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A history of the early days of personality testing in American industry: An obsession with adjustment

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Abstract

Objective personality testing began with Woodworth's Personal Data Sheet in 1917. That test was developed to identify soldiers prone to nervous breakdowns during enemy bombardment in World War I (WWI). Soon after, many competing personality tests were developed for use in industry. Many of these tests, like Woodworth's, focused on the construct of employee maladjustment and were deemed important in screening out applicants who would create workplace disturbances. In this article, the authors review the history of these early personality tests, especially the Bernreuter Personality Inventory and the Humm-Wadsworth Temperament Scale, and discuss the implications of personality testers' obsession with the construct of employee maladjustment. In addition, the authors discuss the industry's obsession with emotional maladjustment and how this obsession coincided with a cultural shift in norms relating to cultural expression.
A HISTORY OF THE EARLY DAYS OF
PERSONALITY TESTING IN
AMERICAN INDUSTRY:
An Obsession With Adjustment
Robert E. Gibby
Procter & Gamble, Cincinnati, Ohio
Michael J. Zickar
Bowling Green State University
Objective personality testing began with Woodworth’s Personal Data Sheet in 1917.
That test was developed to identify soldiers prone to nervous breakdowns during
enemy bombardment in World War I (WWI). Soon after, many competing person-
ality tests were developed for use in industry. Many of these tests, like Wood-
worth’s, focused on the construct of employee maladjustment and were deemed
important in screening out applicants who would create workplace disturbances. In
this article, the authors review the history of these early personality tests, especially
the Bernreuter Personality Inventory and the Humm-Wadsworth Temperament
Scale, and discuss the implications of personality testers’ obsession with the
construct of employee maladjustment. In addition, the authors discuss the industry’s
obsession with emotional maladjustment and how this obsession coincided with a
cultural shift in norms relating to cultural expression.
Keywords: personality testing, emotional adjustment, Robert S. Woodworth, indus-
trial psychology
Personality testing has been an integral part of industrial-organizational (I-O)
and vocational psychology for the last 85 years. Since the creation of the first
formal personality inventory, the Woodworth Personal Data Sheet (WPDS;
Woodworth, 1917), personality testing has endured many controversies, transfor-
mations, and threats. Currently, personality testing is viewed as crucial to under-
standing the overlapping fields of vocational psychology (Tokar, Fischer, &
Subich, 1997) and I-O psychology (Hough, 2001). Personality inventories are
used in vocational counseling and employee selection and are important compo-
nents in theoretical models of work behavior. Despite its long history and
importance, however, there has been little historical scholarship investigating the
early days of personality testing.
In this article, we examine the beginnings of the relationship between per-
sonality testing and industry. We document the evolution of personality testing
from the 1917 WPDS test up until tests of the 1940s after which personality
testing became much more established and commercially accepted. We focus on
Robert E. Gibby, Procter & Gamble, Cincinnati, Ohio; Michael J. Zickar, Department of
Psychology, Bowling Green State University.
Sources from various archives were used in writing this article. We use simplified notation to
document the various collections from which these materials were obtained. WVDB refers to the
Walter VanDyke Bingham papers located at Carnegie Mellon University. AHAP refers to the
Archives of the History of American Psychology located at University of Akron.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Robert Gibby, Procter &
Gamble, 2 P&G Plaza, Cincinnati, OH 45202. E-mail: gibby.re@pg.com
History of Psychology
2008, Vol. 11, No. 3, 164–184
Copyright 2008 by the American Psychological Association
1093-4510/08/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0013041
164
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the obsession that personality test developers (and their managerial consumers)
had with the construct of adjustment while they ignored other aspects of person-
ality that are now viewed as important for predicting work-related behavior. We
trace the roots of this obsession by highlighting the writings of Elton Mayo, as
well as other managerial gurus who thought that the key to success in American
industry was to root out the “problem employees.” In addition, we highlight how
this obsession with adjustment and emotions in the workplace coincided with a
general cultural change regarding emotional expression.
Although we feel that documenting the history of personality testing for
industry is worthy by itself as an academic exercise, we believe reviewing this
history is important in understanding the current practice of personality testing.
We note that such lessons may be especially pertinent to researchers using present
adjustment-oriented personality variables, such as neuroticism, integrity, and core
self-evaluations.
Precursors to Modern Personality Measurement
Although philosophers had been interested in personality and temperament
throughout the history of intellectual thought, the first formal objective measure
of personality owes it origin to World War I (WWI) when American military
personnel were interested in the emotional stability of new military recruits. Prior
to that, however, philosophers and thinkers had long categorized individuals along
different dimensions that would relate to personality as conceptualized today. For
example, Galen (130 –200) conjectured that individuals differed in temperament
due to a prevalence of different types of body fluids. Sir Francis Galton, in his
study on heredity genius, mailed out surveys to eminent scholars and asked them
to describe their temperament using Galen’s typology, asking whether they were
“distinctly nervous, sanguine, bilious, or lymphatic?” (Galton, 1874, pp. 199
200). In another approach, Franz Joseph Gall (1758 –1828) promulgated the idea
that differences in temperament were due to the shape of individuals’ skulls. Gall
and other phrenologists measured personality using a variety of devices such as
calipers (see van Whye, 2004). These precursors to modern personality mea-
surement attempted to understand and measure individual temperament, al-
though the measurements were crude and based on theories that have since
been discredited.
The first formal personality test, the WPDS, was developed in an era (1910
1920s) in which psychologists were concerned with improving the measurement
of psychological phenomena and they were also beginning to become concerned
with developing scientific-based applications that would benefit society. With
regard to the first trend of concern for measurement, research in the United States
focused initially on the assessment of intellectual assessments. Psychologists like
Henry Goddard, Lewis Terman, J. McKeen Cattell, Edward L. Thorndike, and
Robert Yerkes developed tests of individual differences such as intelligence,
achievement, and sensory skills; these tests were thought to be useful in assessing
student potential as well as military potential after the “Great War” broke out (see
Zenderland, 1998). With regard to applying psychology, psychologists such as
Hugo Mu¨nsterburg, Walter van dyke Bingham, and Walter Dill Scott worked with
industry to create applications that could be useful for organizations. Applied
165HISTORY OF PERSONALITY TESTING IN INDUSTRY
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psychology got a major boost when psychologists worked in various capacities
with the American military and government to develop rating forms used to
evaluate military personnel as well as entrance exams that helped evaluate the
intellectual fitness of new recruits as well as assess their specialized trade
knowledge (see Koppes, 2007; Napoli, 1981). It would be these efforts during
WWI that would lead to the development of the first objective personality
inventory.
