"46 AVERAGE AMERICAN ”

Southland Times, Issue 20205, 16 June 1927, Page 8

" 46 AVERAGE AMERICAN ”

MENTALITY OF A CHILD. WHY IMPOSTORS THRIVE. San Francisco, May 16. The average American adult possesses the mentality of a boy of 14, in the opinion of Professor Hollingsworth, psychologist of Columbia University, who says he has drawn this somewhat drastic conclusion about his fellow-nationals after the most laborious investigations, based on countless records and statistics garnered from thousands of men and women who submitted to his tests. The American army, with its 4,000,000 soldiers in training, furnished much of the data of Dr Hollingsworth’s inquiry. About half of them underwent standard tests, and nearly 100,000 men were carefully selected from different parts of the U.S.A., and from different racial groups, in order that they should be considered representative. After giving the average American a span of but 53 years of life, and crediting him with smaller than average brain weight, the investigator declares that his vocabulary is not more than 7500 words. “He can probably tell you what is meant by ‘nerve,’ but he will have difficulty about the word ‘coinage,’ ” he says. “He understands ‘shrewd’ and ‘insure,’ but he is not so clear about ‘dilapidated’ and ‘philanthropy.’ He may know the difference between poverty and misery, and can give three differences between King and President, but he does not think it worth while to probe the difference between evolution and revolution.” If the average American is given a whole minute, he can tell you how many pencils may be bought for 50 cents if two pencils cost 5 cents, but he is completely lost when asked how many boxes there are in a collection in which one large box holds four small boxes, each containing four smaller ones, says Professor Hollingsworth. He leaves school with a smattering of local geography, a little history, but no knowledge of civics, science, or literature. “He believes a lot of nonsense and superstition,” continues Professor Hollingsworth, in reviewing his average American. “He does not take much interest in religion. His conversation with his fellows consists largely in an exchange of personalities and comments about the weather. It is not hard to convince him that the spirit world communicates directly with us, and one or two coincidences are sufficient to make him think thought transference is possible. He falls an easy prey to fakirs and impostors with unsound investments. Beyond his trade or avocation he never knows anything very thoroughly.”