Walter Dill Scott: Biography Of This Business Psychologist
Walter Dill Scott was an American psychologist who made many contributions to applied psychology, especially in the industrial area. As his biography shows us, Dill Scott laid many of the psychological foundations of advertising and current human resources principles.
Below you will find the biography of Walter Dill Scott, one of the first to recognize and apply principles of psychology in the business area. The latter in relation to advertising, since he considered that the latter is the “nervous system” of the business world.
Who was Walter Dill Scott? Biography of a pioneer in applied psychology
Walter Dill Scott (1869-1995) was born in Cooksville, Illinois. His training at Northwestern University was in the artistic and educational area. He subsequently moved to Germany to study psychology under Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig, where received the degree of doctor of philosophy in psychology and education in the year 1900.
With this degree he returned to the Northwestern University psychology faculty as a professor, laboratory director, and later department head. Likewise, he was a professor of advertising and applied psychology at the School of Commerce.
Along with several of his colleagues, Walter Dill Scott believed that the field of advertising had a great future. Thus, in 1903, he published together with other authors the first book that had advertising as its theme in relation to psychology : The theory and practice of advertising (Theory and practice of advertising).
Walter Dill Scott was interested not only in psychology, but in world affairs and had a broad understanding of history. This, along with his general orientation in culture, allowed him to see the possibilities of advertising as a popular educational force, which gradually led him to define some standards of truthfulness and effectiveness.
Very soon he realized that advertising could change the mind, so, the laws that govern the mind should be taken into account to determine whether an advertisement will be effective or not. In other words, he suggested that advertising has psychological components that can be exploited.
Furthermore, as Dill Scott analyzed advertisements, he realized that many of them were poorly made. From there he began to wonder how he could improve them, and one of the conclusions he reached was that the first thing was to select properly qualified people to prepare the advertisements.
In other words, beyond the essential qualities of effective advertising, Dill Scott began to consider the qualities necessary for a salesperson to be successful Thus, he quickly became the number one authority in the field of advertising psychology and in the selection and management of human resources.
In turn, advertising and personnel management were positioned as two key elements for the business field, which opened a very important door for applied psychology.
Contributions to the management and selection of personnel
Between the years of 1908 and 1915, Walter Dill Scott conducted a salesperson selection study for the American Tobacco Company. His intention was to develop and test criteria for a systematic selection of sellers.
For this, he started with observe closely how the interviewees who were in charge of recruiting staff operated He soon realized that they used a simple method that he described as “give or take,” which did not provide him with the information he needed.
Thus, Scott began to directly examine and analyze the qualities that the company’s most successful salespeople had. He then discussed these qualities with his research team and with the company’s interviewers. This allowed him to train interviewers on how to determine whether applicants met the desired qualities.
Finally, Scott and his team monitored the application of their approach until it was fully demonstrated that the interviewers were effectively selecting salespeople. The result was very important for the company, which made Scott acquire more tasks in evaluation and personnel management within the same company, and later in others.
Important works
Some of Walter Dill Scott’s classic works, which were published between 1903 and 1917, are: Increasing Human Efficiency In Business: A Contribution to the Psychology of Business (Increasing human efficiency in business: a contribution to business psychology), Influencing Men in Business (Influencing men in business), Aids in Selecting Salesmen (Aid for selecting sellers), and the article Psychology of Advertising (Psychology of advertising).
Other books that were published later and that have had a great impact in the field of business and advertising are Personnel Management (Personnel management) and Science and Common Sense in Working With Men (Science and common sense in working with men).
