The Art Of Interrogation

Studies in the Principles of Mental Tests and Examinations

ER Hamilton, Hamilton, E R, E R Hamilton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780415210584
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136331848
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

This is Volume VIII of twenty-one in the Individual Differences series with the library of Psychology. First published in 1929, this study provides information on the principles of mental tests and examinations within the area of interrogation in order to understand more fully the differences in the minds of individuals.

Chapter I
The Description of Mind—Some General Principles

1. Introductory

To understand other people's minds, and to act in accordance with such understanding, are vital concerns of everybody. Not only is our behaviour in daily intercourse with others determined largely by our beliefs as to the nature of their minds, but most of our thinking, the private side of our life, is coloured by meanings derived from our social life. We cannot, in fact, understand our own minds unless we have some understanding of the minds of other people; nor can we interpret other minds except in terms of experience of our own. The psychologist has a triple task to perform. He must try to see others as he sees himself; he must try to see others as they see themselves; and he, like all men, must value the "giftie" to see himself as others see him. Psychology is the science of describing other minds in terms of one's own mind, and one's own in terms of others. No study could well be more important or more fascinating than that of the means by which we seek to estimate and classify the mental qualities of our fellows.

There are many ways in which we seek to obtain knowledge, or to form opinions, of the mental qualities of men. In a task so essential to all men's welfare as the judgment of the nature of their fellows all must have some skill, however crude, however uncertain, however unconsciously acquired. Many people develop, in the course of everyday life, considerable power of judging character and other qualities in an intuitive way; that is to say, they can make those judgments, but they do not know how they make them. And he is no psychologist in whose estimations of the mental qualities of individuals intuitive judgment does not play a large part. It is the business of the psychologist, however, at once to respect intuition and to suspect it. He, therefore, devises systematic methods of examination to supplement his intuitions. It is with such systematic methods that we are concerned in this book.

2. Descriptive Terms and Enduring Qualities

In order that we may compare individuals with respect to their mental qualities we must have some system of describing minds, a vocabulary of terms that can be applied to recognizable mental qualities. And these terms must be applicable in the same sense to the minds of all the individuals whom we wish to compare with one another. If by "memory" we mean something recognizable in the mind of Smith, the term must not be meaningless when applied to the mind of Robinson. If we speak of "intelligence", we must mean the same kind of thing when we are speaking of Smith's mind as when we are speaking of Robinson's; and we must mean the same kind of thing when we use the term to describe Smith's skill in mathematics as when we use it to describe his skill in laying a fire. The ideal towards which we must work—and we are always far from attaining it—is a vocabulary by which we can describe the mind of any person (given the necessary knowledge of his mental nature), and such that every term has a definite meaning, which is the same in its application to all individuals, at all times, and in ah circumstances.

Let us see more clearly what can be meant by the phrase "describing a mind". What justification is there for talking of "describing a man's mind", as we have done, as though his "mind" were something he carried about with him, a thing we could look upon and see that it was good—or bad, or indifferent? Now, this question will lead us, if we let it, into difficulties literally as great as we please. But our present purpose will be served by an answer of a comparatively simple character.

Experience shows that many of the observable attributes of men endure for a considerable time. If a man is described as "clever", the description is supposed to hold good for many years, although he may be in "good form" one day and in "poor form" another. If we have formed the opinion that a certain man is "good", we are shocked to find him in jail for embezzlement, for the saint of Monday is not usually the criminal of Tuesday. If Dr Johnson is said to have been hypochondriacal it is because hypochondria was one of his enduring characteristics. The point need not be further laboured. Obviously neither psychology, nor indeed much of human intercourse, would be possible were it not for the fact that many qualities of human beings are permanent or semi-permanent. Upon this fact is dependent, in particular, the value of all examining and testing of men. For, we must suppose, in classifying or selecting individuals for any purpose, that the classification obtained at the time of the test will continue, for some time at least, to hold good.