Shell Shock and WWI
During WWI, a large number of Allied soldiers, when threatened with enemy
bombardment for the first time, experienced long-lasting traumatic symptoms
previously associated with psychopathology. The symptoms reported by soldiers
after bombardment included nausea, uncontrollable weeping, night shakes, heart
palpitations, and amnesia. These symptoms, when experienced after bombard-
ment, were termed “shell shock,” and largely rendered soldiers unfit for military
duty (Mott, 1917; Salmon, 1917). At the conclusion of the war, the number of
victims of shell shock were estimated to be 800,000 British, 800,000 French, and
15,000 American solders (Hale, 1995). Considering such a large number of
military casualties associated with shell shock, the military decided to commission
a test that could be used to identify soldiers among the American Expeditionary
Services who were emotionally unstable, and therefore unfit for active combat
service in the U.S. Army (Woodworth, 1919, 1932; see also Goldberg, 1971).
The test that resulted from this concern was the scale of Psychoneurotic Tenden-
cies (PT), developed by Robert S. Woodworth (Woodworth, 1919). Woodworth, a
Columbia University student of James McKeen Cattell, had been influenced by
his mentor’s interest in mental tests and the applications of quantitative methods
to psychology. After graduating, Woodworth worked at a variety of universities,
including Columbia, Bellevue Hospital Medical College, the University of Edin-
burgh, and the University of Liverpool, finally settling down to an instructor
position at his alma mater Columbia, where he worked until his retirement.
During WWI, the American Psychological Association asked Woodworth to
develop a test to measure emotional stability. Woodworth and colleagues exam-
ined case studies of patients with neurotic symptoms and interviewed psycholo-
gists and psychiatrists who had experience with such patients. Based on these
interviews and analyses, Woodworth collected a set of neurotic symptoms and
administered the set to a group of individuals without neurotic tendencies,
eliminating items that had high frequency among the “normal” individuals. After
that initial analysis, he administered the test to 1000 recruits as well as a small
group of “diagnosed abnormal subjects.” The results were submitted to the
Surgeon General who decided to use the test on a trial basis for preliminary
screening of recruits. When a particular recruit indicated a number of unfavorable
symptoms, it was recommended that a military psychiatrist interview the at-risk
recruit in more detail. Although the test was developed too late to be used for
operational screening of recruits during the war effort, Woodworth publicized the
test to other psychologists (see Poffenberger, 1962; Woodworth, 1932, for details
about the development of the WPDS).
After the war, Woodworth adapted the test for industrial research, renaming
166 GIBBY AND ZICKAR
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the test the Woodworth Personal Data Sheet (WPDS). The 1924 version of the
WPDS assessed personal adjustment via 75 yes/no items; example items included
“Do you ever get so angry that you see red?” and “Do you get tired of people
easily?” As noted by Ferguson (1952), “this test can be called the grandfather of
all present-day personality tests” (p. 146). As might be expected for a test
designed initially to identify shell shock, the WPDS focused on the level of
psychoticism or personal maladjustment of the respondent. This concentration on
the negative end of personality set a precedent that would hinder efforts to find
validity for personality traits in the workplace. In the short term, however,
managers obsessed with rooting out undesirable and unstable workers found the
WPDS and its derivative tests useful.
The Obsession With Adjustment
Nearly all of the popular personality inventories prior to the 1950s focused on
the negative and maladaptive aspects of personality (e.g., X-O Tests for Investi-
gating the Emotions, Pressey & Pressey, 1919; the Colgate Tests of Emotional
Outlets, Laird, 1925; the Mental Hygiene Inventory, House, 1927; and the
Personality Schedule, Thurstone, 1930). In the summaries of the tests, writers
described maladaptive aspects of personality as involving “lack of emotional
control” and “emotional instability” (Pressey & Pressey, 1919) and used clinical
sounding terms such as psychasthenoid, neurasthenoid, and hysteroid (Laird,
1925). This practice was consistent with management theory promulgated by
people such as Harvard Business School professor Elton Mayo and was consistent
with the ethos of the 1920s and 1930s. Mayo believed that problems at work were
most often due to “mental disintegration” and maladjustment (Mayo, 1923).
These maladjusted workers could cause problems by lowering work morale,
fomenting workplace violence, and agitating for unions. Mayo’s writings were
influential in the business world and the psychological community; his work,
along with colleagues, at the Western Electric Company’s Hawthorne Works
facility outside of Chicago provided much fodder for those who thought emo-
tional adjustment was the major cause of problems in the workforce (see
Gillespie, 1991 and Trahair, 1984 for more background information on Mayo). As
noted by Hersey (1936), “the consistently low emotional states which are symp-
tomatic of unhealthy mental conditions cause lessened production, increased
accident rates, lack of cooperation and in many instances group conflicts” (p.
296). One psychologist estimated that 80% of all problem employees had a “quirk
or unusual feature” in their personality (Humm, 1943). By identifying these
maladjusted people with personality tests, it was thought that productivity would
increase and workplace radicalism, which was prevalent in the 1920s and 1930s,
could be eliminated (see O’Connor, 1999; Zickar, 2001).
