Raymond Cattell - Personality Theory

Personality Theory

In order to apply factor analysis to personality, Cattell believed it necessary to sample the widest possible range of variables. He specified three kinds of data for comprehensive sampling, to capture the full range of personality dimensions:

1. Life data (or L-data), which involves collecting data from the individual’s natural, everyday life behaviors, measuring their characteristic behavior patterns in the real world. This could range from number of traffic accidents or number of parties attended each month, to grade point average in school or number of illnesses or divorces.
2. Experimental data (or T-data) which involves reactions to standardized experimental situations created in a lab where a subject’s behavior can be objectively observed and measured.
3. Questionnaire data (or Q-data), which involves responses based on introspection by the individual about their own behavior and feelings. He found that this kind of direct questioning often measured subtle internal states and viewpoints that might be hard to see or measure in external behavior.

In order for a personality dimension to be called “fundamental and unitary,” Cattell believed that it needed to be found in factor analyses of data from all three of these domains. Thus, Cattell constructed personality measures of a wide range of traits in each medium. He then repeatedly performed factor analyses on the data.

With the help of many colleagues, Cattell's factor-analytic studies continued over several decades, eventually producing the 16 fundamental factors underlying human personality. He decided to name these traits with letters (A, B, C, D, E…) in order to avoid misnaming these newly discovered dimensions, or inviting confusion with existing vocabulary and concepts. Factor-analytic studies by many researchers in diverse cultures around the world have re-validated the number and meaning of these traits.

Cattell set about developing tests to measure these traits across different age ranges, such as The 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire for adults, the Adolescent Personality Questionnaire, and the Children’s Personality Questionnaire.

From the beginning of his research, Cattell reasoned that, as in other scientific domains like intelligence, there might be an additional, higher level of organization within personality which would provide a structure for the many primary traits. When he factor analyzed the 16 primary traits themselves, he found five “second-order” or global factors, now commonly known as the Big Five. These second-order or global traits were broad, overarching domains of behavior, which provided meaning and structure for the primary traits. For example, the global trait Extraversion emerged from factor-analytic results made up of the five primary traits that were interpersonal in focus.

Thus, global Extraversion is fundamentally related to the primary traits that came together in the factor analysis to define Extraversion, and, moving in the opposite direction, the domain of Extraversion gave conceptual meaning and structure to these primary traits, identifying their focus and function in personality. These two levels of personality structure can be used to provide an integrated understanding of the whole person, with the global traits giving an overview of the individual’s functioning in a broad-brush way, and the more-specific primary trait scores providing an in-depth, detailed picture of the individual’s unique trait combinations.

Research on the basic 16 traits has shown them to be useful in understanding and predicting a wide range of real life behaviors. For example, the traits have been used in educational settings to study and predict such things as achievement motivation, learning style or cognitive style, creativity, and compatible career choices; in work or employment settings to predict such things as leadership style, interpersonal skills, creativity, conscientiousness, stress-management, and accident-proneness; in medical settings to predict heart attack proneness, pain management variables, likely compliance with medical instructions, or recovery pattern from burns or organ transplants; in clinical settings to predict self-esteem, interpersonal needs, frustration tolerance, and openness to change; and, in research settings to predict a wide range of dimensions such as aggression, conformity, and authoritarianism.

Cattell’s program of personality research in the 1940s, 50’s, and 60’s resulted in five books that have been widely recognized as identifying fundamental dimensions of personality and their organizing principles:

• The Description and Measurement of Personality (1946)
• Personality: A Systematic, Theoretical, and Factual Study (1950)
• Personality and Motivation Structure and Measurement (1957)
• The Scientific Analysis of Personality (1965)
• Personality and Mood by Questionnaire (1973)

These books detailed a program of research that was based on personality data from objective behavioral studies, from self-report or questionnaire data, and from observer ratings. They presented a theory of personality development over the human life span, including effects on the individual’s behavior from family, social, cultural, biological, and genetic influences, as well as influences from the domains of motivation and ability.