Johnson O'Connor - Aptitude Research at General Electric

Aptitude Research At General Electric

In a visionary experiment, the General Electric leadership decided that if employees could be matched to positions that best suited their natural abilities and retrained in those areas, it would benefit both company and employees. In 1922 F.P. Cox of GE asked O’Connor to develop an in-house program called the "human" engineering project that would find the proper positioning for each employee and retrain them within that field. This led O’Connor into a study of inborn aptitudes and to the development of aptitude tests that he called "work samples." Using empirical research, O'Connor developed classifications for specific human abilities, to which he gave labels such as "Graphoria," "Ideaphoria," and "Structural Visualization." O’Connor became one of the first researchers to offer documentation that aptitudes are in fact innate. For example, one who is mathematically inclined can learn much more quickly and easily about mathematics than can one whose aptitudes in this area are low. Similarly, if one were to take two groups, one that possessed a high aptitude for finger dexterity and one that did not, with practice, both groups performance would improve, but the group that possessed the higher aptitude would continue to outperform the other despite identical training.