Common sense recognizes some of the exceptions to which the assumption of the permanence of human qualities is subject. It recognizes that a man's efficiency depends partly upon what he has had for dinner, and that efficiency may vary with the state of health from month to month or from year to year. It recognizes that his nervousness may temporarily reduce the effective ability of a good candidate in an examination; that a keen mind may rust through disuse; that experience of an unusual kind may sometimes work sudden and great changes in a man, so that his emotional nature may be transformed into something that would have been quite strange to him the day before. Such catastrophic transformations are, however, rare, and variations of efficiency and character generally take place about a fairly stable norm.

Turning now to the metaphor of "possessing a mind", we may justify it by pointing to the permanence or semi-permanence of human qualities. Since an individual shows certain uniformities in his behaviour, certain characteristic degrees of skill, certain tendencies to action, certain emotional traits, and so on, it is convenient to think of these constancies as manifestations of an enduring something, and that something is what, in this chapter, we have been calling a "mind". This is the sense in which we shall generally use the term "mind" in this book. When we speak of "mental qualities" we shall not usually mean what a man observes by introspection, his feelings, his images, his willings and knowings; we shall refer rather to the fact that the man is liable to have such and such experiences or to display such and such behaviour. We shall think of "mental qualities" as qualities in virtue of which he thinks and feels and desires in certain ways. But the phrase "qualities in virtue of which he thinks . . . in certain ways", is a figure of speech; all that we actually know is that he does think, feel, desire, in certain ways at various times.

These more or less enduring mental qualities, often called "dispositions", do not necessarily exist, and in any case we have no notion of their nature; to speak of them as "traces" or as "deposits", as some psychologists have done, or (still worse) to refer to them as "neurograms", as others have done, is to make a gratuitous and (as far as the point of view adopted in this book is concerned) an unnecessary hypothesis. When we say that a certain disposition "exists in a man's mind" we mean no more than that he is likely to act or think in a certain way. To say that dispositions exist, is simply to say in other words that present behaviour is in part determined by the history of the individual, including what he inherits from his parents. Instead of saying that the Speaker of the House of Commons will recognize Big Ben next time he sees it, we may say—because it happens to suit our scheme of psychological description—that he has a disposition (more accurately, a "cognitive disposition") corresponding to Big Ben. Instead of saying that Jones is frequently in a bad temper we say, even in ordinary speech, that he has an "irascible disposition".

3. Modes of Description

In this book we shall be mainly concerned with the task of assessing and describing the more or less enduring characteristics of individuals. But there are various kinds of psychological description. We may describe mental processes as we observe them going on in our own minds (to use the everyday metaphor). Or, we may observe the behaviour of other people or of animals, and describe such behaviour in purely physical terms. Again, we may describe the behaviour of man or animal in the sort of terms we use in the description of mental processes. Or, when other people make written or spoken signs to us, we may be able to describe, not only the mere behaviour of writing or speaking, but the mental processes we regard as indicated by those signs. And finally, there is the kind of description already referred to; that namely, of the dispositional nature of an individual—his knowledge, skill, tendencies, abilities and capacities.

With the description of mental processes, with the interpretation of signs, and with dispositional descriptions we need not deal here. A good illustration of the different modes of describing behaviour is provided by Thorndike's well-known experiments on cats. We will describe in two ways what happens in those experiments. A cat, which has had nothing to eat for some time, is placed inside a cage. If a certain string is pulled, or a button struck, inside the cage, the door of the cage will open. A piece of fish is placed outside the cage, beyond the reach of the cat. The cat is found to run about in an apparently haphazard fashion, until in due course it operates the string or button which releases it. When this experiment is repeated many times the animal takes less and less time to escape, finally escaping almost immediately it is placed inside the cage. Here is a description in purely physical terms. Let the reader now contrast this account with the following. A hungry cat, placed in a cage, outside which is placed a piece of fish within sight and smell of the cat, shows signs of great impatience and rushes about excitedly but without any definite plan of action. In the course of these random, or apparently random, movements, the cat will strike the releasing mechanism, probably by accident, and so satisfy its desire to reach the fish. If the cat is placed again and again in the same cage, it will in course of time learn how to get out, and will then escape as soon as it is placed in the cage. This is quite a different kind of description. The terms "hungry" "sight", "smell", "impatience", "desire", "learn", are mental terms; and most people would regard the second as the truer kind of description. Why they would do so, is an interesting psychological problem.

