0.9 Trait theories of personality  (Page 18/41)

Discussion Question: Are you prejudiced? Now that you have probably answered no, think again. Are there times, or situations, where you find yourself having thoughts that make you uncomfortable when you stop to really think about them? What do you think is more important, eliminating prejudice, or enacting laws against discrimination?

Brief Biography of Raymond Cattell

Raymond Bernard Cattell was born on March 20, 1905, in the seaside town of Staffordshire, England. Cattell developed a great love for the sea, and his first book was actually about sailing. His father was a mechanical engineer who worked on projects such as innovations for WWI military equipment, the steam engine, and the new internal combustion engine.  Cattell was an excellent student, and he earned a scholarship to attend London University. He majored in chemistry, and he received his bachelor’s degree in 1924, with first class honors.

The years following World War I were a time of great change in Europe, and Cattell decided that studying psychology would provide him with the opportunity to address the political and economic issues facing society. He entered University College in London, where he worked on his Ph.D. with Charles Spearman, the renowned statistician and expert on intelligence testing (a student of Wilhelm Wundt, and advisor to David Wechsler as well). During his studies, he was involved in the development of factor analysis, a new statistical method that was to have a profound effect on the development of psychological tests (including the MMPI). He completed his Ph.D. in 1929, after which he both worked and continued his education. He spent six years as the director of the City Psychological Clinic, a child guidance center in Leicester, earned a master’s degree in education, and a doctorate of science degree.

In 1937, he came to America to work with E. L. Thorndike at Columbia University, where he continued his work on theories of intelligence. In 1939, he moved to Clark University, where his research interests turned to developing objective measures of personality. In part, this work led to his theory on fluid vs. crystallized intelligence. Then, in 1941, at the invitation of Allport, Cattell joined the faculty at Harvard University. While at Harvard, he was influenced by Allport and Henry Murray, and Cattell became even more strongly interested in the study of personality. It was in this stimulating environment that be began to consider applying factor analysis to the study of personality.

In 1945, Cattell accepted a research professorship at the University of Illinois, where he remained for nearly 30 years. The University of Illinois soon became the site of the first electronic computer, providing Cattell with the technology necessary to conduct large-scale factor-analytic studies on personality (factor analysis is a math intensive statistical technique, even relative to other statistical techniques). He established the Laboratory of Personality Assessment and Group Behavior, where he and his colleagues were highly productive and produced a number of influential books advancing psychological science, including Description and Measurement of Personality (Cattell, 1946), An Introduction to Personality Study (Cattell, 1950a), Personality: A Systemic Theoretical and Factual Study (Cattell, 1950b), Factor Analysis (Cattell, 1952), and Personality and Motivation Structure and Measurement (Cattell, 1957). In these books, Cattell gathered together extensive data from a methodologically sophisticated program of research on the development and organization of personality. In 1960, he called for an international meeting of researchers in the scientific study of personality, which resulted in the foundation of the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology, and in 1966 he co-wrote and edited the influential Handbook of Multivariate Experimental Psychology (Cattell, 1966).