“Psychometric Experiments”

“Psychometric Experiments” is an article written by Sir Francis Galton that described new methods for measuring human thought. He believed that if one wished to study the mind, there must be some replicable, verifiable means of measuring and quantifying its operation.

Beginning no later than 1876, Sir Francis Galton turned his extraordinarily prodigious mind to the development of a science of psychometry in Great Britain. At the same time that Wilhelm Wundt opened his experimental psychology laboratory in Germany, Galton conducted suggestive early research in psychometry. These two individuals’ approaches were similar in some ways, but differed fundamentally in others. Both men were committed to the study of the human mind through introspectionWundt by establishing rigorous experimental research methods and Galton by applying observational techniques to establish an understanding of the character of human thought. Wundt would likely agree with Galton that a discipline cannot attain the status of a [Page 1136]science until its phenomena have been measured reliably and validly.

Wundt influenced the early development of psychology to a far greater extent than Galton; Wundt's laboratory was associated with the University of Leipzig and attracted students internationally (e.g., J. M. Cattell, G. Stanley Hall, E. B. Titchener, and William James, to name a few), all of whom published prolifically for many decades. On the other hand, Galton, like his cousin Charles Darwin, was a wealthy individual and largely worked alone. His only disciple of considerable note was Karl Pearson. Consequently, psychological research during most of the 20th century was driven by the experimental and quasi-experimental designs fomulated by Wundt and his followers. It was only in the last quarter of the 20th century that Galton's (much-evolved) concepts of correlation and regression (e.g., multiple regression analysis, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, canonical correlation, and structural equation modeling) began to characterize much of psychological research.

Galton was particularly interested in the development of instruments with which to measure human mental attributes. For him, psychometry was the art of measuring and assigning numbers to the attributes of the mind (e.g., determining the response latency of individuals). British, European, and American psychologists adopted many of his measurement tools, and some remain in use today (e.g., the questionnaire, word association tests).

In his paper “Psychometric Experiments,” Galton proposed to provide a new form of psychometric investigation in which he attempted to quantify the processes of the human mind. Two studies were reported in his paper. In the first “experiment,” Galton walked down the Pall Mall a distance of some 450 yards, focusing intently on each successive object that caught his eye. When he had generated one or two thoughts directly associated with the object, he made a mental note of each idea, then moved on to the next object. Afterwards, he calculated that he viewed approximately 300 objects during his walk that evoked a wide array of memories formed throughout his life. He noted that he recalled previous incidents of which he was not consciously aware until after the recollection occurred. Galton repeated his 450-yard walk along the Pall Mall and discovered there were many repetitions of associations from his first walk. These results, although intriguing, were not systematically recorded, and thus they were not available for statistical analysis.

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