The Rise of Psychological Testing 359Some on the Harvard faculty, such as John Brewer, saw
vocational guidance as an educational function; others, such
as Hugo Münsterberg, saw it as a province of the new applied
psychology. Brewer argued that guidance was a part of the ed-
ucational experience, a process by which the student is an ac-
tive agent in seeking out experiences that help determine the
appropriate choice of an occupation (Brewer, 1932). Psychol-
ogists such as Münsterberg (1910) viewed guidance as an ac-
tivity well suited to the new applied psychology. Münsterberg,
director of the psychological laboratory at Harvard and an
early progenitor of applied psychology, was familiar with and
supportive of Parsons’ work but offered a warning:
We now realize that questions as to the mental capacities and
functions and powers of an individual can no longer be trusted to
impressionistic replies. If we are to have reliable answers, we
must make use of the available resources of the psychological
laboratory. These resources emancipate us from the illusions and
emotions of the self-observer. The well-arranged experiment
measures the mental states with the same exactness with which
the chemical or physical examination of the physician studies the
organism of the individual. (p. 401)Münsterberg was joined by colleagues such as Harry
Hollingworth and Leta Hollingworth, psychologists who had
advocated for the scientific study of vocational guidance.
Like Münsterberg, they were wary of pseudoscientific means
of assessing individual traits. They were so concerned with
the problem that in 1916, Harry Hollingworth published the
book Vocational Psychology. Designed to debunk such
character-reading techniques as physiognomy, it promoted
the benefits the new science of psychology could lend to the
assessment of individual abilities. Leta Hollingworth, an
early advocate for the psychological study of women and
women’s issues, added a chapter on the vocational aptitudes
of women. The purpose of the chapter she wrote was
to inquire whether there are any innate and essential sex differ-
ences in tastes and abilities, which would afford a scientific basis
for the apparently arbitrary and traditional assumption that the
vocational future of all girls must naturally fall in the domestic
sphere, and consequently presents no problem, while the future
of boys is entirely problematical and may lie in any of a score of
different callings, according to personal fitness. (p. 223)Reflective of much of her work on gender differences and
mental abilities, she concluded that “so far as is at present
known, women are as competent in mental capacity as men
are, to undertake any and all human vocations” (p. 244).
The new applied psychology fit well with the Progres-
sive Era theme of social efficiency. The scientific study of
mental life encouraged greater understanding of adaptation
to everyday life. Psychologists such as Lightner Witmer, E.
Wallace Wallin, G. Stanley Hall, Augusta Bronner, William
Healy, Maude Merrill, Lewis Terman, and Helen Woolley in-
vestigated various aspects of the childhood experience, each
contributing in his or her own way to the child-saving move-
ment and helping to create a body of knowledge that helped
to shape social-science policy in the early decades of the
twentieth century (Baker, 2001).
While psychologists were busy with the study of individ-
ual difference in mental abilities, educators continued to de-
velop a national program of vocational guidance. Although
Frank Parsons was well regarded for developing a system of
vocational guidance, his was an individual method. In public
education, greater numbers of students could and would be
reached through the provision of group guidance. In 1907,
Jesse B. Davis became principal of Grand Rapids High
School in Michigan. Davis attempted to expose students to
vocational planning through English composition. He rea-
soned that having high school students explore their voca-
tional interests, ambitions, and character would empower
them to make informed choices about their place in the flux
of the new social order (J. B. Davis, 1914). Soon his ideas
about vocational and moral development would be translated
into a complete program of guidance (Brewer, 1942).
Between 1890 and 1920, vocational guidance would come
of age in American culture and establish itself as a permanent
fixture of the twentieth-century landscape. Individual efforts
of people like Parsons and Davis were eclipsed by the forma-
tion of national organizations concerned with vocational
guidance. In 1906, the National Society for the Promotion of
Industrial Education (NSPIE) was formed largely through the
efforts of progressive labor leaders and settlement home ad-
vocates, many with ties to the Civic Service House and its
Vocational Bureau. The NSPIE provided an organized means
of lobbying the federal government for changes in public
schooling that would accommodate industrial education and
vocational guidance (Stephens, 1970). In 1913, the National
Vocational Guidance Association was founded and provided
a clear identity for those associated with vocational guidance.
With powerful political support and an impressive set of ad-
vocates, vocational guidance found its way into most educa-
tional systems in America by 1920.THE RISE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTINGThe First World War saw much less interest in the choice of a
meaningful career and much more interest in the selection of
able soldiers. The role and influence of psychologists ex-
panded greatly during this period as the new tools of the trade
were offered to the testing and classification of recruits.