Story of Psychology - Morton Hunt [144]
But that was not the end of the story for Cattell or for mental testing. Cattell, undaunted, developed a number of other tests, particularly in the field of value judgments, edited two science magazines, founded the Psychological Corporation to do applied psychology as a business, and became the prime exemplar of the hustling, practical, commercial side of psychology.
Although Galton’s anthropometric approach to mental testing died out rapidly, intelligence testing of a different sort shortly took its place and soon made the study of individual differences the leading area of American psychology. By 1917, well over half of all research reported at meetings of the American Psychological Association dealt with individual differences.23 Galton’s assessment of the value of mental testing came to dominate American psychology, and intelligence testing became the means by which his hereditarian views influenced the schooling offered to students, the assignments given men in the military service, and the immigration policies of the nation.
A final paradox is that none of these results was the intent of the man who developed the intelligence tests that supplanted Galton’s. Alfred Binet’s tests won out over Galton’s; Galton’s views won out over Binet’s.
The Mental Age Approach: Alfred Binet
Alfred Binet, whose name every undergraduate learns in Introductory Psychology, was not a great psychologist; he formulated no important theory, made no brilliant discoveries, and was not a charismatic teacher. But he had one original and relatively simple idea, on the basis of which he and his collaborator, Théodore Simon, fashioned a mental test that has profoundly affected the lives of millions of people.
Binet was born in Nice, France, in 1857; his father was a physician and his mother a woman of some artistic talent.24 His parents separated when he was young and he was raised by his mother; whether due to that circumstance, unusual in his time, or to his being an only child or to a constitutional bent, he grew up an introverted man who made few friends and was most comfortable working and studying alone.
Seeking to find his proper métier, Binet made many false starts. In his student years, he earned a law degree, but then decided that science was more interesting and began the study of medicine. However, having an independent income and not faced with the need to earn a living, he dropped out of medical school to study psychology, to which he had felt drawn for years. He unwisely chose not to pursue psychological training in a formal way but immersed himself in solitary reading in the library (where, among other works, he studied Galton’s Hereditary Genius).
His self-education might have led nowhere, but in 1883 an old classmate, Joseph Babinski (who would later discover the infant reflex that bears his name), introduced him to Charles Féré, a staff member at the Salpêtrière, who in turn introduced him to Jean Martin Charcot, its director. Though Binet had no degree in medicine or psychology, Char-cot was impressed by his intelligence, knowledge, and interest in hypnosis, and offered him a position at the Salpêtrière clinic of neurology and hypnosis.
After some productive years there, Binet took another wrong turn. He and Féré conducted some poorly controlled experiments in hypnosis, imagined that they had discovered a previously unknown phenomenon in hysterical patients, and made public their findings. By the use of magnets, they said, they had been able to shift any action the patient performed under hypnosis, such as lifting an arm, from one side of the body to the other. Even more remarkable, they had been able, also by means of magnets, to transform any of the patient’s emotions or perceptions into the opposite—the fear of snakes, for instance, into a fondness for snakes.
Their report of this hocus-pocus, which would have looked suspect even in Mesmer’s time, brought immediate criticism. Auguste Liébeault and his followers, the Nancy School of hypnotism,