From Trenches to Laboratories
Psychological testing during World War I
Of course the most recent and up and coming topics in psychological testing are interesting. However, I thought I’d take us back to a time when psychological testing was only beginning/on the rise. Yes, this will be one of those “did you know that…?” blog posts but, aren’t those the most fun? Well, I’m sure we can all agree on what wasn’t “fun”: World War I. Nevertheless, World War I remains an interesting topic as many important contributions to psychology did actually spawn from such an unforgettable event. In the following blog post, I’d like to acknowledge and share a couple of the war’s psychological testing methods as well as their incredible findings with you (incase you didn’t already know!).
Earlier versions of the intelligence and personality tests we know today were administered to almost two million soldiers/recruits of the American Expeditionary Force. The psychiatrist Thomas W. Salmon was the main designer of the US program of military psychiatry during World War I. Recruits were screened to exclude the 2% of all inductees who were “insane, feeble-minded, psychopathic, and neuropathic individuals”. It is important to note that the efficacy of this screening program was never evaluated beforehand. Nevertheless, this effort had two main (and surprising!) effects on psychology:
1) Awareness
The results of the intelligence tests brought much discouragement and, in turn, a huge problem to the forefront: the tests had determined that the average mental age of these men was thirteen years and one month. This served as a huge reflection on the nation’s poor education system as many of its citizens realized that the average American was no more intelligent than a teenager. Consequently, the citizens of the country eagerly worked towards creating a society that favoured mental self-improvement. Unfortunately, this lasted until the stock market crash when the focus shifted to the fact that material goods were becoming scarce.
2) Measurability
The war effort had allowed for the development of personality tests to take place and make their mark. Soldiers were required to complete the Woodworth Personal Data Sheet. This 125-question inventory was supposed to pinpoint those who had weaker personalities or those expected to be unable to handle the atrocities of war (e.g., being under fire).
The screening programs in the US armed forces during World Wars I and II were based on the assumption that vulnerability for “nervous breakdown” was related to relatively stable characteristics within the individual, including constitution, genetic makeup, and temperament, or the effect of early childhood experiences. The challenge of screening was to detect those traits that indicated vulnerability for mental health problems during deployment. — Hans Pols, PhD and Stephanie Oak, BMed, 2007
The test failed to predict the soldiers’ performance under fire. Because there were simply too many cases of mental breakdowns being had during the war, the screening procedures were deemed ineffective. In spite of these results, this test marked the first time someone had tried to take a crack at quantifying personality! It had then dawned on many psychologists how groundbreaking and world-shattering this attempt was. Why was this so revolutionary you ask? In a nutshell, all of this now meant that personality could be measured and, in turn, take on a more empirical tone so that by the mid-thirties, infamous diagnostics like Rorschach’s inkblots would be born.
The latter discovery set the stage for future psychologists like Emil Kraepelin all the way through to Gordon Allport in that it permitted personality disorders to be describable and diagnosable. For that reason, I’d really like to give a big thumbs up for psychological testing. Long live such ambitions for discovery and for making a difference in the world!