THE BEST POSSIBLE EFFECT - CHAPTER VI
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF ECONOMIC PSYCHOLOGY
Here we may stop. From those
elementary questions concerning the mental effects,
the path would quickly lead to questions of gravest
importance. What is the mental effect which the
economic labor produces in the laborer himself?
How do economic movements influence the mind of the
community? How far do non-economic factors produce
effects on the psychical mechanism of the economic
agents? But it would be idle to claim to-day
for exact psychology, with its methods of causal thought,
regions in which so far popular psychology, with its
methods of purposive thought, is still sovereign.
Our aim certainly was not to review the totality of
possible problems related to economic efficiency,
but merely to demonstrate the principles and the methods
of experimental economic psychology by a few characteristic
illustrations. As all the examples which we selected
were chosen only in order to make clear the characteristic
point of view of psychotechnics, it is unimportant
whether the particular results will stand the test
of further experimental investigations, or will have
to be modified by new researches. What is needed
to-day is not to distribute the results so far reached
as if they were parts of a definite knowledge, but
only to emphasize that the little which has been accomplished
should encourage continuous effort. To stimulate
such further work is the only purpose of this sketch.
This further work will have to be
a work of cooeperation. The nature of this problem
demands a relatively large number of persons for the
experimental treatment. With most experimental
researches in our psychological laboratories, the
number of the subjects experimented on is not so important
as the number of experiments made with a few well-trained
participants. But with the questions of applied
psychology the number of persons plays a much more
significant rôle, as the individual differences become
of greatest importance. The same problems ought
therefore to be studied in various places, so that
the results may be exchanged and compared. Moreover,
these psychological economic investigations naturally
lead beyond the possibilities of the university laboratories.
To a certain degree this was true of other parts of
applied psychology as well. Educational and medical
experimental psychology could not reach their fullest
productivity until the experiment was systematically
carried into the schoolroom and the psychiatric clinic.
But the classroom and the hospital are relatively
accessible places for the scientific worker, as both
are anyhow conducted under a scientific point of view.
The teacher and the physician can easily learn to
perform valuable experiments with school children
or with patients. This favorable condition is
lacking in the workshop and the factory, in the banks
and the markets. The academic psychologist will
be able to undertake work there only with a very disturbing
expenditure of time and only under exceptional conditions.
If such experiments, for instance, with laborers in
a factory or employees of a railway are to advance
beyond the faint first efforts of to-day and are really
to become serviceable to the cultural progress of
our time with effective completeness, they ought not
to remain an accidental appendix to the theoretical
laboratories. Either the universities must create
special laboratories for applied psychology or independent
research institutes must be founded which attack the
new concrete problems under the point of view of national
political economy. Experimental workshops could
be created which are really adjusted to the special
practical needs and to which a sufficiently large
number of persons could be drawn for the systematic
researches. The ideal solution for the United
States would be a governmental bureau for applied
psychology, with special reference to the psychology
of commerce and industry, similar to the model agricultural
stations all over the land under the Department of
Agriculture.
Only when such a broad foundation
has been secured will the time be ripe to carry the
method systematically into the daily work. The
aim will never be for real experimental researches
to be performed by the foreman in the workshop or
by the superintendent in the factory. But slowly
a certain acknowledged system of rules and prescriptions
may be worked out which may be used as patterns, and
which will not presuppose any scientific knowledge,
any more than an understanding of the principles of
electricity is necessary for one who uses the telephone.
But besides the rigid rules which any one may apply,
particular prescriptions will be needed fitting the
special situation. This leads to the demand for
the large establishments to appoint professionally
trained psychologists who will devote their services
to the psychological problems of the special industrial
plant. There are many factories that have scores
of scientifically trained chemists or physicists at
work, but who would consider it an unproductive luxury
to appoint a scientifically schooled experimental psychologist
to their staff. And yet his observations and
researches might become economically the most important
factor. Similar expectations might be justified
for the large department stores and especially for
the big transportation companies. In smaller
dimensions the same real needs exist in the ordinary
workshop and store. It is obvious that the professional
consulting psychologist would satisfy these needs most
directly, and if such a new group of engineers were
to enter into industrial life, very soon a further
specialization might be expected. Some of these
psychological engineers would devote themselves to
the problems of vocational selection and appointment;
others would specialize on questions of advertisement
and display and propaganda; a third group on problems
of fatigue, efficiency, and recreation; a fourth on
the psychological demands for the arrangement of the
machines; and every day would give rise to new divisions.
Such a well-schooled specialist, if he spent a few
hours in a workshop or a few days in a factory, could
submit propositions which might refer exclusively
to the psychological factors and yet which might be
more important for the earning and the profit of the
establishment than the mere buying of new machines
or the mere increase in the number of laborers.
No one can deny that such a transition
must be burdened with difficult complications and
even with dangers; and still less will any one doubt
that it may be caricatured. One who demands that
a chauffeur or a motorman of an electric railway be
examined as to his psychical abilities by systematic
psychological methods, so that accidents may be avoided,
does not necessarily demand that a congressman or a
cabinet minister or a candidate for marriage be tested
too by psychological laboratory experiments, as the
witty ones have proposed. And one who believes
that the work in the factory ought to be studied with
reference to the smallest possible expenditure of psychical
impulses is not convinced that the same experimental
methods will be necessary for the functions of eating
and drinking and love-making, as has been suggested.
And if it is true that difficulties
and discomforts are to be feared during the transition
period, they should be more than outweighed by the
splendid betterments to be hoped for. We must
not forget that the increase of industrial efficiency
by future psychological adaptation and by improvement
of the psychophysical conditions is not only in the
interest of the employers, but still more of the employees;
their working time can be reduced, their wages increased,
their level of life raised. And above all, still
more important than the naked commercial profit on
both sides, is the cultural gain which will come to
the total economic life of the nation, as soon as every
one can be brought to the place where his best energies
may be unfolded and his greatest personal satisfaction
secured. The economic experimental psychology
offers no more inspiring idea than this adjustment
of work and psyche by which mental dissatisfaction
in the work, mental depression and discouragement,
may be replaced in our social community by overflowing
joy and perfect inner harmony.