16. Experiments On The Problem Of Monotony
Just as exertion imparts fatigue to the muscles of the body, so does monotony impart fatigue to the mind. Mental fatigue saps attentiveness and enthusiasm, and undermines both the efficiency and effectiveness of work - but because it has no physical expression, it is often disregarded.
Even if the basic motions of a task are well adapted to the functions and capacities of the body and the mind, there remains the possibility that productivity is not increased due to the fatigue that comes of repetition when performing monotonous labor.
Monotony has been greatly increased as a result of industrialization: dividing the work of one man among ten means that each performs a very specific action repetitively. Smith's example of the pin factory shows that a single worker who performs several tasks to fashion a pin is less efficient than several workers who each perform a single task - and it takes advantage of the fact that workers are more efficient at one of those tasks than another, but it doesn't necessarily mean they like doing them. Even pleasurable activities, done with high frequency and repetition, become unpleasant.
Performing a very small task also robs the worker of the satisfaction of his employment. He loses the sense of pride in craftsmanship, because he can no longer count his accomplishments in quantity or quality of finished products because he has performed one narrow task. It cannot be denied that the division of labor creates a sort of "mental starvation" that makes work seem futile and pointless, and the negative results on a worker's psychology diminish not only the pleasure of work, but of life.
Munsterberg considers the division of labor on the larger scale - it's not merely the division of a task in a factory, but in society in general as people specialize in given vocations and devote themselves entirely to a narrow scope of interests: the Renaissance man of many shallow talents and interests is replaced by the Industrial man who does few things and experiences little variety in his life. This leads to a certain staleness and melancholy that has a much broader significance.
In the academic environment, professors specialize in a very narrow topic, and some researchers seek to spend all their lives in pursuit of a single question. The general interest in the natural world becomes a specific interest in botany, becomes a specific interest in mushrooms, becomes a specific interest in a single species in a single location, and in years or decades engaged in painstaking and minute study. And while a man may find this work engrossing, how utterly bereft of pleasure becomes the whole of his life.
(EN: It's also worth contemplating what happens when the work is finished. When a scientist has fully explored his subject or a professional has accomplished his life's work, what is he then? He does not fluidly move on to other interests, as he has none, but the remainder of his life seems waste of breath, having accomplished his greatest ambition.)
On the level of the worker, specialization in a very specific task to the neglect of all else puts him in a vulnerable position. Particularly in a time of rapid change and advancement, he risks obsolescence. A worker trained and experienced in spinning thread by hand find himself useless and unwanted when the process is automated. And yet, when wags are tied to productivity, the worker is encouraged to focus entirely on the task that results in his best compensation.
Back on topic, Munsterberg considers an interview he had with a woman who packed light bulbs, wrapping them in tissue paper and placing them in cartons. She was highly efficient, packing 13,000 lamps a day over the course of 12 years - which is to say she had performed the very same motion over 50 million times.
While one might think this to be dreadful, she took greater pleasure in her occupation and pride in her productivity. Moreover, she was observant to even minute differences that created variety - subtle differences in the texture of the tissue paper and the cartons, the changes in the speed of the line, even experimenting with grasping the lamp or paper in a slightly different way. To her perspective "there is always something to observe and something to think about."
He suggests this is not unique, and provides other examples of people with very monotonous and tedious jobs who likewise found pleasure in their work. He also speaks of knowledge workers, such as the teachers that teach the same classes, delivering the same series of lectures and grading the same assignments year after year. Or physicians who specialize in one kind of therapy and repeat the process with each patient. Or actors who play the same role for three performances a day over the course of several months, with equal emotion and undiminished interest.
On the other hand, he also has encountered workers whose jobs involved varied activities, but who "complained bitterly" about the tedium and monotony of their work. His sense is that the ability to tolerate monotony is a personality trait that differs from person to person.
It may also have to do with perspective. To his previous examples of the teacher, physician, and actor, it can be seen how their activity is repetitive - but they find differences in their work because each repetition is for a different student, patient, or audience. In that way, they are able to appreciate subtle distinctions that others do not perceive, much in the way that the light-bulb packer noticed differences in the texture of tissue paper.
Said another way, people have different perspectives on consistency and novelty: they find comfort in the sameness of some aspects of work as well as stimulation in the novelty of other aspects of work. This difference in psychology means that one worker may be entirely satisfied by the same job that a different worker finds thoroughly unpleasant.
He then speaks of an experiment he conducted with 400 psychology students at Harvard University. A test asked students the degree to which they valued variety or sameness. He asked whether they enjoyed variety or consistency in things such as daily meals, recreational activities, and the like. Some had a preference for sameness, others for variety, but the results were generally mixed in that people preferred variety or sameness in different aspects.
He used lists of words of which about half fell into a single conceptual group (names of flowers, cities, etc.) whereas the rest were mixed. These lists were read to students who were asked to identify the number of words on that theme. In general, there was the tendency to overestimate, but to varying degrees. Another test, borrowed from "a Hungarian psychologist" flashed a series of images to a subject, one of which was dissimilar to the others in gross or subtle ways, and tested their ability to perceive small differences. Again, students varied in the degree to which they took note of differences.
Munsterberg speaks in rather a roundabout way in regard to how the results of the three tests were correlated - drawing no overall conclusion, but noting some consistencies. The more a student claimed to like similarity in he lifestyle survey, the better he performed at tasks requiring them to recognize similarity in the list-of-words test. The more a student claimed to like variety in the lifestyle survey, the better he performed in the different-image test. There is no mention of an inverse relationship, however.
Neither does it seem that students were observed in a methodical manner while performing the two tests to see if they found the tasks enjoyable, but Munsterberg generally observes that their "inner energy" was exhausted more quickly doing tasks to which their interest in similarity or difference was not suited.
He also concedes that it is not possible, and likely not responsible, to offer any general observations because the results of the lifestyle study showed that, while students show a tendency to like sameness or variety in general, each had certain activities in which he favors sameness. So it cannot be said there is a type of man who likes monotony, but that each man enjoys or tolerates monotony to different degrees depending on the nature of the task.
Further experimentation is necessary to make such a determination, and if it is to be used in an occupational setting it must be tailored to the specific job. Thus done, a short series of tests could likely be defined to enable an employer to assess whether a prospective employee would find a given job pleasant or unpleasant in regard to monotony.
This likely plays out more slowly in the real world, as employees who are not suited to a given job in terms of their tolerance for monotony and desire for variety sort themselves out over time as they detest their work - they are dismissed for poor performance or leave on their own to pursue other opportunities. But it would likely be more effective and efficient for both employer and employee to better assess them in advance rather than discover it slowly over time, when the two are committed to a long-term relationship.