Besides Mayo and other management theorists, support for focusing on
emotional adjustment came from the new profession of psychiatry, which was
gaining influence in the United States. Around the turn of the 20th century, Adolf
Meyer, a Swiss pathologist who came to the United States and worked in hospitals
in Illinois, New York, Baltimore, and Massachusetts promulgated the view that
mental illnesses, even schizophrenia, were not caused solely by biological defects
and could be cured or ameliorated by therapy and talking cures (Lidz, 1966;
167HISTORY OF PERSONALITY TESTING IN INDUSTRY
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Pressman, 1998). A group of industrial psychiatrists influenced by Sigmund
Freud’s psychodynamic school and new programs in psychiatry (inspired by
Meyer and others) attempted to solve industry’s woes with personnel counseling,
one of Mayo’s inventions in the classic Hawthorne studies (see Highhouse, 1999).
Other methods advocated by industrial psychiatrists included role-playing and
psychodrama (Franz, 1942; Moreno & Toeman, 1942) along with group sessions
where managers discussed work-related problems (Burling, 1954). Although there
were many individuals who referred to industrial psychiatry, the number of
psychiatrists employed in industry appears to be small; one estimate from 1954
was that less than 25 psychiatrists were employed in industry (Alexander, Caples,
Harris, & Coulter, 1954). Another study found that eight corporations hired
psychiatrists full-time whereas another 200 hired psychiatrists part-time (Collins,
1960). One of the inspirations was Jacob Moreno who trained in psychiatry in
Vienna and developed a group therapy technique while working with prostitutes;
although his work on group therapy and psychodrama was conducted in many
different settings, it found many advocates in industrial settings (see Borgatta,
Boguslaw, & Haskell, 1975). Consistent with psychiatry’s focus on helping
people with psychopathology, industrial psychiatrists concentrated on helping
employees resolve their emotional problems.
Psychiatrists and others concerned with mental health created a new field
called mental hygiene. Besides dealing with the problems of alcoholism, prison
reform, and the insane, mental hygienists pledged to help otherwise psychologi-
cally healthy individuals cope with the inevitable hassles and stressors present in
the fast-paced society created by the industrial revolution (see White, 1917, pp.
1–3). Mental hygienists were as interested in preventing serious mental illnesses
from occurring as they were in curing existing maladies. Laurance Shaffer, in one
of the first textbooks on adjustment entitled The Psychology of Adjustment: An
Objective Approach to Mental Hygiene provided a scientific study of how adjust-
ment problems could influence people in various domains such as education,
social work, the family, and the workplace (Shaffer, 1936). Mental hygienists had
similar views of the causes of industry’s woes as Mayo. For example, Giberson
(1937) claimed that maladjustment “is the most subtle of the barriers to effi-
ciency” and “must be carefully considered in employee relations, particularly in
those supposedly mal-adjusted routine jobs” (p. 259). Fisher and Hanna (1931)
claimed that “a large part of vocational maladjustment and industrial unrest are
secondary to, and but a reflection of, emotional maladjustment” (p. vii). Shaffer
(1936) claimed that maladjustment influenced turnover, inefficiency, job dissat-
isfaction, workplace bullying, obsession with routines, and daydreaming. For
example, “such [maladjusted] persons are often overdependent and, expecting
from their superiors in business the same loving consideration that they received
from their parents, are thwarted and emotionally upset when they fail to receive
it” (Shaffer, 1936, p. 518).
Given the rapid industrialization of the United States in the post-WWI era and
its accompanying problem of new sources and levels of stress and alienation, it is
not surprising that mental hygienists and their companion psychiatrists considered
industry to be a prime target. During the postwar era, industrial conflict was
rampant and fears of strikes and unionization were in the minds of most large
business leaders. Militant labor unions, inspired by the “red revolution” in Russia
168 GIBBY AND ZICKAR
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aggressively confronted management using a variety of tactics including strikes,
propaganda, and even industrial sabotage. In addition, less radical forms of
unionism inspired by the American Federation of Labor and its President Samuel
Gompers advocated a form of business unionism that encouraged dialog first (and
aggressive action second) with employers over issues of working conditions,
wages, and workplace safety. In short, management felt under siege from assertive
workers who were willing to challenge their control over the workplace (for an
excellent summary of this period see Montgomery, 1979).
Given all of these sources of influence, early industrial psychologists devoted
a lot of attention in studying employee adjustment. Industrial psychologist Morris
Viteles’ influential textbook Industrial Psychology devoted a full chapter to The
Maladjusted Worker and began that chapter by stating “adjustment at work
represents the major objective in using the procedures for selection, training,
elimination of fatigue and monotony, and so forth, described in other chapters of
this text” (Viteles, 1932, p. 586). Psychologist Rexford Hersey (1932) thought
that the emotional life of workers was so important that he spent a year investi-
gating fluctuations in Pennsylvania Railroad employees’ moods in both the shop
and at home.
This obsession with emotions and problem employees can be viewed as part
of a greater societal trend related to emotional expression that began in the 1920s.
Historian Peter Stearns argues that a confluence of societal changes resulted in a
general cultural shift from the Victorian norms, which treated emotions, such as
anger, fear, and guilt, as useful in the context of work and family. For example,
aggressive and competitive behaviors, properly directed, were viewed as useful in
the work context by writers of the time such as Horatio Alger and the new field
of Social Darwinists who viewed the workplace as a battleground in which only
the fearless would prosper (see Stearns, 1994, pp. 29 –34). Changes in gender
norms, participation of fathers in family life, and an increase in consumerism
resulted in a cultural shift in which emotions became viewed as undesirable
(see Stearns, 1994). Across a variety of sources including child rearing
manuals, romance advice columnists, and business literature, Stearns con-
cluded that “this shift in emotional direction means that emotions already
admitted as potentially dangerous in the Victorian lexicon now became
completely unacceptable. Fear and anger had no positive function in the new
schema; rather than being directed, they were to be avoided as fully as
possible” (Stearns, 1994, pp. 95–96).
As evidenced by these viewpoints that highlighted the importance of em-
ployee maladjustment and emotional expression in general, it seemed logical to
develop tests to screen out employees with significant emotional maladjustment
prior to entering the workforce. Woodworth’s test, which was originally devel-
oped to identify soldiers prone to shell-shock, provided initial ammunition for
those who believed that the problems of the workplace stemmed from faulty
emotional life. Although Woodworth’s test was the first objective
1
personality
test, several imitators soon developed competing tests that were also designed to
measure maladjustment.
