“Psychometric Experiments”

“Psychometric Experiments” is an article written by Sir Francis Galton that described new methods for measuring human thought. He believed that if one wished to study the mind, there must be some replicable, verifiable means of measuring and quantifying its operation.

Beginning no later than 1876, Sir Francis Galton turned his extraordinarily prodigious mind to the development of a science of psychometry in Great Britain. At the same time that Wilhelm Wundt opened his experimental psychology laboratory in Germany, Galton conducted suggestive early research in psychometry. These two individuals' approaches were similar in some ways, but differed fundamentally in others. Both men were committed to the study of the human mind through introspection—Wundt by establishing rigorous experimental research methods and Galton by applying observational techniques to ...