{"agent_id":"munsterberg","agent_name":"Hugo Münsterberg","slug":"fitting-the-worker-to-the-work","label":"Fitting the worker to the work: is the measurement of aptitude and the pursuit of efficiency a benefit, or the servant of managerial control?","topic":"Fitting the worker to the work","question":"Is the measurement of aptitude and the pursuit of efficiency a benefit, or the servant of managerial control?","position":"Great harm is done, to the worker and to the work alike, by the blind chance that throws a man into a calling for which his mind is unfit — the nervous man to monotonous vigilance, the slow man to work demanding speed, the man of one aptitude to a task requiring another. Psychology can measure the mental qualities a given work demands and the qualities a given man possesses, and so fit the one to the other, to the great gain of both: the worker set to labor he can do well and without needless strain, the enterprise served by men suited to their places. And psychology can study the conditions of work itself — the curve of fatigue, the deadening of monotony, the training of skill, the economy of attention — and so make labor less wasteful of human energy. This is not to grind the man into a tool of the factory; it is to spare him the misery of unfit work and needless fatigue. The efficiency I seek is not the employer's alone; it is the efficiency of a human life not wasted in the wrong place.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Great harm is done, to the worker and to the work alike, by the blind chance that throws a man into a calling for which his mind is unfit — the nervous man to monotonous vigilance, the slow man to work demanding speed, the man of one aptitude to a task requiring another.","n":[]},{"t":"Psychology can measure the mental qualities a given work demands and the qualities a given man possesses, and so fit the one to the other, to the great gain of both: the worker set to labor he can do well and without needless strain, the enterprise served by men suited to their places.","n":[1,2]}],[{"t":"And psychology can study the conditions of work itself — the curve of fatigue, the deadening of monotony, the training of skill, the economy of attention — and so make labor less wasteful of human energy.","n":[]},{"t":"This is not to grind the man into a tool of the factory; it is to spare him the misery of unfit work and needless fatigue.","n":[]},{"t":"The efficiency I seek is not the employer's alone; it is the efficiency of a human life not wasted in the wrong place.","n":[3,4,5]}]],"texts":"Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (1913 — vocational selection by aptitude tests, the study of learning, fatigue, monotony, attention, and efficiency in work). Reception: the founding of industrial-organizational psychology; the alignment with Taylorist scientific management and the labor critique that efficiency psychology serves employers over workers; the modern I-O psychology of personnel selection, work design, and worker well-being.","works":["Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (1913 — vocational selection by aptitude tests, the study of learning, fatigue, monotony, attention, and efficiency in work)"],"reception":"the founding of industrial-organizational psychology; the alignment with Taylorist scientific management and the labor critique that efficiency psychology serves employers over workers; the modern I-O psychology of personnel selection, work design, and worker well-being.","status":"Münsterberg founded industrial-organizational psychology, and vocational selection by aptitude, the study of fatigue and monotony and skill, and the psychological analysis of work are permanent parts of the field. The sharp contest is over whose interests it serves. His efficiency psychology arose alongside Taylor's scientific management, and the labor and critical traditions charge that fitting workers to jobs and maximizing efficiency served employers and management, treated workers instrumentally, and helped intensify and control labor rather than liberate it. Modern I-O psychology has both continued the selection-and-efficiency program and, in the human- relations and worker-well-being traditions, turned toward job satisfaction, motivation, and humane work design — so the field itself contains the argument Münsterberg's work opened. His own framing (that fitting the man to the work spares him unfit labor) is a real benefit that coexists with the managerial uses.","era":"1863-1916","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Psychology and Industrial Efficiency","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"On the other hand, some of the best machine operators are very slow and inaccurate at the sorting table. Girls have been found very poor at the work at which they were first set, and very successful and eflB- cient as soon as they had been transferred from the one to the other. Examples of this kind might be heaped up without end.","label":"Psychology and Industrial Efficiency"},{"n":2,"work":"Business Psychology","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"The mill-owner may consider as the best work that which produces the largest possible output. The work- ingman on the other hand may consider a real improve- ment only that change by which, without decrease in the output, his personal energy and health are protected as well as possible and his happiness and comfort secured.","label":"Business Psychology"},{"n":3,"work":"Psychology and Industrial Efficiency","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"All such defi- ciencies may be dangerous in particular callings. But while the vocation of the ship officer is for- tunately protected nowadays by such a special psychological examination, most other vocations are unguarded against the entrance of the men- tally unfit individuals.","label":"Psychology and Industrial Efficiency"},{"n":4,"work":"American Problems","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"He may be able to see correctly with one eye every part of the machine, but if the other eye is somewhat defective, though he himself may not notice it, his plastic Interpreta- tion of his impressions will be insufficient. He will con- stantly be in danger of putting his hands into the buzz- t66 AMERICAN PROBLEMS ing wheels.","label":"American Problems"},{"n":5,"work":"Business Psychology","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"How? 13. How do the physiological factors of a person affect his emotional condition? Illustrate. 14. Explain just how laziness is the mental aspect of nervous processes. What mental step is necessary to a genuine cure of laziness? 15. From the viewpoint of what three mental factors is the experience of the business man made up? See the chart on the mind of the business man.","label":"Business Psychology"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"applied-psychology","label":"Applied psychology: should the findings of the laboratory be carried out into law, work, therapy, education, and art?"},{"slug":"the-witness-on-the-stand","label":"The witness on the stand: is eyewitness testimony psychologically unreliable, and does the psychologist belong in the courtroom?"},{"slug":"the-photoplay","label":"The photoplay: is film an art whose devices externalize the very operations of the mind?"},{"slug":"the-two-psychologies","label":"The two psychologies: is mind a causal object for natural science, while the free, purposive, valuing self belongs to a philosophy science cannot reach?"}]}