, most of the common responses, and must be on the alert for the many possible misunderstandings. The words must be read at the rate of about one every two seconds, and the answer to each recorded without a break in the even flow of the test. Yet the rate of speed should depend on the individual who is being tested; the words must not be read too rapidly, or nervousness will appear, and they must not be read too slowly, or the responses will become premeditated replies rather than spontaneous reactions. Even an adept at giving the free-association test should never give any one test alone, because of the importance of interpreting the results in relation to the whole individual. I have seen many youngsters hopelessly and needlessly discouraged by having been given the result of a single test.
Few schools feel that they can afford a full-time trained psychologist, and even these few cannot always give him a sufficiently wide range of testing experience to keep him in touch with contemporary research, which in these early years of the work is continually changing procedures and results. Ultimately, no doubt, testing will be done by the schools, but it is still too largely in the experimental stage to separate it safely from the research work.
The second reason why tests should not be given as part of the school curriculum is that, even with perfect administration, the interpretation of the test is so difficult that it demands a real interest on the part of the youngster and his parents. Experience has shown that at present this can be more easily gained by a laboratory organization working in conjunction with the school, perhaps even at the school but apart from it, and by one which tests only such individuals as are themselves interested.
The third reason for the use of a psychological laboratory for testing is the fact that the future accuracy of the work will depend directly upon the amount of follow-up work which can be done. It is difficult, if not impossible, for individual high schools to follow individual pupils into many different preparatory schools and colleges, and then into a wide variety of occupations. Laboratories are organized to do this accurate follow-up work through a long period of years, and thereby to improve continually the tests and their interpretations.
With these needs in mind, Stevens Institute of Technology has organized two Human Engineering Laboratories, which were described in a former Atlantic Monthly article,2 one on its own campus in Hoboken, and the other in Boston, open to any boy or girl fourteen years of age or older; and in addition an engineering summer camp for boys who have completed the junior year of high or preparatory school and have not yet taken senior year.
At what age should such tests be taken? Preferably at fourteen or fifteen or sixteen. We are testing, occasionally, at twelve and thirteen, and hope within a few years to know more about these ages; but at the present time our norms for these ages are not fully reliable.
VII
An avalanche of questions now assail one, most of them at the moment unanswerable. Is the difference in personality between various types of successful men and women an acquired trait, or is it inherent in the individual, perhaps inherited? Does it change with age? Can the subjective boy become objective by forcing himself into a sales position? Or can the objective boy become subjective? Can the boy who wishes to be a salesman or an executive cultivate objectivity? Can the prospective research worker acquire subjectivity? All that we have been able to do is to gather a certain amount of circumstantial evidence which would seem to indicate that this or that attitude toward life is deeply ingrained in one’s essential nature, an integral part of the complexity which we call personality, and that it is already fixed early in the teens.
Not long ago there came to me a man of perhaps forty-five, out of a job because of the depression. He had been a success in selling, a leader in his field, but he wished to be tested to see whether he should go on attempting to find another sales job. There was doubt in his mind, and he wanted outside evidence. He scored extremely subjective, the non-sales type. He had a strong physique, an outstanding personality, a will to succeed. He had become a loader in sales work because of his willingness to apply himself to it and his overwhelming ambition; but as he grew older his youthful energy began to diminish, he was anxious to let down a little, he began to dread keeping up indefinitely the output of energy which was required of him. He was clearly out of place, and was finding himself in an increasingly uncongenial atmosphere.
The youth who leaves school or college with ambition and energy and vitality can always succeed. The question is not as to the first five years, but as to whether ten or fifteen years from then he will have made for himself a place of importance in the world, and will be increasingly happy in it. If a career in salesmanship develops this aspect of personality, the man who has worked for years in a sales environment and has steeped himself in its atmosphere should score objective in our test; yet the man I have just mentioned scored extremely subjective, and instinctively felt himself out of place. It would seem from this one case that environment does not alter this aspect of personality; but one instance is not proof.
We have measured men and women ranging in age from fourteen to forty, and from our present records there is no change in the average objectivity of each age. If objectivity is an acquired attitude, it would seem as if men of forty should be more objective in their attitude toward life than boys of fourteen or sixteen or eighteen. Yet such is not the case, when the test is actually applied to these ages. It may be that certain subjective boys of fourteen become objective as they grow older, but, if so, the same number of objective boys must become subjective in order that the average of the group shall not change. It may be that the groups of each age which we have measured are not unselected, or not sufficiently large to represent the true conditions. The results are based on only 1500 individuals. We have now measured 4000 to 6000 more, and we are going over our records and reëxamining the change of this aspect of personality with age, but the detailed work involved is enormous, and the results are not yet tabulated. From our completed analysis, however, of 1500 tests, it appears that one’s attitude toward life does not change with age.
