Behavioral Science in the Army: A Corporate History of the Army Research Institute

Abstract

The Corporate History was begun in September 1982 and completed in March 1983. The purpose of this foreword is to note the important scientific developments and progress that have taken place during the four-and-a-halfyear interval between the writing and publication.

Specific Abilities in the Workplace: More Important Than g?

“…The “discovery” of specific abilities quickly proliferated, with some postulating 40 to over 120 abilities by the 1970s [39]. The conceptual emphasis on specific abilities influenced the development of new, multi-attribute assessments over this period, such as the General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB), Army General Classification Test (administered to over 12 million World War II recruits [40]), Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), and the Air Force Officer Qualifying Test [41,42]. In time the focus on specific abilities grew so intense that Ghiselli [43] (p. 83) could assert: “Whatever happened to Spearman’s G?…”

Shooting Straight: 20 Years of Rifle Markmanship Research

“…5 ARI began to tackle this problem by defining the rifle defeatable combat threat, 6 by examining previous marksmanship research, 7 and by investigating existing and alternative training procedures. 8 9 These initial efforts defined the rifle defeatable threat as being briefly…”

Military Aptitude Testing: The Past Fifty Years

“…Other responsibilities include recruiting, training, and other components of the personnel system, such as the effectiveness of enlistment incentives, welfare of dependents, training methods, and human factors. Zeidner and Drucker (1988) have prepared a comprehensive history of ARI that describes the scope of research activities in the Army and briefly in the other Services.…”

“…December 1961 (Zeidner and Drucker, 1988). The organizations in the Army, Navy, and Air Force became laboratories or centers, just as they were called in the military hardware arena.…”