1
By using objective, we refer to the scoring of the test. Objective tests have fixed rules of
scoring and hence there is no subjectivity involved in the scoring.
169HISTORY OF PERSONALITY TESTING IN INDUSTRY
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Successors to Woodworth
Unidimensional Tests
Many personality tests followed soon after Woodworth’s work, including the
X-O Tests for Investigating the Emotions (Pressey & Pressey, 1919), the Colgate
Tests of Emotional Outlets (Laird, 1925), the Mental Hygiene Inventory (House,
1927), and the Personality Schedule (Thurstone, 1930). These tests were similar
to the WPDS in that they all assessed personality on the dimension of maladjust-
ment or psychoticism. In addition, these tests, with the exception of the X-O Tests
for Investigating the Emotions, were to a large degree an amalgamation of their
predecessors, including the WPDS which was not copyrighted, as test construc-
tors often created inbred tests by borrowing items and content from previous tests.
For example, the instruction manual of the Personality Schedule noted that “it was
compiled largely from several shorter lists already published, including Wood-
worth’s Psychoneurotic Inventory, House’s monograph on this subject, Laird’s
list of questions, Freyd’s list of introvert and extrovert traits, and Allports’
ascendance-submission test” (Thurstone, 1930, p. 1). Although these tests were
not widely used in organizational or industrial settings, the historical significance
of these tests, and the fact that they influenced later assessments of personality,
warrant their discussion.
Viteles (1932) identified the Colgate Personality Inventory, the Thurstone
Neurotic Inventory, and the Woodworth-Wells Psychoneurotic Inventory as ad-
justment-oriented personality tests being used in industry. In addition to use by
personnel managers, researchers during the time were publishing results favorable
to the early personality tests. To provide a context for how these tests were
employed in industry, examples of research with the measures are offered. In an
early assessment, Elwood (1927) utilized the Colgate Mental Hygiene Tests to
determine whether psychoneuroticism could aid in the selection of careers for
nurses. Peck (1936) used the Thurstone Personality Schedule to investigate the
adjustment difficulties of women teachers, and concluded that “one third of the
women teachers are definitely maladjusted, and one-sixth need psychiatric advice,
as judged by the Thurstone Personality Schedule. Only one fifth can be classified
as well-adjusted” (p. 414). In addition, Sheddan and Witmer (1939) found that the
Thurstone Personality Schedule was useful as an assessment of personal adjust-
ment within a battery of tests for predicting the efficiency of relief and social
workers. In general, the tests seemed correlated with criteria that were related to
adjustment; there was little published investigation of nonadjustment criteria. This
would change once tests that measured additional dimensions were introduced.
Multidimensional Tests
The creation of the Bernreuter Personality Inventory (BPI) by Robert Bern-
reuter (1931), began a new era in personality testing by combining many of the
tests listed above to become arguably the first multidimensional measure of
personality. The BPI, along with the Humm-Wadsworth Temperament Scale
(HWTS; Humm & Wadsworth, 1934) are especially notable because they ex-
panded the number of personality traits beyond what we would call today
neuroticism. In addition, both inventories were actively marketed to industry
170 GIBBY AND ZICKAR
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(especially the HWTS) and were used frequently. Because of their importance in
the history of personality testing, we highlight the history of the BPI and the
HWTS and examine in depth the tests.
The BPI
The BPI was originally constructed by Robert Bernreuter as part of his
dissertation research at Stanford, under the supervision of Lewis Terman (Bern-
reuter, 1933a). After graduate school, he was hired by Pennsylvania State
University to start a school psychology program and psychological clinic for
schoolchildren. In its published form, the BPI consisted of 125 items that mea-
sured four dimensions: Neurotic Tendency, Self-Sufficiency, Introversion-
Extroversion, and Dominance-Submission. Sample items (a yes or no response
option was used) include “Do you enjoy spending an evening alone?” and “Do
you think that marriage is essential to your present and future happiness?” The test
was adapted from the Thurstone Neurotic Inventory, Laird (C2) Introversion Test,
Allport Ascendance-Submission Reaction Study, and the Bernreuter Self-
Sufficiency Test (Bernreuter, 1933b, 1935). The fact that it borrowed heavily from
these tests landed Bernreuter in a bit of trouble with Gordon Allport and the
publisher of his Ascendence Submission Test, as they threatened legal action for
copyright infringement (see Parker, 1991). In response to a letter sent by Bern-
reuter apologizing for his naı¨vete´ to copyright issues, Allport (June 17, 1931)
noted the advantages of Bernreuter’s scale over his own: “By using most of our
situations you measure the same thing. That is a clear violation. Then by
embedding this material in a great deal else that is useful and interesting you
make a scale that offers competition, even threatening the major proportion of
the market. By reducing the price Stanford Press secures still further advan-
tage. No doubt you offer buyers more for their money” (p. 211; as cited in
Parker, 1991). As evidenced in this quote, the fact that the BPI cheaply
measured four commonly assessed personality traits made it a popular test. By
1935, it had been refined to measure six personality traits, with self-
consciousness and solitariness being included based on the findings of a
doctoral dissertation conducted by John Flanagan (Flanagan, 1935; see also
Bernreuter, 1935; Bird, 1946; Goldberg, 1971).
