How did Yerkes suggest that psychologists help in the war effort? What was the effort that resulted from this suggestion?
Robert Mearns Yerkes (1876-1956) was born in a family of farmers in rural Pennsylvania, US. He studied in Ursinus College and then in Harvard University where he studied about animal behavioral patterns. He earned a doctorate degree in 1902 and started to research about Human Psychology along with his friend John B. Watson at Harvard.
Yerkes got the job of director of psychological research at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital and got interested in testing intelligence. He explored the possibilities of Binet-Simon tests in gauging the intelligence of human beings. In the year 1917, Yerkes became the president of the American Psychological Association (APA).
Yerkes suggested that psychologists should help in the War (WWI) effort. He believed that mental testing was an important tool in determining the character and personality of a human being. During First World War, the American Army gave Robert Yerkes the permission to carry mental testing of the new recruits to the American Army.
Yerkes devised a set of mental tests that were to be administered to the 1.75 million new Army recruits. There were three sub-divisions of the test:
1. Alpha test – This was a written test for all literate army recruits. They had to fill in the missing number or pattern, spot analogies, unscramble sentences or words. It was similar to modern day tests.
2. Beta test – This was a pictorial test for the illiterate army recruits or those who had failed in the Alpha test. It consisted of analogies, picking the correct options, picture completion questions.
3. Individual Examination – It was a spoken-test for those army recruits who had both failed in the Alpha and Beta tests.
Deterioration of National Intelligence - It was observed that the European immigrants, who came to America from Eastern and Southern parts of Europe, had a comparatively lower innate intelligence level.
Yerkes along with Terman and Goddard were concerned about the deterioration of the nation’s average intelligence level. They believed in the concept of Eugenics. The observations of the Army Testing Program led to the deportation of thousands of the European immigrants who failed the mental tests and were deemed “mentally impaired”.