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OBITUARIES
Morris S. Viteles (1898-1996)
Morris Simon Viteles, who was 98 years and 9 months old,
died on December 7, 1996, at Medford Leas, a New Jersey
retirement community. He was an important participant in
the development of psychology as a science and as a
profession.
Born on March 21, 1898, in a Russian village, he
migrated with his parents and siblings to England in the fall
of 1898 and moved in 1904 to the United States. He com-
pleted elementary schooling in Philadelphia in six years
and Central High School in four years. After a year at the
Philadelphia School of Pedagogy, he entered the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania, where he received his Bachelor of
Arts degree in 1918 and his Doctor of Philosophy degree
in psychology in 1921, at the age of 23.
During his long career, Viteles served in several sig-
nificant roles. He can rightfully be called a pioneer because
his contributions came early in the history of the voca-
tional guidance movement and in the development of indus-
trial psychology. Upon completion of undergraduate study
at the University of Pennsylvania (as a history major with a
minor in psychology), he accepted an assistantship in the
psychology department. As a graduate student in psychol-
ogy, he was exposed to Lightner Witmer's clinical psy-
chology and to Edwin Twitmyer's approach to experimen-
tal psychology, and he became interested in individual dif-
ferences and their measurement in relation to job perfor-
mance and career development. In 1926, he established the
first university-based vocational guidance program. In 1937,
he and Franklin J. Keller, then principal of the Vocational
High School in New York City, published Vocational Guid-
ance Throughout the World, which provided a compre-
hensive survey of the methods and accomplishments of the
vocational guidance movement not only in the United States
but also in Europe, Australia, South Africa, and Asia.
Due to early consulting experiences with the Milwau-
kee Electric and Light Company and the Philadelphia Elec-
tric Company, industrial psychology gradually replaced vo-
cational guidance as his primary interest. His consulting
led to the formulation of the Job Psychograph, which was
used to identify the abilities required in job settings and
which led to the grouping of occupations into job families
and to the occupational codes used in the Dictionary of
Occupational Titles, published by the U.S. Employment
Service (U.S.E.S.). Viteles served on the Technical Board
of the U.S.E.S. during that developmental period.
The event that most justifies his being called a pioneer
was the publication, written in 1932 at the age of 34, of
Industrial Psychology, which not only established him as a
leader in the field but helped to define this newly develop-
ing field. It provided a comprehensive summary of indus-
trial psychology both in the United States and Europe and
had, as its objective, "showing the genesis, the problems,
the settings, the knowledge, and the accomplishments of
this newer application of psychology." Frequently referred
to as the "bible" of industrial psychology, it was supple-
mented in 1953 by the 500-page Motivation and Morale
in Industry, a definitive work on this increasingly impor-
tant aspect of industrial psychology.
Although his entire academic career was spent at the
University of Pennsylvania, Viteles became involved in a
wide variety of activities including teaching, research, and
consulting in both private industry and government set-
tings, and participated in professional activities both in the
United States and abroad. Long before the 1949 APA Boul-
der Conference espoused the concept of the integrated
role of scientist and practitioner as the model for psy-
chologists, Viteles not only exemplified the role but vigor-
ously promoted it. From articles in the 1920s on selection
research and in an article entitled "Validating the Clinical
Method in Vocational Guidance" to a 1972 article on "Psy-
chology today-Fact or Foible" in the American Psycholo-
gist, Viteles consistently and persistently insisted on the
need for psychologists to base their practice on sound
research and validation.
Viteles legitimately played the dual role of academi-
cian and practitioner. By agreement with the university, he
served as Director of Training and Personnel Research for
the Philadelphia Electric Company from 1927 to 1964. He
was also an active consultant with the Yellow Cab Company
from 1927 to 1965 and with the Bell Telephone Company
from 1951 to 1984. As explained in his 1967 autobiogra-
phy, Reminiscences of an Academic Moonlighter, he car-
ried out both roles with equal diligence and devotion.
During World War II, Viteles became extensively
involved in activities related to the war effort. These activi-
ties included research about the effects of environmental
conditions on the performance of personnel on naval ves-
sels, criteria for evaluating student flight performance for
the National Research Council Committee on Selection
and Training of Aircraft Pilots, chairmanship of the Medi-
cal Aviation Section of the U.S. Navy, and consulting roles
in a variety of projects for the National Defense Research
Committee of the Office of Scientific Research and
Development.
Throughout his career, the outcomes of his consulting
roles were not treated as in-house information or used for
personal benefit but were shared with the profession. In
addition to publishing articles in psychology journals, he
published in journals such as the Journal of Personnel
Research, Annals of the Academy of Political and Social
Science, Society for the Advancement of Management,
and journals of the industry in which he was consulting. In
October 1998
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American Psychologist
Copyright 1998 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0003-066X/98/$2.00
Vol. 53, No. 10, 1153-1154
1153
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