If the employment of large
numbers is in question, and average values alone are involved, such a
decision on the basis of group psychology may be adequate. In most
factories this vague sex psychology, to be sure, usually with a strong
admixture of wage questions, suggests for which machines men and for
which women ought to be employed. But here again it is not at all
improbable that in the case of a particular woman the traditional
group value may be entirely misleading and the personality accordingly
unfit for the place. Only the subtle psychological individual analysis
can overcome the superficial prejudices of group psychology. The
situation lies differently when problems of economic policy are before
us. Such general policies as, for instance, colonial politics, or
immigration politics, or politics concerned with city and rural
communities, or with coast and mountain population, will always have
to be based on group psychology as far as the economic problems are
involved, inasmuch as they refer to the average and not to the
individual, differences.
Finally, another indirect scheme to determine the personal qualities
needed for economic efficiency may be suggested by the psychology of
the typical correlations of human traits. We have seen that group
psychology proclaims that a certain individual probably has certain
traits because he belongs to this or that nation or to this or that
otherwise well-known group.
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