page_title: Psychological testing
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Psychological testing / History
caption_attribution_description: Typical illustration in a 19th century book about Physiognomy (on the left: "Utter despair", and on the right: "Anger mixed with fear")
context_page_description: Psychological testing is the administration of psychological tests. Psychological tests are administered by trained evaluators. A person's responses are evaluated according to carefully prescribed guidelines. Scores are thought to reflect individual differences in the construct the test purports to measure.The science behind psychological testing is psychometrics.
context_section_description: The first large-scale tests may have been examinations that were part of the imperial examination system in China. The test, an early form of psychological testing, assessed candidates based on their proficiency in topics such as civil law and fiscal policies. Other early tests of intelligence were made for entertainment rather than analysis. Modern mental testing began in France in the 19th century. It contributed to separating mental retardation from mental illness and reducing the neglect, torture, and ridicule heaped on both groups.
  Englishman Francis Galton coined the terms psychometrics and eugenics, and developed a method for measuring intelligence based on nonverbal sensory-motor tests. It was initially popular, but was abandoned after the discovery that it had no relationship to outcomes such as college grades. French psychologist Alfred Binet, together with psychologists Victor Henri and Théodore Simon, after about 15 years of development, published the Binet-Simon test in 1905, which focused on verbal abilities. It was intended to identify mental retardation in school children.
  The origins of personality testing date back to the 18th and 19th centuries, when personality was assessed through phrenology, the measurement of the human skull, and physiognomy, which assessed personality based on a person's outer appearances. These early pseudoscientific techniques were eventually replaced with more empirical methods in the 20th century. One of the earliest modern personality tests was the Woolworth Personality Data Sheet, a self-report inventory developed for World War I and used for the psychiatric screening of new draftees.
caption: Physiognomy was used to assess personality traits based on an individual's outer appearance.
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