Historians have noted that great wars have often brought about marked advances in engineering, an applied physical science. More recently wars have also produced comparable advances in medicine, a biological science. In World War I, a bio-social science, psychology, also made significant progress with the development of mental testing on a large scale. In the present war all of these sciences are making still more significant advances, and other social sciences such as economics, sociology and political science are finding similar opportunities.
One of the most significant commentaries on the role of the sciences in wartime is that of the present restrictions which are necessarily placed upon the reporting or printing of confidential researches undertaken for the government. Altogether these projects now occupy a large part of the time of leading scientists through projects in the various branches of civil government, in the armed forces, and through contracts for projects conducted by scientists in universities. Coordinating committees work through the National Research Council and similar research agencies. At present we can only report the fact of widespread research in these applied fields. Details of findings must in most cases remain unpublished until after the war.
Military Psychological Activities.
Certain broader aspects of military psychological activities are already known and may be mentioned freely. For example, the selection of scientific personnel and other specialists for both the armed forces and civil government offices is being cleared through the agency of the National Roster of Scientific and Specialized Personnel. This agency covers all of the sciences but the methodology is that of applied psychology and the agency is directed by a leading psychologist. In close cooperation with it is the liaison office of the American Psychological Association which assists in locating specially qualified personnel for special types of governmental positions and vice versa. As one evidence of the role of psychology in the war, it is announced that practically all of the psychologists known to be in the armed services have been assigned to psychological or closely related work, at least within a relatively short time following their basic military training period of a few months. This holds true of men inducted through the selective service act and includes advanced students as well as professional psychologists.
Whereas psychologists in the last war were restricted largely to problems of intelligence testing in relation to classification of military personnel, they are at present called upon to develop and evaluate tests in many other areas such as perception in the various sense fields, manual and bodily coordinations as in the operation of mechanized equipment, and in affective balance or emotional stability. Problems in perception tend to be intimately related to those of action, as in controlling a machine. Studies of manual skills include tests for mechanical aptitudes in war industries and in the manual skills of operating trucks, tanks, and airplanes.
Measurement of Temperamental Factors.
Measurement of temperamental or personality factors is still the most difficult of all of the fields, although several relatively new approaches are being tried. In one of these approaches the individual is put under conditions of mental stress in a controlled condition designed to produce frustration. Evidences of emotional instability and quickness of recovery are studied to determine whether these samples of emotional behavior will be predictive of behavior under stress situations in civilian or military life. Another approach is that of attempting to relate factors of temperament to constitutional differences in body builds. Here the old fallacy of attempting to distinguish sharp body types has been overcome by recognizing the need for a quantitative method of describing the test profile resulting from measurements on a number of body dimensions. In this way gradations in body build are recognized.
Verbal Questionnaires.
The use of verbal questionnaires for measuring emotional factors still suffers from the lack of empirical validation of such questions on selected groups in which the emotional status has been determined by more intensive case histories. The psychological mechanisms of compensation and rationalization would alone be sufficient to upset any 'arm chair' evaluation of the significance of a given set of answers by the psychologist constructing a test. It definitely cannot be assumed that the person being measured can or will give a thoroughly straightforward reply to such questions, even though the person is not consciously evading the issue. On the other hand, it may be possible to establish the existence of certain characteristics though not necessarily logical answers brought about by the habitual use of various mental mechanisms (compensation, etc.) in the solution of personal problems by persons of various temperaments. Some such studies have been made, but larger numbers of individuals in each criterion group must be studied in order to show stability of findings. Lacking such well-established devices for measuring individual difference in temperamental factors, clinical psychologists have been greatly restricted in their ability to meet the needs of the armed forces in selecting personnel.
Projective Techniques.
A wide variety of devices for diagnosing personality have been developed under the name of 'projective techniques,' in which some relatively neutral or impersonal situation is presented to a person with the request for his reactions to it. For example in the well known Rorschach test, a standardized shape of ink blot is presented with a question as to what the person perceives it to be. Similarly, individuals may be asked to interpret, or complete a cartoon or story about some other person. In all such cases the individual's interpretations are influenced by his background of previous experiences, and the various techniques endeavor to determine the significance of various types of replies to the background of the person's own problems. Such techniques are at present largely qualitative, but some progress is being made toward quantification of the method. A related idea is that of the 'psychodrama' and 'role therapy' in which the psychologist attempts to discover how the person thinks of himself or his role in life. Frequently it is possible to suggest a variation of this role which enables the person to see himself in a new light, one more satisfying to himself and thus a means of relieving a frustration if that is present. This should also result in better adjustment between the individual and his social groups, since the new role is usually chosen so as to adjust the individual's goals in the direction of better conformity to social needs.
Other Wartime Trends.
Social psychologists have been called into governmental work on such problems as surveying aspects of morale in both civilian and military groups. They and the social scientists are also consulted in attempting to evaluate the effect of large population shifts such as those brought about by moving rural workers to new defense plant areas.
