CHOICES: TYPICAL BEHAVIOR
OR MAXIMAL PERFORMANCE

When modern psychology first became established in the academy by Wundt
and his students, the study of human behavior became both standardized and
often artificial. For example, the procedures of early introspection experi-
ments on sensation and perception required that observers mentally decom-
pose an image into its components and not simply say that “I perceive a
chair.” When intellectual assessments were introduced (to some degree first
by Galton, and then later by Binet), standardization was a key ingredient to
the methodology. Although one may argue whether Binet’s assessments of
intellectual abilities were more or less artificial, it is clear that Binet was inter-
ested in obtaining the child’s maximal performance. That is, Binet instructed
examinees to do whatever was appropriate (whether encouragement for one
child, or admonishment for another) in order to obtain the child’s best per-
formance on the test (e.g., see Binet & Simon, 1916; see also Ackerman, 1996,
for a review). This paradigm for assessing intellectual abilities has been
passed down through succeeding generations of assessment instruments, un-
der the heading of ‘establishing rapport with the examinee.’ In the developed
world, testing is so ubiquitous, and the consequences of poor performance so
well entrenched, that by the time a high school student attempts the SAT, or a

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Cognitive, Affective, and Conative

Aspects of Adult Intellect Within

a Typical and Maximal

Performance Framework

Phillip L. Ackerman
Ruth Kanfer
Georgia Institute of Technology

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