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In this volume the author has given a comprehensive treatment of the problem of psychological differences among individuals and groups from the point of view of general psychology. A critical survey of the vast amount of research that has been done on related
subjects is effectively presented. Numerous experimental studies by various investigators are described, the methods employed critically evaluated, and possible sources of error carefully examined. Throughout the book, the relative influence of environment and heredity as determining psychological differences or behavioral variations are estimated, with the weight of evidence, according to the author, preponderantly on the side of environment. The author repeatedly demonstrates the rôle of cultural and environmental influences, or 'experiential background', in determining human diversity.
The work is competently planned and realized. More than half of the volume is devoted to a consideration of fundamental principles of individual variation, in which a wide range of scattered psychological data is coördinated. Here are to be found illuminating discussions of mental testing, measurement of personality and mental growth, as well as critical observations on measurement technic, in general. There are interesting chapters on General Family Resemblances, Special Family Relationships, The Effects of Training, etc., containing information pieced together from a variety of sources, with special emphasis on factors and conditions involved in producing variation.
Most of the remainder of the book is taken up with an analysis of major group differences, which deals with such topics as the Subnormal, Genius, Sex Differences, Racial Comparisons, and Rural and Urban Population. This part of the study is pursued primarily, the author explains, as an adjunct to the investigation of individual differences in general; for, says the author, 'from the standpoint of behavioral development, the effective groupings are stimula