Scope and Contents
The John H. Cornehlsen Papers consists of three series: Psychological Profiles, Sample Tests, and Office Files. The psychological profiles are two-thirds of the collection, consisting of over 2,000 profiles of middle managers done by Dr. Cornehlsen for several major corporations to aid in hiring or promotion decisions. Also included are psychological profiles done for individuals wanting to position themselves better in the job market. They usually consist of handwritten interview notes, a type assessment of the individual's psychological profile, and a battery of personality and cognitive tests. Typically the battery of tests includes: a personality inventory, a temperament survey, a study of values, an interest profile, and Dr. Cornehlsen's own sentence completion test. Depending on the profile, other tests may be included, while some of the aforementioned may be absent. The profiles are grouped by company then alphabetically within the company by last name. The tests done for individuals themselves are arranged separately in alphabetical order by last name. For reasons of privacy the folder titles do not include either the name of the company the profile was done for, or the name of the individual profiled. Most of these profiles were done in the late 1950s and early 1960s, with most of the individuals being men in their 40s and 50s.
The second series, Sample Tests, consists of blank samples for over 250 different tests. Not all samples included are complete, some consist only of the manual of directions or only of the blank question form. The samples are arranged alphabetically by title or by publisher, then title, where appropriate. The tests included in this sample set are designed to measure intelligence, cognitive ability, personality, personal preferences, language ability, math ability, sales ability, clerical ability, judgment, employee attitude, vocational interest, art and music appreciation, and many other aspects of a person's psychological/personality makeup.
The third series, Office Files, consists of files pertaining to Dr. Cornehlsen's work as a consulting psychologist or psychology professor. This includes memos, correspondence, and other files from Mahler and Associates; correspondence, reports, resumes, and other files from Richardson, Bellows, Henry, and Company; correspondence, notes, and other material for creating and updating a "Career Guidance" pamphlet for the New York Life Insurance Company; and correspondence from Cornehlsen and Associates. There is also material from several courses Dr. Cornehlsen taught, mostly at C. W. Post College. The course files consist of notes, syllabi, bibliographies, exams, and course evaluation forms filled out by students. A few article reprints, mostly concerning executive training and evaluation are also a part of this section, as are a few folders of Dr. Cornehlsen's personal correspondence and papers.
Dates
- 1920-1983
Language of Materials
Collection material in English, French, German, and Latin.
Conditions Governing Access
Access to the collections in the Kheel Center is restricted. Please contact a reference archivist for access to these materials.
Conditions Governing Use
This collection must be used in keeping with the Kheel Center Information Sheet and Procedures for Document Use.
Biographical / Historical
Dr. John Henry Cornehlsen, Jr. was an industrial psychologist working mainly in the mid-twentieth century. Dr. Cornehlsen was born in New York City on December 27, 1906. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1929, earned his Master's degree from Harvard University in 1938, and received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1942.
He worked as a consulting psychologist for various firms, including his own, and for the Department of Defense. In his consulting he specialized in executive selection and appraisal; career development and counseling; personnel selection and guidance. During the Second World War Dr. Cornehlsen was involved with officer selection in the Bureau of Naval Personnel.
In addition to his consulting work he taught psychology at St. Lawrence College, Stanford University, San Francisco State College, New York University, and C. W. Post College. The courses taught by Dr. Cornehlsen at C. W. Post included: Child Psychology, Adolescent Psychology, Social Psychology, Industrial Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, Behavior Management in the Classroom, and Executive Leadership and Supervision.
Dr. Cornehlsen died on February 1, 1998.
Extent
59.5 cubic feet
Abstract
This collection consists of psychological profiles of individuals in corporate middle-management positions, samples of tests that could be used to create those profiles, as well as samples of other psychological and personality tests, and office files from Dr. Cornehlsen's career as a consulting psychologist and a psychology professor.
Arrangement
Series I: Psychological Profiles
Sub-Series A: Profiles done for Companies Sub-Series B: Profiles done for Individuals
Series II: Sample Tests
Sub-Series A: Blank Samples Sub-Series B: Completed Tests and Other Forms
Series III: Office Files
Sub-Series A: Consulting Sub-Series B: Teaching Sub-Series C: Personal
Quantity:
56 linear ft.
Forms of Material:
Records (documents) .
General
- Contact Information:
- Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives Martin P. Catherwood Library 227 Ives Hall Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 (607) 255-3183> kheel_center@cornell.edu http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/library/kheel-center
- Compiled by:
- Kheel Staff, April 02, 2013
- EAD encoding:
- Randall Miles, April 18, 2017
Processing Information
The John H. Cornehlsen Papers were described at the box level in 2001. In 2013 a rough folder-level description was created without any physical processing being done. With the 2016 decision to describe this collection in a more comprehensive way the collection was physically processed.
Dr. Cornehlsen had grouped the psychological profiles by company and alphabetically by last name within the company. This order has been maintained, as well as the order in which the companies are listed. At the time this collection was donated Dr. Cornehlsen stipulated that the names of the companies and people involved in the psychological profiles could not be published. To that end folder titles for the profiles consist of a place-holder for the company name (Company A for the first one, Company B for the second) and the first to letters of the individual's last name.
Physical processing entailed moving material to be filed with like material: the material from original boxes 34 and 35 was interfiled with the other Office Files in boxes 50-52. Also the psychological profile files in box 60 were filed with the psychological profiles from the same company in box 27. Additionally the material in boxes 46-53 were rearranged more logically, to put like materials together, and separate out disparate material from mixed folders. This material is now in boxes 52-55. Another aspect of physically processing the collection was the weeding out of over-duplication. There were multiple copies of the same documents, often in separate folder scattered throughout the collection. In some cases there were thirty, or more, copies of the same document. Only three copies were kept, the rest were discarded. This eliminated nearly six lineal feet from the collection.
Due to the physical processing of the collection any older finding aid or folder listing is no longer accurate.
- Title
- John H. Cornehlsen Papers
- Status
- Completed
- Author
- Compiled by Kheel Staff
- Date
- April 18, 2017
- Language of description
- Undetermined
- Script of description
- Code for undetermined script
Revision Statements
- 02/23/2024: This resource was modified by the ArchivesSpace Preprocessor developed by the Harvard Library (https://github.com/harvard-library/archivesspace-preprocessor)
Repository Details
Part of the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives Repository
227 Ives Hall
Ithaca NY 14853