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involved in the SOE; however, they lacked detail regarding the psychometrics used. The one training manual available was based on the cur- riculum from a Canadian Special Training School (STS) for the OSS and was focused on training specific skills.
Some very helpful information did come to light from personal memoirs such as The OSS and I, a recollection of William J Morgan’s time as Conducting Staff at an STS. Despite being blind in one eye (a fact he managed to hide from the military), Morgan, who held a PhD in Psychology from Yale, was selected to train OSS (Office of Strategic Services) agents at SOE Schools. He later dropped into occupied Europe to co-ordi- nate guerrilla attacks on German forces and also fought the Japanese. After the war, he used his experience to develop the selection process for the CIA, the successor to the OSS.
Morgan details a number of tests that the can- didates were put through. Taking an approach used by the German Wehrmacht, candidates were observed in a variety of settings and activi- ties. It was important to see how they would approach a problem, work with other members of a team and react to adversity, as much as whether they would be successful or not. Any- body familiar with the Army Officer Selection Board would recognise this approach, which is still used successfully to this day.
Bringing this German approach to selec- tion, alongside the more scientific American approach, seemed to work well, but there is a lack of detail to the psychometrics involved.
Morgan mentions that the Rorschach test was used along with tests of verbal and non-verbal intelligence. Amongst the tests there was a mod- ified version of the Bennett Mechanical Compre- hension test as used by the Royal Navy, which involved building models with Meccano and, of course, aptitude tests in coding in Morse.
These were easily replicated for television, and for the specific intelligence and psychometric tests, tools like Murray’s Thematic Appercep- tion Test (1943) and early versions of the Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices developed in 1936 were selected. These would have been available to the SOE psychologists and there was some evidence that they or similar tests would have been used in selecting agents for training.
For my part one of the most difficult things was to step away from my current role, which is to develop leaders and officers. The focus of SOE training was to develop agents that would be effective on operations. Agents had to work in small teams and the selection process had to consider which agents would be able to comple- ment each other as part of a team.
Often specific skill sets had to be considered and temperaments within the team had to be balanced. This required a different approach to the traditional military officer, as having too much of a military bearing could be deadly. Indeed, one agent, a young army officer, had a lucky escape after automatically returning a salute from a Ger- man soldier in France.
It’s difficult to say how effective the selection and training was. The psychologists and Conducting Staff knew that they were preparing agents for missions from which many of them would not return, a fact that was never far from the minds of the staff and participants on the show. One thing did stand out though, was the fact that in the SOE’s four-day selection process I could see the prototype to many aspects of modern-day military selection, which stands as testament to the psychologists and Conducting Staff who developed the process.
References:
Bennett, G. K. (1951). Mechanical comprehen- sion test, manual (Rev. ed.). Oxford, England: Psychological Corp.
Foot, M.R.D., (1984), SOE: An Outline History of the Special Operations Executive 1940-1946. London, England. BBC
Morgan, William J., (1957), The OSS and I. Pocket Book, USA
Murray, H. A. (1943). Thematic apperception test. Cambridge, MA, US: Harvard University Press
Raven, J. C. (1936). Mental tests used in genetic studies: The performance of related individuals on tests mainly educative and mainly reproduc- tive. MSc Thesis, University of London
Vernon, P. E., & Parry, J. B. (1949). Personnel selection in the British forces. London, England: University of London Press
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