By what may seem a curious turn of affairs, a considerable number of specialists in comparative or animal psychology have now shifted their interests to applied human psychology, thus uniting workers from two areas which had previously been considered to have little in common. Some of these men have even gone into social psychology, a still longer jump. In the opinion of the writer these incidents are evidence of an acceleration in the two trends reported in previous articles, namely the growing recognition of the applicability of the same basic scientific methods to all subject matters, and the gradual merging of earlier viewpoints into an eclectic psychology. Another example of such convergent trends in psychology is to be found in a commission to consolidate or federate the various major psychological organizations which have been developed to promote their respective special fields of psychology in recent years. The willingness to undertake such a consolidation of efforts marks a healthy reversal from a not too distant tendency of the 'pure scientists' to hold aloof from the 'applied scientists.' The great amount of shifting about of men in the different areas of the war effort should also aid in breaking down the remaining barriers between the special fields of interest. As an evidence of the tremendous shifting about of psychologists during the war, the American Psychological Association this year reports change of address for about half of the associates and members. Such an extensive change is probably four or five times the normal expectation. A further evidence of convergent trends in psychology is the appearance of collaborative textbooks bringing together studies from all of the various fields of psychology with an increasing attention to the applied fields.
Psychology and Wartime Civil Life.
Many of the current changes in the wartime life of everyday citizens are of considerable psychological interest and may have a lasting effect on our culture. These in a way constitute a whole series of uncontrolled social experiments on a gigantic scale. The publication of the English Beveridge plan for social changes after the war and the Dutch plan for a colonial union both indicate changes of great social importance. The necessity for vastly increased man power is forcing both military and business organization to break down restrictions which have usually kept women and certain racial groups from an opportunity to work in certain areas primarily restricted to men or to majority groups. Likewise our democratic organizations are being 'tried by fire' as appropriate means of coordinating the interests of individuals and society in a tremendous war effort. This is perhaps more true of labor and labor regulating organizations than of any other groups.
Education.
Educational psychologists are faced with problems of determining the advisability of curricular changes at all levels of education. Strangely enough, neither psychologists nor educators have been consulted very extensively on problems of training military personnel, though all grades of schools have been given opportunities to train civilians for defense work. More recently, with the advent of selective service recruitment of 18-19 year old men, the government is setting up specialized military training units in colleges and universities with admission to be based upon ability rather than financial status of the individual. Psychological tests will undoubtedly be used in such admissions plans. Here too is another evidence of progress which should interest social psychologists in a democratic country.
The conscription of younger college men is also forcing a hasty and long delayed revaluation of regular educational objectives and methods. The necessity of choosing the most essential types of training for men going into specialized services within a few months, and the coordinate demands for training young women to take over jobs previously held by men are straining the resources of colleges to make necessary changes in time to survive the prospective shifts in demands for public service during the war. On the other hand, university staff members are being called upon as never before to furnish expert personnel for government emergency offices, and the very serious attention now given to systematic postwar planning would have been considered largely 'academic' in the last war.
Public Opinion.
The major problem of a 'representative government,' that of correctly interpreting the opinions and needs of its citizens as a basis for formulating governmental policies is particularly acute in wartime, when a lag of several months may represent a costly delay in aligning the efforts of citizens behind a war program. The phrase 'too little and too late' as applied to England and America applies not only to the technical plans of military leaders, but to the problems of civil leadership as well. In spite of the availability of public opinion polls, administration leaders seem often to have waited too long for public opinion to develop before undertaking a policy, only to find after a few months of controversy or indecision that the general public had been far ahead of the leaders' sentiments in such developments of opinion. In other instances, as with the 'farm bloc' or the 'silver bloc,' small groups have been able to force or delay legislative action on matters when public opinion was almost certainly strongly opposed to such actions. The use of representative sample public opinion polls seems to offer one of the principal methods for the public to inform its representatives of their wishes and needs in between more formal and expensive general elections. While national administrative leaders are using the technique extensively, the legislative groups appear to resist its use, probably viewing it as a rival agency for representing views of the people.
Abnormal Psychology.
In abnormal psychology the striking results of 'shock therapy,' e.g., treatment of major mental disorders by inducing convulsions through the use of drugs, or electrical shocks or by operations on the frontal lobes of the brain, have now been extended in another direction. Cooling the body of the human being is found to produce a partial suspension of living activities. Strange to say, when victims of severe mental disorders have their body temperatures thus lowered for some time, they may show a temporary return to normal mental condition when they are returning to the normal body temperature, only to relapse when the return to normal is complete. Such unusual findings in types of disorders which have long been among the most resistant to treatment raises many questions as to the reasons for the observed effects. Further research along this line should help to evaluate all of the shock theories for the origin and treatment of such disorders.
One curious fact about the effect of the war on mental hygiene is the English report on decreased numbers of serious mental disorders among civilians, a finding which is just the opposite of what many would have expected. Apparently wartime morale has somewhat more than compensated for the other stresses of war.
Effect of War on Psychological Studies.
As might be expected, the research areas less directly connected with the war effort, such as experimental esthetics and other pure science investigations, have been temporarily overshadowed by emergency research. One must not lose sight of the fact that pure science and many theoretical problems which have not yet reached a stage of development where application is possible or wise, are still worthy of attention. These should properly continue to stimulate thinking and research even in wartime. On the other hand, the present general trends in psychological work give increasing support to the principle that studies in applied psychology may well contribute as much to the advancement of pure science as has previously been expected in the opposite direction. Such empirical studies are likely to give much needed corrections to the frequently misleading implications from 'well controlled' but artificial laboratory studies such as those on the learning of nonsense syllables and maze pathways.
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