As Allport speculated, the BPI enjoyed a tremendous amount of use and
popularity from its publication up to the Second World War (WWII). In his
review of research utilizing the BPI, Super (1942) noted “the following trends in
publication: in 1932, 7 distinct published studies; 1933, 21; 1934, 19; 1935, 23;
1936, 17; 1937, 12; 1938, 18; 1939, 8; and 1940, 8” (p. 95). In addition, these
publications displayed the BPI’s use in a wide variety of settings. Arthur Murray
utilized the BPI to check the extraversion of dance instructors, a Hollywood
moviemaker administered the test to screenwriters, and the BPI was used to select
house-to-house salesmen, engineers, and other occupations (see Bird, 1946). In a
poll of American psychologists of their awareness of 53 vocational tests, Pallister
(1936) reported that the BPI was the best-known test. Beane, Carroll, and Habbe
(1940) performed another survey of quantitatively focused psychologists concern-
ing their awareness of psychological tests in several categories, one being “Per-
sonality and Interest Tests.” The unidimensional tests included in their survey
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were the Thurstone Personality Schedule, the Allport A-S Reaction Study, and the
Pressey X-O Tests for Investigation of the Emotions (p. 351). By 1938, all of
these unidimensional tests were outranked on preference among quantitative
psychologists by the BPI. In addition to being more popular than all other
personality measures listed in the poll, the BPI was considered to be the most
popular measure in the category of personality and interests tests aside from the
Strong Vocational Interest Blank, and tied for third (with the Stanford Revision of
Binet-1937) among all surveyed tests. Whyte reported that the test’s popularity
continued for a while with reports of 1,000,000 sales by the test publisher
Stanford University Press in 1953 alone (see Whyte, 1956, p. 190).
2
Bird in 1946
claimed that over 2,000,000 “salesmen, mechanics, college students, hospital
patients, and self-curious individuals have chewed pencils over its simple trip-
pers” (Bird, 1946, p. 2).
Considering the popularity surrounding the use of the BPI, it seems ironic that
the results of so many studies employing the BPI in industrial investigations prior
to and during WWII were negative. In fact, repeated findings showed that the BPI
was poor at predicting worker performance. Several studies reported little or no
relation between personality scores on the BPI and work-related criteria for
salesmen (Dodge, 1938; Otis, 1941), grocers (Hampton, 1941), and cotton mill
supervisors (Harrell, 1940). Scores on the BPI were also found to be unrelated to
measures of efficiency and only slightly related to work attitudes, including job
satisfaction among employees at the Harris Trust and Savings Bank of Chicago
(McMurry, 1932). In addition to investigating worker productivity and efficiency,
researchers also used the BPI to determine the role personality assessment could
play in vocational guidance. The findings investigating this relation, however,
were also mixed (Dodge, 1937; Hampton, 1941). The disconnect between sales
volume and test validity might be a function of marketing efforts and an initial
enthusiasm for testing in industry. It would only be later after cultural criticisms
and threat of legal action that tests would be held to higher standards by managers.
Part of the reason for the low validity of the BPI in predicting worker
productivity and efficiency may have been its continued focus on adjustment, a
focus that carried over into its being scored and used as an assessment of “neurotic
tendency” in industry (see McMurry, 1932). Although the test had multiple
dimensions (not just general maladjustment), each of these dimensions, appar-
ently, concentrated measurement on the negative or maladaptive end of the
continuum. This continued focus is best evidenced by Bernreuter’s (1933b)
concluding statement, in an article detailing the validity of the BPI, “that the full
significance of the [BPI] scores will be understood when the studies of the scores
of clinically diagnosed adjustment cases, which are now under way, have been
completed” (p. 386). This quotation shows the continued focus of personality
researchers and test developers on the maladjusted side of the personality spec-
trum. According to McMurry (1932), it was this focus that was keeping the BPI
and other personality tests from reaching their potential in predicting work-related
criteria: “assuming that the subjects have told the truth and that the Bernreuter test
provides a somewhat valid index of neurotic tendency, the author suggests that
2
We attempted to verify the sales numbers with Stanford Press but the records have been
destroyed.
172 GIBBY AND ZICKAR
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there has been too much emphasis on the significance of neurotic tendency in
accounting for work maladjustment, inefficiency and unrest” (p. 201).
Besides the overfocus on adjustment, the BPI suffered from other psycho-
metric issues. According to a progress report issued by the National Research
Council’s (NRC; 1940) Division of Anthropology and Psychology that detailed
the value of the BPI to predict success in aeronautical training, the BPI had been
found by researchers to be unreliable, lacking in self-consistency, and incorrect in
purporting to measure independent traits that were actually intercorrelated (p. 11),
a result previously reported by Flanagan and further researched by St. Clair and
Seegers (1937). In addition, the report noted that accumulated research showed
the test “to be incapable of differentiating extreme types of mentally abnormal
persons from normals” (p. 11). Concern over the test’s ability to discriminate
among adjusted and maladjusted individuals, combined with the inconsistent
results surrounding the BPI and other personality tests of the day led Bennett and
Gordon (1944) to state that “it appears that the type of personality test used is of
little or no value as part of a battery of tests used in personnel selection, since it
will predict neither success nor the attitudes of colleagues” (p. 278).
Considering these negative results and concerns, it seems strange that per-
sonality test use in industry grew during this period and tests continued to be
developed. Considering the relatively poor results surrounding the BPI’s use in
industry, many industrial researchers created and began using other personality
measures prior to and during WWII. These tests included the Bell Adjustment
Inventory (Bell, 1938), various versions of the Guilford-Martin Personality In-
ventory of Factors (Guilford, 1940; Guilford & Martin, 1943), the Nebraska
Personality Inventory, and the Humm-Wadsworth Temperament Scale (HWTS;
Humm & Wadsworth, 1934).
The HWTS
The second scale, the Humm-Wadsworth, deserves separate mention because
its authors were savvy entrepreneurs who cared not only about the validity of their
test but also worked actively to increase its sales potential.
3
Assessing personality
on seven dimensions (hysteroid, manic, depressive, autistic, paranoid, epileptoid,
self mastery plus a response bias scale) via 318 questions (of which 153 were
nonscored “filler”), the HWTS was developed in 1934 as a response to a
workplace violence incident in which an unstable employee working in a large
company killed his supervisor (Hemsath, 1939). The test was developed based on
a theory of personality proposed by Dr. Aaron Rosanoff, who used psychiatric
observations to hypothesize that personality could be categorized into four ab-
normal traits: antisocial, cyclotyhymic (i.e., manic-depressive), autistic, and epi-
leptic (Rosanoff, 1920). Rosanoff believed that “so-called normal” personalities
had those four traits in various degrees, though normals were more successful in
inhibiting the abnormal tendencies compared to patients that he observed in the
Kings Park State Hospital in New York. After working in New York, Dr.