Let us consider now more particularly the description of the enduring characteristics of individuals: their abilities, capacities, tendencies, beliefs, prejudices, and so forth. In what ways do we obtain the data necessary for describing such qualities? We may obtain such data by observation of the ways in which men act in their everyday life. Or, the works produced by men, their books or pictures, the bridges or railways they make, the battles they win or lose, may be interpreted as signifying the possession of such and such mental qualities. Again, by subjecting men to systematic tests and examinations, we can try to compare them with one another with respect to specified qualities, their powers of memorizing, their abilities in mathematics, the readiness with which they can perceive relations, or certain kinds of relations, between different things. Each of these methods of obtaining information has its particular merit. Thus, the kind of knowledge we gain of our intimate friends through constant intercourse with them will often enable us to predict with high probability their action in given circumstances, and to do so with more accuracy than we could if we had to rely solely upon the results obtained by subjecting them to a series of psychological tests. Much of our knowledge of acquaintances, however, is obtained intuitively, and is therefore peculiarly liable to bias. A psychological test may be the most dependable means of ascertaining the degree in which an individual possesses a particular mental quality, such as power of visual memory, of discrimination between the pitches of musical notes, or of dealing with problems of a particular kind. On the other hand, men, in the works they spontaneously produce, give us information about their minds that frequently can be obtained neither through personal acquaintance nor by systematic testing.

4. The Differences between Individuals

Psychology is possible because all men are alike, and worth while because all men are different. The stress in orthodox psychology used to be upon the resemblances between human beings, mental qualities being discussed in the abstract rather than in the forms they assumed in particular individuals. Actually what the early psychologist did was to confine his attention mainly to his own mind, and then assume that the introspective description he made would apply equally well to the mind of anybody else. And that assumption had this much truth in it: namely, that general psychological concepts, to which definite names could be given, must, if they are valid, be applicable to all minds. But, that we can describe the features of the human face in general terms, does not imply that all human faces are alike!

Psychology became at once more interesting, more useful and more scientific when it began to concern itself with the study of the ways in which individuals differ from one another. The old "general psychology" bears to the "psychology of individual differences" a relation in some respects analogous to that between formal grammar and literature. Grammar is possible in so far as there are principles common to all speech; but literature draws its life from the infinite varieties of speech that are possible. The kind of description we now aim at is a concrete description of the mental qualities of particular individuals, but in doing this we are actuated by the motives of comparing individuals and of seeking laws of mental action that will apply to all individuals alike. And in leaving the old kind of general psychology behind us we have not, of course, relinquished general psychological terms. The vocabulary in terms of which we describe the mind of Smith will be used also to describe the mind of Jones.

There are several ways of comparing the minds of individuals. These ways fall into two roughly distinguishable classes, according to the type of description of mind upon which we base the comparison. Consider first another kind of comparison, e.g., that between two pictures. We may express our judgment of comparison between two pictures by simply saying that one is more pleasing, or has more merit than the other "on the whole". Or, we may compare the pictures with respect to various qualities, each quality being considered separately: colour, line, design, and so on. Now, in judging a picture "as a whole" we necessarily judge it from some definite point of view—the pleasure it gives, or its æsthetic merit; we are in that sense judging a single quality of the picture. But in forming such a judgment we must take cognizance, perhaps subconsciously, of the separate qualities (line, colour, etc.) of the picture. Our judgment of the picture as a whole is not, however, simply the sum of the separate judgments (which we need not necessarily express in words) of the various qualities; nor, indeed, is it the total of those judgments plus a further judgment. If, however, we try to make a detailed comparison between two pictures we are sure to make an analysis of their qualities and then compare them with respect to these qualities; but this analytical comparison is never exhaustive. Similarly, if we wish to make a detailed comparison between the minds of two individuals, we shall be driven to comparing them with respect to particular mental qualities—their intelligence, suggestibility, powers of appreciating music, irascibility, and so on; and this is what we try to do by means of mental tests. But it is certainly as true of psychological comparison as it is of comparing pictures, that such an analytical comparison does not tell the whole story of the ways in which the individuals differ from one another. In fact, when you have compared Smith's intelligence with that of Jones, and Smith's irascibility with Jones's, and so on throughout the gamut of mental qualities, you have still got to compare Smith with Jones.

