Personality, Incorporated: Psychological Capital in American Management, 1960-1995
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Personality, Incorporated: Psychological Capital in American Management, 1960-1995 by Kira Lussier A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology University of Toronto © Copyright by Kira Lussier, 2018 Personality, Incorporated Kira Lussier Doctor of Philosophy Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology University of Toronto 2018 Abstract Personality, Incorporated traces the history of personality testing in American corporate management from 1960 to 1995 through three case studies. This dissertation takes up the twinned history of psychological techniques, as deployed by a cadre of “consulting psychologists,” and the psychological capacities conjured by these techniques. Personality, Incorporated make two core arguments. First, it argues that personality tests aimed to incite and channel employees’ psychological capacities as forms of economic value. Psychological tests did not simply measure static traits, but they also actively elicited and mobilized affects, subjectivities, and differences, that they then harnessed for corporate value production. Second, this dissertation argues that late twentieth-century corporations were not just sites for the application and circulation of psychological knowledge, but they also served as important experimental laboratories for investigating humans’ interpersonal, emotional, and cognitive capacities. A core contribution of this dissertation is to identify, investigate, and interrogate the specific form of value mobilized at this intersection of personality tests and management practices: “psychological capital. As an analytic category, psychological capital names how human beings’ psychological capacities are enlisted into circuits of economic value, with the aid of psychological techniques that can measure and incite these capacities. Psychological capital circulates as an intangible yet nonetheless measurable form of capital that was made visible, measurable, and valuable through psychological techniques of personality testing and training amidst economic, social, and cultural changes of the knowledge economy. This dissertation ii offers a new way to think about psychological tests: as tools designed to mobilize and channel psychological capacities, to elicit and cultivate the very characteristics that they purported to measure. In weaving together histories of psychology, science and corporate capitalism with critical scholarship on affect and value, this dissertation excavates how psychological tests have become corporate techniques that shape contemporary selfhood. iii Acknowledgments Writing a dissertation is an incredibly solitary endeavor, but also an endeavor impossible without the mentors, colleagues, institutions, funders, friends, and family who sustained me during the triumphs and the anxieties of finishing a dissertation. My first and greatest intellectual debt is to my supervisors, Elspeth Brown and Michelle Murphy. This project would have looked quite different had I not taken a class with Michelle all those years ago—a class which first showed me that I could be a historian of science attuned to power, politics, and theory. Her feedback was consistently generous and generative, with a knack for summing up my argument and greatest stakes in a manner for more eloquent way than I could have. Through the Technoscience Research Unit and Technoscience Salon, she fostered interstitial homes on campus that made my graduate experience much more welcoming. In addition to their intellectual support, both my supervisors have been models for me of engaged, conscientious academics and citizens. Elspeth Brown molded me into a historian of American capitalism with her incisive, careful feedback that pushed me to situate my work in the broader historical context, to link theory with historical evidence, and to pay attention to the footnotes. Maintaining a constant investment in my project, even when my own had faltered, her encouragement provided crucial moral and intellectual support. I was incredibly fortunate to have an engaged and enthusiastic committee that included Mark Solovey. The kernel of this dissertation began with a term paper in Mark’s class, and he has helped shepherd my writing from term papers to journal articulates and dissertation chapters, always with careful attention to style, structure, and evidence. I am grateful for his introduction to the literature and networks of people in the history of human sciences that are so foundational to this dissertation. iv Thanks to my committee and my two external readers, I had a dissertation defense more enjoyable and generative than I could have imagined. I am grateful to Sarah Igo for her flexibility in scheduling and ability to attend in person. The perceptive, thoughtful and enthusiastic commentary on the dissertation she provided is sure to inform the future directions of this project. Pushing me to situate my work in labor history, Steve Penfold asked incisive questions that cut to the heart of the dissertation—including a question I keep coming back to about whether or not I made capitalism appear “too interesting.” In addition to the intellectual support of my committee, the ability and privilege to dedicate oneself to such a major project requires financial support; I am grateful for the funding bodies that provided time and space to research and write this dissertation: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC); Department of Historical Studies at University of Toronto, Mississauga; Ontario Graduate Scholarship; Canadian Business History Association; Jackman Humanities Institute; Center for Addiction and Mental Health; and Victoria College. My archival research was generously supported by grants from the School of Graduate Studies and the Center for the Study of the United States, both at the University of Toronto; an Alvin Achenbaum grant from Duke’s Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History; a grant-in-aid from the Rockefeller Archives Center; an Alfred D. Chandler fellowship from Harvard Business School; and a Henry Belin du Pont grant from Hagley Museum & Library. During these research trips, the assistance and expertise of archivists was invaluable. Lizette Royer Barton saved my dissertation by allowing me access into Akron’s Archives for the History of American Psychology before they closed for renovations. At the Center for the Application of Psychological Type, Logan Abbitt and Judith Breiner were generous with their time in allowing me access to the Isabel Briggs Myers Library. At Duke, Joshua Larkin Rowley v helped me access archival materials that would be crucial to the project, while librarian Joyce Chapman served as a wonderfully friendly inadvertent host for a researcher. At Harvard Business School, Walter Friedman oriented me to the world of business history, before later providing an important opportunity to publish in the Business History Review. At Hagley, the archival assistance of Lucas Clawson and the logistical expertise of Carol Lockman’s logistical expertise helped make my first archival visit go smoothly. It was at my home department, the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST) where I became a historian of science, and I am grateful to the training of faculty members, particularly Lucia Dacome, Nikolai Krementsov, and Marga Vicedo. In addition to building my historians’ toolkit, Nikolai Krementsov merits special thanks for (perhaps unknowingly) leading me to my interest in management by encouraging me to investigate scientific management and Fordism. A particular thanks goes to Muna Salloum and Denise Horsley, whose organizational acumen has kept the department afloat. I am grateful for the opportunity to teach a course in the history of personality testing just as I finished my dissertation, which reminded me of the importance and the pleasures of pedagogy and personality tests. Thank you to my students in “Making Up People” and to Chen-Pang Yeang for providing the opportunity to teach a topics course. Before I became a historian of science, I became enamored with history through seminar courses at McGill taught by Thomas Jundt, James Krapfl, Brian Lewis, Leonard Moore, Suzanne Morton, and Andrea Tone. I was fortunate to build a supportive community of graduate students in Toronto to celebrate the highs and commiserate the lows of graduate school. My most significant and enjoyable interlocuters, Justin Douglas and Bretton Fosbrook, have been there for every step of the journey through graduate school: together we have read Foucault and Marx, co-organized a major conference, and read countless drafts of each other’s papers; we have debated how much vi coffee to serve and argued about the nature of capitalism, all with equal fervor. They made this dissertation sharper and graduate school less lonely. The genesis of our friendship lay in an STS reading group alongside Sonia Grant, Johanna Pokorny, Alex Schweinsberg and Adriel Weaver, which become one of my first social-intellectual homes at the University of Toronto. Thank you to Nico Saldias and Curtis Forbes for being my favourite café pals, and to Curtis for always buying me the most spot-on souvenirs. For support and solidarity throughout my years at the IHPST, thanks to Esther Atkinson, Riiko Bedford, Agnes Bolinska, Michael Cournoyea, Alex Djedovic, Gwyndaf Garbutt, Jenn Fraser, Liz Koester, Cory Lewis, Rebecca Moore, Sarah