ossible problems related
to economic efficiency, but merely to demonstrate the principles and
the methods of experimental economic psychology by a few
characteristic illustrations. As all the examples which we selected
were chosen only in order to make clear the characteristic point of
view of psychotechnics, it is unimportant whether the particular
results will stand the test of further experimental investigations,
or will have to be modified by new researches. What is needed to-day
is not to distribute the results so far reached as if they were parts
of a definite knowledge, but only to emphasize that the little which
has been accomplished should encourage continuous effort. To stimulate
such further work is the only purpose of this sketch.

This further work will have to be a work of cooeperation. The nature of
this problem demands a relatively large number of persons for the
experimental treatment. With most experimental researches in our
psychological laboratories, the number of the subjects experimented on
is not so important as the number of experiments made with a few
well-trained participants. But with the questions of applied
psychology the number of persons plays a much more significant role,
as the individual differences become of greatest importance. The same
problems ought therefore to be studied in various places, so that the
results may be exchanged and compared. Moreover, these psychological
economic investigations naturally lead beyond the possibilities of the
university laboratories. To a certain degree this was true of other
parts of applied psychology as well. Educational and medical
experimental psychology could not reach their fullest productivity
until the experiment was systematically carried into the schoolroom
and the psychiatric clinic. But the classroom and the hospital are
relatively accessible places for the scientific worker, as both are
anyhow conducted under a scientific point of view. The teacher and the
physician can easily learn to perform valuable experiments with school
children or with patients. This favorable condition is lacking in the
workshop and the factory, in the banks and the markets. The academic
psychologist will be able to undertake work there only with a very
disturbing expenditure of time and only under exceptional conditions.
If such experiments, for instance, with laborers in a factory or
employees of a railway are to advance beyond the faint first efforts
of to-da