Rosanoff became the California State Director of Institutions, where Dr. Humm
worked with him for five years. Although test reviewers praised the HWTS for
3
Bernreuter left marketing up to the BPI’s test publisher Stanford University Press.
173HISTORY OF PERSONALITY TESTING IN INDUSTRY
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This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
being based on a particular theory of personality (and hence could be empirically
verified), several reviewers questioned the validity of Rosanoff’s theory. For
example, Prescott commented “the reviewer feels that the availability of this scale
offers a promising opportunity for the scientific evaluation of the truth which may
underlie Rosanoff’s theory; if the theory has holes in it the scale will not work
well with normal subjects” (Prescott, 1938, p. 57). Eysenck commented that the
“theory on which it is based is not widely held among psychiatrists or psychol-
ogists, and there appears to be little evidence in its favor” (Eysenck, 1949, p. 154).
The test was reported to take 30 to 90 minutes to complete. Sample items
included “Do you like to go on blind dates?,” “Do you think traffic policemen
have the right attitude toward motorists?” and “Do you like movie heroes?” (see
“Pegs that fit,” 1942). In the 1938 Mental Measurement Yearbook the reported
rate was $2.50 for 25 tests or $9 per 100; in addition, each report cost 50 cents.
By 1965, the price had gone up to $25 for 25 tests along with $2.50 per 25 answer
sheets. Humm maintained strict control over the instrument entering into contrac-
tual agreements with users that required a first year fee of $1,350 with a $10 per
month fee afterward (in 1965 dollars). Part of the fee covered a two week
intensive course that Humm conducted to train personnel managers on the use of
the HWTS. Humm also required that the test users submit applications of their use
from time-to-time so that he could verify that the instrument was used properly.
Trained psychologists had more relaxed requirements (see Glennon, 1965, p.
252). One reviewer noted that a perusal of the Humm Personnel Service office
records showed that “over two million scorings have been made for employee
selection and appraisal in a wide variety of industries” (Misbach, 1949, p. 90).
There are several reasons for the popularity of the HWTS. To begin, it was
arguably the first personality instrument developed directly for application to
industry, and was created by researchers that worked in the field of industrial
personnel (see Tiffin, 1942). The Humm-Wadsworth team seemed like an ideal
combination for the development and marketing of a personality test geared, not
just for academic research, but for industrial sales. Doncaster Humm was a
graduate of University of Southern California conducting his dissertation (super-
vised by Dr. George H. Mount) on the heritability of mental disorders using
archival data collected from siblings (Humm, 1932). He was a psychologist employed
by the Los Angeles Public School system when he gave a presentation on psychology
to a group of personnel managers. Guy Wadsworth Jr., a vice-president at the
Southern Counties Gas Company of California, was in the audience and asked Humm
to help him develop a test to screen potential employees for temperament issues.
Wadsworth helped collect validation data sets used to develop the HWTS (personal
communication, Jack Petit, January 17, 2003; Taylor, 1942).
4
Wadsworth gave the
test credibility among personnel managers in that a successful businessman lent his
name and efforts to a psychological test that might otherwise be viewed suspiciously
by managers reluctant to embrace psychological testing. Previous tests were devel-
oped by psychologists (e.g., Thurstone and Bernreuter) more concerned with mea-
surement issues than business concerns. With the pairing of Humm with Wadsworth,
the two combined concern with measurement issues with business acumen. In
4
Jack Petit is a retired psychologist who was employed by Doncaster Humm and his wife
Kathryn Humm to market and develop the HWTS.
174 GIBBY AND ZICKAR
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addition, Dr. Humm had no formal academic affiliation and depended on the sales of
the HWTS as well as his consulting practice whereas previous test developers had
academic positions that provided job security.
Researchers began to use the HWTS because its creators heavily marketed it
to industry and organizational settings. Articles written by its authors in personnel
management journals, especially in Personnel Journal, showcased the worth of
the HWTS in allowing the “personnel man” to pick the men he wanted (Wads-
worth, 1936), to fit employees to their jobs (Wadsworth, 1937a), and to consult
the tests as personnel aids (Wadsworth, 1937b). In addition, articles about the
HWTS were published in journals specific to particular industries (e.g., American
Gas Journal,Aviation,Public Utilities, and Sales Management) as well as outlets
in popular magazines such as Time Magazine (“Pegs that fit,” 1942) and Readers’
Digest (Taylor, 1942). In fact, the latter article was read by Isabel Briggs and
inspired her to create the MBTI. After reading the article, she worked with
Edward Hay at the Pennsylvania Company for Banking and Trusts to validate the
HWTS. Based on her experiences with the HWTS (and her reading of Jungian
psychology), she created the now popular MBTI (see Saunders, 1991).
These marketing articles were not subtle about the worth of the HWTS in
industry, as noted in Humm and Wadsworth’s (1943) claim that “a knowledge of
temperament will predict behavior, and often will forestall undesirable behavior
through an understanding of unfortunate tendencies” (p. 315). As evidenced in
this quote, it is clear that the message being delivered by the creators of the HWTS
emphasized confidence in the ability of the test to determine whether or not
applicants and employees were emotionally stable and adjusted. Wadsworth was
so confident in the results produced by temperament testing in industry by 1937
that he called for an increase in their use by stating “temperamental tests are
probably one of our best aids in smoothing human relationships on the job. There
is every reason to believe that they have now developed to a stage where they may
safely be widely used in industry for this purpose” (p. 346; Wadsworth, 1937b).
In addition, Lockheed Martin’s industrial relations manager claimed that “nearly
ever time we’ve made an exception [that is, hired somebody the test rejected],
we’ve regretted it” (Taylor, 1942, p. 15). In addition to the marketing of the
HWTS in professional journals and trade literature, there was a full-time staff of
psychologists and clerical help that was employed to market the test to industry
(Jack Petit, personal communication, January 17, 2003).
