Using personality inventories to identify thugs and agitators: Applied psychology's contribution to the war against labor

This article describes a period in the history of applied psychology when p ersonality inventories were used to screen applicants for unionization symp athies. Articles appeared in leading personnel management magazines of the 1930s and 1940s that advocated using personality inventories which measured psychopathology, such as the Humm-Wadsworth Temperament Scale, to identify potential malcontents, agitators, and thugs. These types of personality in ventories were used because there was a widespread belief, among managers, that workers who engaged in union activities were likely to have psychologi cal problems. I argue that this use of personality inventories was motivate d by the passage of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which outlawe d discriminatory hiring practices used previously to exclude union sympathi zers. Implications of this practice related to personality testing in indus try are discussed. Ethical implications for research in organizations are a lso discussed. (C) 2001 Academic Press.