Mental tests are concerned solely with the analytical comparison between individuals: by means of tests we compare individuals with respect to one mental quality at a time; but a man's expressive product, such as the book he writes or the picture he paints, may give us insight into that balance or synthesis of mental qualities that lends the man his distinctive individuality, insight that no amount of psychological testing would ever afford us.

The question whether there is a sense in which a man's mind may, like a picture, be judged or valued "as a whole", is one for philosophy rather than psychology. But the distinction between analytical and synthetic judgment is one that will recur frequently in these pages, and it may well receive further illustration at this point.

If we want to ascertain whether Smith or Jones is the better chess player we may satisfy ourselves by getting them to play a number of games together and to solve a number of problems which we have designed as specially searching. In this way we obtain data for a comparison of their total abilities in chess. But a fuller description of their individual differences in the matter of chessplaying would have to indicate that Smith, who is usually beaten by Jones, has his good points, in some of which he is very much superior to Jones. This is the analytical kind of description. Similarly, if we want to know which of two men is the best all-round mathematician, we may set them papers in the various branches of mathematics and base our decision upon the total marks. But if we want to make a complete comparison between the mathematical abilities of the two men, we must break up mathematical skill into components (which need not necessarily correspond to the conventional branches—algebra, geometry, etc.), and make each component the subject of a separate comparison.

Before we leave this preliminary account of the comparison of individuals mention should be made of another point. In any full comparison of the minds of Smith and Jones there will be reference to the degrees in which they respectively appear to possess various mental qualities: intelligence, suggestibility, constancy or fickleness of motives, and so on. But we must also consider the relations between these mental qualities in each individual. For, the important thing in the comparison between these two men may be that, whilst Smith's intelligence is far greater than that of Jones, Jones, having great constancy of purpose, makes so much better use of his intelligence that he is, on the whole, the more effective person of the two, and one more likely to succeed in what he undertakes to do. Analytical comparison of individuals needs always to be supplemented by such consideration of the interrelations between their mental qualities.

A similar proviso is necessary when we turn from the consideration of enduring mental qualities to that of mental processes. The attempt to analyse mental processes into kinds—such as emotions, willings and knowings —especially when it is described as an attempt to analyse mind into parts, is often decried as a falsification of the facts of mental life. A mind broken up, it is said, is no longer a mind. But indeed analysis and abstraction are unavoidable in psychology. It is true that the various mental processes that receive separate names in our analysis are, in the living mind, organically united, or, we had better say, that a "process" is always but one aspect of a whole experience. But, although we may employ one system of psychological categories or another, we are bound, having chosen our system, to consider separately each of those categories. Thus we consider emotion and cognition separately. But we atone for this unavoidable sin by further considering what we describe as "the interaction between emotion and cognition".

5. Theoretical and Practical Aims

Psychology, once but a modest branch of philosophy, has distinguished itself in recent years by the number and variety of its applications to problems of practical life. Its range now extends from philosophy to bricklaying. But the applications always have a theoretical as well as a practical interest. Mental tests, for example (whether they be designed to single out the men most likely to become good rifle shots, or to gauge t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• INTRODUCTION
• PREFACE
• CHAPTER I. THE DESCRIPTION OF MIND-SOME GENERAL PRINCIPLES
• CHAPTER II. THE WAY OF MENTAL TESTS
• CHAPTER III. MEASUREMENT IN PSYCHOLOGY
• CHAPTER IV. EXAMINATIONS, OLD AND NEW
• CHAPTER V. THE TESTING OF KNOWLEDGE
• CHAPTER VI. QUESTIONS IN THE MAKING
• CHAPTER VII. QUESTIONING IN THE CLASS-ROOM
• INDEX