Walter Dill Scott was born on a farm
near the town of Normal, Illinois. Scott’s father was ill; therefore
all the
responsibility of running the farm was put on Walter’s shoulders.
While plowing a field one afternoon, he had
the idea about work efficiency. Scott
realized that if he was going to accomplish anything, he would need to
stop
wasting time. Scott realized that he
lost ten minutes out of his time; he could be doing something
important, every
time he gave the cows a ten minute rest.
So he decided to carry a book around with him and spend every spare
minute of his time reading and learning something new (Schultz &
Schultz,
2004).
Scott
wanted to go to college, but in order to do that he had to pick and can
blackberries, salvaged scrap metal to sell and take on other odds
jobs.
At age nineteen, he enrolled at Illinois State
Normal University. He wanted to become a missionary
to China,
but by the time he graduated from Chicago
theological seminary there were no room for missionaries. Scott
then started taking a liking to
psychology when he enrolled in a psychology class and enjoyed it, and
when he
read a magazine article about Wundt’s Leipzig
laboratory (Schultz & Schultz, 2004).
On July 21, 1898,
Scott went to study
with Wundt, and then two years later he obtained his Ph.D. Scott
then became a psychology and pedagogy instructor
at Northwestern
University. A few years later his interest
changed when
an advertising executive asked him to think of a way to apply
psychology to
advertising to make it more successful (Schultz & Schultz, 2004).
In 1903,
Scott wrote The Theory and
Practice of
Advertising, the first book on
the topic of advertising. In 1905, he was promoted to professor
and in
1909, he was appointed to professor of applied psychology and director
of the
bureau of salesmanship research at Pittsburgh
Carnegie Technical
University (Schultz & Schultz,
2004).
When the United
States entered World War I, Scott
offered to
help the army select military personal. At
first his ideas were not well liked; and
not everyone was convinced
about psychology’s practical values. An army general was not convinced
on
Scott’s selection techniques, but eventually Scott was able to persuade
the
general in using his selection techniques. Scotts
was later rewarded with the army’s
Distinguished Service Metal (Schultz
& Schultz, 2004).
After World
War I, Scott formed his own company called The Scott Company. His company provided consulting services to
corporations wanting assistance with problems of personal selection and
worker
efficiency. While running his own
company, he was also president of Northwestern
University
from 1920 to 1939 (Schultz
& Schultz, 2004).
Scott
argued that consumers do not act rational, and therefore they can be
easily
influenced. He said that emotion,
sympathy, and sentimentality are all factors that increase consumer
suggestibility. Applying his laws of
suggestibility, he recommended that companies use direct commands to
sell their
products. He suggested that companies
use return coupons because they required consumers to take direct
action. His techniques were used by
advertisers and
by 1910 were used all over the country (Schultz & Schultz, 2004).
Scott came
up with a rating scale and group test to measure characteristics of
people who
were already successful as sales people, business executives, and
military
personal. He also questioned army
officers and business managers, asking them to rank the importance of
appearance, demeanor, and character.
Scott then ranked job applicants on the qualities found for effective
job performance. Scott also developed
psychological test to measure intelligence and other abilities, but
instead of
individual test he made test that could be given to groups of
people.
Scott was not only measuring general
intelligence but he was also interested how a person applies their
intelligence. He defined intelligence in
practical terms such as judgment, quickness, and accuracy. He
compared applicants’ test scores with
scores of employees who were successful, and was not concerned about
what those
test scores would say about the personals mental problems (Schultz
&
Schultz, 2004).
|
