Increasing the Effectiveness of Military Selection in the Early Days of Applied Psychology

Abstract

The study reviews the early days of the scientific application of psychology, the theoretical foundations of which can still be used as a basis for military selection. The framework within which the studies were initiated and conducted in the early 20th century shall be reviewed, and the major differences in the perceptions of the two (American and German) nations and how they were disseminated in Hungary shall be discussed. As with many other sciences, the development of psychological testing methods has been boosted by war. The Army Alpha and Beta, the widely known group intelligence tests was a national issue for effective placement in the United States of America. One of the slogans of psychotechnology in occupational psychology reads: “The right man on the right place”; the notion that everything should be done to employ people in jobs according to their character and abilities. In the Hungarian context, I reviewed the available literature from the organisational work started in the Monarchy, through the rise of psychotechnology, to the establishment of the Central Institute of Aptitude Testing at the Royal Hungarian Army and the studies conducted there.