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Intelligence tests are often used
by employers to weed out brainless job
candidates, but an increasing number of
UK companies use a test designed to identify
candidates who are too smart. The idea
behind the Wonderlic Personnel Test
is that people can be too stupid or too
bright for a job. If too bright, they
might become bored and leave, or they
might spread a mood of frustration and
disenchantment throughout the workplace.
Employers who use the Wonderlic
test take the threat of over-intelligent
workers very seriously. For example, many
US police force job applicants have been
rejected for scoring too highly in the
test (one applicant sued in federal court
for unfair disqualification).
The extensive use of the Wonderlic
test (it’s the world’s most widely used
employee intelligence test) has a sinister
implication. The corporate world seems
fully aware that most jobs require relatively
low intelligence. High intelligence is
seen as a hindrance, because there’s no
way that intelligent people would tolerate
40 hours of tedious monotony every week.
It follows that full employment – the
holy grail of conservative politicians
– would require low intelligence in most
of the population. But the only guaranteed
way to achieve this is mass lobotomy.
The majority of jobs being created seem
to be low-paid and soul-destroying: telesales,
security, office administration, etc.
If large numbers of intelligent people
are forced into tedious jobs, the frustration
they feel must be managed and contained,
otherwise their employers won’t profit.
After herding people into office buildings,
how do you keep them productive, week
after week, in activities which insult
their intelligence?
To an extent, industry has always had
this problem. Captains of industry have
forever been on the lookout for ways to
increase management control of worker
productivity. Modern psychology, in particular,
has been a happy hunting ground for company
bosses wanting to maximise performance
and discipline.
One branch of psychology has provided
important advances in management control.
In the early 1900s, behaviourism
revolutionised psychology by focusing
entirely on objectively measurable human
responses to stimuli. Subjective mental
states like happiness or boredom were
dismissed as irrelevant to the scientific
process. At the same time, a scientific
management approach was taking hold in
industry – for example, time and motion
studies emphasised observable, measurable
worker behaviour. The job of both the
psychologist and the manager was to manipulate
the human environment to produce the desired
results.
Behaviourism treated people like rats
in a maze, and it wasn’t too long before
Gestalt psychologists challenged this
reductionist, mechanistic view. Scientific
management was also criticised: studies
conducted in the 1930s showed that worker
productivity was not determined entirely
by the workplace, but had as much to do
with the feelings and perceptions of workers.
During the 1950s, behaviourism became
popular again, largely due to the work
of B.F. Skinner. After a lot of experimenting
on rats and pigeons, Skinner made some
important advances on classical Pavlovian
conditioning (he developed the concept
of “operant conditioning”). Skinner’s
advanced conditioning techniques found
their way into industry by way of organisational
behaviour modification and contingency
management.
Modern office technology provides managers
with the ultimate behaviourist tool: continuous
remote monitoring of employee activity.
There’s nowhere to hide anymore. And we
shouldn’t be fooled by company PR about
sensitivity to the feelings of employees.
In spite of occasional management trends
towards a warmer, more humanistic approach
(consideration of the needs and goals
of individuals, etc), behaviourism remains
the favourite approach of those who like
to be in control.
Another relevant area of psychology is
cognitive dissonance, which sheds light
on the peculiar psychological torture
experienced by many office workers. Cognitive
dissonance is a term for what happens
when we think or act in ways which contradict
our self-image. For example, some job
roles require us to behave in an “out
of character” way. This can be uncomfortable,
embarrassing and stressful. We normally
escape the discomfort of cognitive dissonance
by distracting ourselves (get a coffee,
read a newspaper, etc), but with no distractions
available, we experience a kind of restless,
self-loathing ennui.
Office jobs supply the two main ingredients
of mental agony: cognitive dissonance
and prolonged monotony. This diabolical
combination is probably the biggest source
of psychological suffering in Western
civilisation, leading to vast amounts
of stress. Dissonance is the mysterious
factor which turns boredom into a major
health hazard.
Our cult of Individualism makes
us particularly prone to cognitive dissonance
because of our need to see ourselves as
stable, self-contained beings. We regard
personal identity as something unchangeable
and absolute – a view which ignores the
whole of modern psychology. Consequently,
we underestimate the role of social setting
in influencing our behaviour.
If you spend a lot of time in the same
social setting, it’s eventually going
to get to you. If you join the army with
an expectation of remaining aloof from
the military mentality, then you’re in
for a nasty shock. Anyone starting an
office job, expecting to escape office
politics, corporate-speak, employee pettiness
and chronic boredom, is going to have
a hard time coming to terms with their
own behaviour in that environment.
Due to the nature of modern workplaces
(authority hierarchies, politics, tangled
communication, boredom), employees often
do irrational things. For example: concealing
what they’re doing from their boss, acting
evasively, making dubious excuses, telling
lies, subtly redirecting blame, feeling
intense resentment over trivial matters,
reporting that everything is fine when
it isn’t, etc. Obviously this kind of
behaviour doesn’t fit the beliefs we have
about ourselves as essentially good, decent,
rational and professional.
How can you come to terms with your pathetic
employee-persona if you see yourself as
basically honest and dignified? The only
way to deal with your “out of character”
behaviour is to justify and rationalise
it. But that means making excuses, which
is even more undignified. The only real
escape from this torture is to quit your
job.
A smart person with a boring, pointless
job (ie a fairly typical job) suffers
the crippling cognitive dissonance of:
“I am intelligent – most of my days
are spent in meaningless stupidity”.
If there is no choice but to continue
the job (due to money needs and a harsh
labour market), more dissonance arises:
“I am a free person – I cannot escape
this situation”.
Most companies promote the idea of freedom
with endless corporate jargon about “choice”
and “opportunity”. This seems like a crude
attempt to hide the fact that employees
have no free choice. At most, they have
an economic dilemma: continue the job
or suffer the humiliation of welfare.
We're like rats in a behaviourist maze.
Behaviourism describes the external control:
the supply or withdrawal of money and
social status. Cognitive dissonance describes
the inner state of mind: confusion, discomfort
and impotence. Together, they contain
the potentially vast social discontent
resulting from compulsory full employment.
Cognitive dissonance could be dispersed
if we replaced the word “employee” with
“slave”. Then there’d be no confusion
about our slave-identities. Most people
would want to see slavery reduced rather
than extended. Full “employment” would
be recognised as full slavery. At that
point there would probably be a social
consensus to dismantle the behaviourist
mechanisms that keep us enslaved. (First
printed by the
Idler)
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