If a subjective attitude toward life is an acquired characteristic, it would seem as if individuals who have had physical defects from early childhood, and children whose parents died early and who have, in consequence, been brought up by relatives rather than in a normal home atmosphere, might by these conditions be made sensitive and more subjective in their attitude than more fortunate persons. But those of this type whom we have measured, although their number is not large, show the same average objectivity as an unselected group.
With one group of normal persons, we readministered the test at the end of two years and found comparatively little change, not enough to suggest that this attitude toward life is an acquired characteristic affected by environment. We are this year readministering the test to a group whom we originally tested nearly four years ago. This should throw further light on the change of the characteristics over a period of four years.
VIII
From the work which we have thus far done it seems best, if one is to meet life successfully, not to try to change one’s personality. Neither the subjective nor the objective personality is better than the other. Each has its own bailiwick, its own function in life. It is when one of the individuals attempts to assume the characteristics of the other that difficulties begin.
Not long ago I tested a fourteenyear-old youngster who, as he came into the laboratory, knocked loudly at the door, opened it without waiting for a response, rushed across the room, and shook hands heartily. I said to myself instantly, ‘A subjective boy gone wrong.’ He tested true to our expectations, extremely subjective, giving not one single objective response, but he was trying hard to be the hailfellow-well-met type. He had been sent in by a school because he was always getting into difficulties; he was always the goat of every joke. He did poorly in all his studies, not, I believe, for lack of real ability, but because his mind was more set upon making a good impression than upon actually doing well the job in hand.
Several years ago I encountered the first boy of this type whom I had recognized as such. He was in a school which takes a keen interest in every boy as an individual problem, and bit by bit the headmaster urged him to stop play-acting and to become frankly the quiet, retiring student. His room was changed so that he could live alone, instead of with another boy. In the next two years, until graduation, his work and his personality both improved. Too often the subjective person who tries to be objective overdoes it. He becomes too obviously the backslapping, glad-hand type, and one instinctively feels the insincerity of the pose.
There is, apparently, one sound way by which the subjective person who wishes to do it can more or less obliterate the distinction between himself and the objective type. This is by acquiring a large English vocabulary, a trait quite distinct from personality. In one successful sales organization, which, as a whole, scored low in English vocabulary, we found not a single subjective individual. In another similar sales organization, which scored higher in vocabulary, we found an occasional extremely subjective but successful salesman. In a third sales group, which averaged still higher in vocabulary, higher as a whole than college graduates, we found many subjective men successful in selling. The higher the vocabulary, the less difference we have found between sales success of the subjective and of the objective types.
The best solution, however, seems to be not to try to alter one’s personality, but rather to seek that field of work, or that particular type of work in one’s own field of interest, for which one’s attitude toward life is an asset, not a handicap. If one is objective, this indicates salesmanship, executive work, or a business career. Boys who score objective should take positions which will throw them in contact with other men, where their personality is an asset. They should get the type of training while they are still in school and college which will be of most value to the group-contact kind of man.
One who is subjective should select law, medicine, designing engineering, scientific research, or individual creative work of some nature. Boys who score subjective should fit themselves for positions where individuality counts, and where the lone worker is most successful. The subjective man seldom ventures an opinion unless he knows every fact; to express himself with certainty, he must have many times the background of the objective business man, who is often forced to make a decision with less knowledge of the essentials than would satisfy the subjective nature. For this reason the subjective boy would be wise to specialize, in order that he may know his own field thoroughly. He should get as sound a technical training as possible in the subjects which interest him, in order that he may have sufficient knowledge to express his opinion with force and conviction, and take pleasure in his accomplishments.
- The seven mental traits which we have learned to measure are: —↩
- 1. Personality — the distinction between the objective, sales, executive type and the subjective, research, and designing-engineering type described in this article.↩
- 2. Tonal memory — a gift for carrying in mind musical themes which have been heard. It is interesting because there is some slight relationship between tonal memory and vocabulary. The better the tonal memory, the larger the number of words which an individual is likely to remember.↩
- 3. Engineering aptitude — a gift for visualizing three-dimensional structure. This trait is fundamental to success in engineering, architecture, surgery, and the higher types of mechanical work.↩
- 4. Clerical aptitude — a gift for grasping the significance of figures, essential to success in accounting and banking.↩
- 5. Tweezer dexterity — characteristic of surgeons and assemblers of miniature instruments. Some would not care to classify this as a mental element, but we do because it seems to be a distinct trait, having no relation to the others.↩
- 6. Finger dexterity — which for some queer reason has practically no relation to tweezer dexterity. The ability to use one’s fingers seems to be quite independent of the ability to use a small tool, such as a pair of tweezers.↩
- 7. Creative imagination.↩
- An eighth element (inductive reasoning) and a ninth (visual memory) we have evidence exist, but we have not yet been able to isolate them completely and measure them as accurately as the others. In all, there are about fifteen elements of which we have gained some knowledge, and probably many more which we have not yet been able even to approximate. — AUTHOR↩
- ‘Taking a Man’s Measure,’ in the June 1931 issue. — EDITOR↩