As an illustration of the extent to which personality tests were marketed to
industry for personnel screening and selection of adjusted employees, it should be
noted that Humm also worked very hard to have his test used for screening out
neurotic and psychotic soldiers during the drafts of WWII. In a telegram dated
March 11, 1941 (AHAP), Humm, on the suggestion of Gordon Allport, asked
Walter R. Miles, the Chairman of the NRC’s Committee on Problems of Neurotic
Behavior, to meet with him personally concerning the identification of psycho-
paths by the Humm-Wadsworth Temperament Scale. Miles replied to the tele-
gram (in a letter dated March 12, 1941; AHAP) by explaining that “a subcom-
mittee on personality inventory” had been established and that he would refer the
matter of incorporating the HWTS to the committee. Upon learning of this
committee, Humm immediately provided a copy of the original research on the
HWTS and offered his services to Carney Landis, the head of the subcommittee.
175HISTORY OF PERSONALITY TESTING IN INDUSTRY
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Humm’s marketing of the HWTS paid off, as the head of the Civil Aeronautics
Authority in southern California requested the experimental use of the test (letter
dated October 21, 1940; AHAP).
Apparently, personnel departments and industrial researchers also bought into
such marketing tactics and began using the HWTS. The Time Magazine article
mentions that over 2,000,000 workmen within 225 corporations had completed
the test (“Pegs that fit”, 1942). Unlike the BPI, however, results were generally
favorable concerning use of the HWTS. For example, Fulton (1945) found it to be
helpful in selection of policemen, and Irwin (1942) noted the test’s implementa-
tion into the selection procedure of all employees at Lockheed; the company
attributed its status as having the lowest turnover (less than 1% per month) in the
aircraft industry as due to using the HWTS; the President of Lockheed Robert
Gross was an especially strong advocate of the HWTS who completed the exam
and was determined to be “temperamentally O.K. for his job” (see Pegs that fit,
1942). Additionally, Mursell (1947) noted that the HWTS “has been found very
accurate and helpful in personnel work, for, of the 2,000 cases chosen as being
satisfactorily adjusted on the basis of their test showing, very few were later
discharged for personality reasons” (p. 251). In these cases, however, the criteria
used to validate the HWTS continued to be related to employee adjustment.
A second reason for the success of the HWTS was Humm’s aggressive efforts
to shape the scientific debate surrounding the HWTS. For example, concerns
raised by Dysinger (1939); Dorcus (1944), and Gilliland and Newman (1953)
were answered (listed in order) by Humm (1939, 1944) and Humm and Humm
(1954) in the same or next possible volume of the journal of the original article.
In addition, on at least two occasions, D. G. Humm also attempted to bar articles
from being published in professional psychological journals, Personnel Psychol-
ogy and the Journal of Consulting Psychology. (see letters June 6, 1950, Jan. 2,
1951, Feb. 14, 1951, AHAP). Although Humm’s aggressive efforts to shape the
scientific discourse surrounding the HWTS might have alienated him from the
journal editors and fellow psychologists, these efforts could have been successful
in promoting the HWTS as a valid instrument for industry.
History of Personality Testing and Adjustment Between the
1940s and 1990s
Although the focus of this article is on the early days of personality tests in
industry, it is worth a brief discussion of how the personality testing industry changed
after that time. This brief review helps better place the early days of personality testing
in perspective. Building on tests like the BPI and the HWTS, personality testing
changed dramatically in the 1940s and 1950s with the development of several
thorough personality inventories that changed the concept of personality testing. The
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), developed by researchers at
the University of Minnesota, concentrated on identifying psychopathology, such as
schizophrenia, so that the process of clinical diagnosis could be standardized and
made more efficient (Hathaway & McKinley, 1943) In addition Raymond Cattell
developed the Sixteen Personality Factor (16PF) Questionnaire which was designed
to measure 16 personality traits thought to span the spectrum of personality traits
identified with factor analytic methodology (Cattell, 1949). In addition to the 16PF,
176 GIBBY AND ZICKAR
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other broad-based personality inventories developed via factor analysis were created
during the 1940s and 1950s (e.g., the Guilford-Zimmerman Temperament Survey,
Guilford & Zimmerman, 1949; Maudsley Personality Inventory, Eysenck, 1959).
Finally, the MBTI was developed in the 1940s based on Jungian typological theory
and became quite popular (see Saunders, 1991). The 16PF, MBTI, and the MMPI,
through various revisions, remain some of the most widely used psychological
inventories and are used in a variety of settings. Most of these inventories, excepting
the MMPI, were less tied to the concept of adjustment and maladjustment compared
to the previously mentioned inventories.
Like previous inventories such as the HWTS, the MMPI was developed to
identify individuals who had adjustment problems (see Buchanan, 1994). The MMPI
as originally formulated, however, concentrated measurement on clinical levels of
psychopathology such as schizophrenia, psychopathic deviance, hysteria, and para-
noia. This focus was different from the previous personality inventories that concen-
trated on the adjustment and maladjustment of otherwise psychologically healthy
individuals. The primary application of the early personality tests was in education
and the workplace. The MMPI’s initial target group was mental hospital patients.
Although the MMPI would later be used for all sorts of purposes, including personnel
selection, education counseling, and marriage counseling, the primary application was
and still is identification of psychopathology in inpatient and outpatient psychiatric
and medical settings (see Graham, 2000).
The 16PF inventory and related factor analytic inventories also had weak ties to
the concept of adjustment. These tests measured a broad set of traits of which only a
small number could be related to adjustment from an emotional perspective. For
example, of the original 16 personality traits measured by the 16PF, only three are
related to the aspects of personality assessed by the adjustment inventories. Factor C
assessed whether an individual was “affected by feelings” or “emotionally stable,”
Factor O assessed whether an individual was “placid” or “apprehensive,” and Factor
Q
4
assessed whether an individual was “relaxed” or “tense.” Other traits related to
shyness, intelligence, imaginativeness, and shrewdness (Cattell & Eber, 1962). The
16PF and similar tests were often validated against criteria that were unrelated or
marginally related to adjustment and maladjustment. For example, the 16PF added
predictive validity over an ability test to the prediction of grades in math (Ayers,
Bashaw, & Wash, 1969). In addition, scores on the 16PF predicted ratings of
performance for police officers (Fabricatore, Azen, Schoentgen, & Snibbe, 1978).
Although the 16PF and other related tests were used for predicting adjustment-related
criteria, they were often successful in predicting other criteria. This is in contrast to the
previous tests which were generally only able to predict criteria related to adjustment.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, personality testing in industry experienced
a resurgence as personality test developers, to a large extent, agreed upon a Big
Five taxonomy that included the traits of Openness to Experience, Conscientious-
ness, Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Agreeableness.
5
The Big Five taxonomy came
about based on repeated factor analyses of different personality inventories (most
based on personality trait adjectives) and different samples that consistently identified
5
There is some disagreement over the labels of the Big Five dimensions. For example, some
researchers prefer the term “Intellectance” to “Openness to Experience.” In addition, acceptance of
the Big Five taxonomy, while popular, is not universal.
177HISTORY OF PERSONALITY TESTING IN INDUSTRY
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five similar factors which explained a large percentage of variance in personality
ratings (see Digman, 1996). Meta-analyses using the Big Five personality traits
demonstrated that job performance could be predicted from personality (see Barrick
& Mount, 1991; Tett, Jackson, & Rothstein, 1991). Although the Big Five personality
traits included Neuroticism, an adjustment-related trait, most of the work-oriented
research that followed after the meta-analyses focused on the role of conscientious-
ness (e.g., Barrick, Mount, & Strauss, 1993; Martocchio & Judge, 1997).
After increasing interest in adjustment within personality psychology that
peaked in the 1940s and 1950s, psychologists became less interested in adjust-
ment and more interested in other traits and issues. To illustrate this trend, we
tabulated the number of books on psychology in PSYCINFO that had adjustment
in the title and compared that to the number of books with personality in the title.
As can be seen in Figure 1, the percentage of books related to adjustment (in
relation to books on personality in general) increased from the 1930s to the 1950s
after which there was a decline. The focus of psychology in general, and
personality psychology in specific, moved away from adjustment. This decline
might be attributed to the humanistic, feel-good movement that gripped the nation
as well as psychology during the 1960s. After the drop during the 1960s, however,
there has been a gradual return to adjustment-related issues although the interest
in adjustment (as judged by this graph) has not reached the highpoints of the
1940s and 1950s.
Adjustment Returns to Industry
Although Figure 1 displays a recent resurgence in interest on adjustment in
the personality literature, it is important to note that work with adjustment-related
personality constructs never completely disappeared in industry. As mentioned
previously, the adjustment-oriented construct of neuroticism is one of the Big Five
factors. In fact, neuroticism has especially enjoyed a great deal of scrutiny among
researchers over the past decade. In particular, meta-analytic evidence for the Big
Five traits has shown mixed results for the relationship of neuroticism and job
performance. For example, Barrick and Mount (1991), in their meta-analysis of
the relationship between the Big Five traits and job performance, showed no
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s
Percentage
Figure 1. Percentage of books on adjustment, 1920 –1999, compared with books
on personality.
178 GIBBY AND ZICKAR
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relation between these variables, whereas Tett et al. (1991) showed that neurot-
icism was correlated with job performance in “confirmatory” studies. More
recently, Salgado (1997) reported meta-analytic evidence supporting neuroticism
as a predictor of job performance. Taking this work into account, it appears that
neuroticism, as an adjustment-related construct, will be the subject of further
research in personnel research.
In addition to being researched and used as part of the Big Five typology,
neuroticism has also been recently reintroduced into the I-O psychology literature
as an important component of the core self-evaluation construct (Judge & Bono,
2001; Judge, Locke, Durham, & Kluger, 1997). As noted by Judge et al. (1997),
the core-self evaluation construct combines the specific traits of self-esteem,
generalized self-efficacy, locus of control, and neuroticism. Despite the fact that
neuroticism is only one of the four components of the construct, it is important to
note that all of these constructs are highly related (see Judge, Bono, Erez, Locke,
& Thoresen, 2002), suggesting that the combination of these traits as the core
self-evaluation construct is indicative of a larger adjustment-oriented trait. Re-
search conducted by Judge and Bono (2001) with core self-evaluations has shown
impressive relationships between the construct and both job satisfaction (r.41)
and job performance (r.23). Based on results like these, it seems likely that
continued work with the adjustment-oriented construct of core self-evaluations
will continue over the next decade.
In addition to work being performed with neuroticism and core self-
evaluations, a great deal of interest over the last decade has existed for person-
ality-based integrity testing to identify potentially problematic employees. As
noted by Sackett and Wanek (1996), personality-based integrity tests are closely
linked to normal-range personality assessment and measure such constructs as
dependability, conscientiousness, social conformity, thrill-seeking, trouble with
authority, and hostility (p. 788). As can be seen in this list, it is clear that these
personality measures, although not focused directly on the construct of neuroti-
cism, are definitely aimed at screening out and eliminating the problem employee,
especially one who may engage in theft.
Although these examples illustrate that emotional stability as a construct is
still being researched in I-O psychology, they also display that a great deal has
changed since the period prior to WWII, when emotional adjustment was the
primary focus of personality psychology. We believe that personality testing has
benefited by expanding beyond the initial obsession with emotional adjustment.
Today, with the advent of the Big Five typology, integrity testing, and personality
related metaconstructs, such as core self-evaluations, it is evident that a great deal
of effort has been made to understand how to better assess and relate emotional
stability to work-related constructs. Despite the great strides that have been taken
to make personality tests, and adjustment-related personality constructs in spe-
cific, relevant to industry, it must also be noted that concerns over their use still
exist and need to be accounted for by researchers. The good news is that it appears
that such concerns will be addressed, as interest in the area of personality based
integrity testing, alongside recent interest in the areas of emotion and organiza-
tional deviance, promises to fuel research on worker adjustment in I-O psychol-
ogy over the next decade. Current personality researchers interested in measuring
emotions-focused aspects of personality can benefit from a review of the early
179HISTORY OF PERSONALITY TESTING IN INDUSTRY
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days of personality testing, when nearly all instruments focused on emotional
adjustment.
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Received September 13, 2005
Revision received May 4, 2008
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