All of Cattell’s work has been oriented towards the discovery of the elements that make up personality, and the development of tests to assess these elements or traits. He has also defended that the way to achieve both goals was the use of FA (Cattell factor analysis). In this short article from Psychology-Online, adapted in summary form, you will have the most important conclusions of Cattell’s theory.
Personality: types of traits
The three methods of psychology for Cattell.
- Univariate or bivariate method: with which relationships are established between the manipulated VI and the DV, which is measured to verify the effects of the VI manipulation.
- Multivariate method: Its purpose is to study the simultaneous relationships between a large number of variables. The researcher does not manipulate the variables, but rather lets them manifest themselves as they are and uses statistical methods to study the relationships between them. Cattell defends the use of this method because he considers that human behavior is very complex and the interactions of multiple variables come into play. Both methods emphasize scientific rigor.
- Clinical method: which is similar to multivariate, since both aim to understand the whole person without manipulations. However, this method lacks the required scientific rigor as it does not use experimental or statistical procedures.
Personality: That which tells us what a person will do when they find themselves in a certain situation (Cattell). What a person does (R or response) is a function of the situation (S) and his personality (P). Therefore, R = f(S,P). The basic structural element of personality is the trait, which implies general reactive tendencies and refers to relatively permanent characteristics.
Guy:
- According to its origin: constitutional features (biologically determined) and environmental traits (due to experience, interaction with the environment).
- According to its content: ability or aptitude traits (problem solving resources), personality or temperament traits (peculiar way of behavior of each person or stylistic tendency), and dynamic traits (related to the motivation or cause of the behavior).
- According to its application range: common traits (applicable to all individuals) and specific traits (exclusive to one person). Cattell’s work focuses on the former.
- According to its meaning: superficial features (behaviors that appear linked at a superficial level but do not really covary or have a common causal root) and source or deep traits (determined by behaviors that covary, so that they constitute a unitary and independent personality dimension). Cattell studies the latter, since he considers that they constitute the pillars of personality, using FA to discover them and be able to describe the sphere of personality constituted by these traits.
Previous conceptions of Cattell’s theory
To obtain the fundamental personality traits, Cattell started from the analysis of language, since he considered that the language has words that include any quality (lexical criterion). But he was against the use of common language terms to name traits, since they could lead to confusion as they were loaded with value judgments and connotations.
He proposed using letters (A, B.) or Universal Indices (UI) followed by a number, Greek terms or neologisms in the description of these traits. He also argued that in psychology data is obtained in multiple ways, but since none is completely satisfactory, it is advisable to use different procedures to compensate for the negative aspects of some with the positive aspects of others.
Distinguishes three types of data:
- L Data (life or vida) that refer to real life events that are verifiable (age, educational level, etc.).
- Q data (quiestionnaire or questionnaires) which are data reported by the person, who can lie or deceive themselves.
- T data (objective tests or objective tests), those preferred by Cattell, which refer to tests in which the person evaluated is not aware of the relationship between their response and the personality characteristic that is intended to be measured.
The Cattell personality structure was based on a study by and Odbert in which they compiled almost 18,000 dictionary terms relating to relevant aspects of personality. As he was fundamentally interested in stable traits, he started only from these and was left with 4,500 terms that, through different analyses, could be grouped into 171 different groups or variables. One hundred adults were evaluated on these variables and the FA showed the existence of 35 bipolar variables. The bipolar variables were passed to a large sample of adults for evaluation and the FA yielded 12 factors.
The second phase consisted of seeing if it was possible to find the same factors (found with L data) with Q data. Questionnaires were constructed that were administered to large groups, obtaining 16 factors, of which 12 were common to both methods. Then the personality structure was studied from T data and 21 fundamental personality traits were obtained, which were named using the Universal Index system followed by a number.
Study process
Cattell also uses FA to develop a taxonomy of the motivational sources of behavior. The dynamic features It divides them into attitudes, feelings and ergs. The basic unit is the attitude that expresses the strength of interest in following a particular course of action, and feelings and ergs are inferred from the factorial study of attitudes. In order to know the components of attitudes, he developed more than fifty objective tests with which he intended to measure different attitudes or motives.
Five component factors of attitudes were obtained:
- Alpha factor or conscious id: is the conscious search for satisfaction without considering the possible consequences.
- Beta factor or Expression of the Self: Conscious and deliberately developed interest.
- Gamma factor or Super-Ego: It alludes to “I should be interested.”
- Delta factor or unconscious id: It includes motivated responses of a physiological nature to stimuli related to interest.
- Epsilon factor or Unconscious conflict: It refers to what is repressed and made unconscious due to conflict. These five factors can be reduced to two components, one conscious (Ego and Super-Ego) and the other unconscious (Id, physiological expressions and repressed complexes).
To determine the different motives or dynamic factors, he created a large sample of attitudes and measured them. The AF revealed two factors: ergs or factors that reflect innate biological drives, and the feelings or factors determined by the environment, acquired mainly through family and school. An erg is activated by environmental stimuli and ceases when the goal is achieved.
Feelings are complex attitudes that incorporate interests, opinions and minor attitudes. These three types of dynamic features are organized in a complex way in a dynamic lattice, in which certain traits are subsidiary or dependent on others. Feelings depend on ergs, and attitudes depend on feelings. Attitudes serve to satisfy feelings, which satisfy ergs or biological needs. The concept of dynamic lattice has been criticized for its speculative nature.
economic model
Econético refers to the study of ecology, of the environment.
Cattell, in addition to developing a taxonomy of situations and environments, assesses the impact of the situation on the individual. Some situations may be relevant to the individual while others are not. Among the relevant ones, some produce more impact than others. What the situation means to the subject also depends on his state of mind.
Cattell expresses the elements that he considers important to predict behavior in the specification equation (specifies the way in which traits and situations combine to predict behavior).
- R = (b1A1 + b2A2 + .bnAn) + (b1B1 + b2A2 + .bnBn) + (b1C1 + b2C2 + .bnCn) + (b1K1 + b2K2 + .bnKn) R It is the response that we want to predict and that is determined by a weighted combination of: Source traits of the person (A1, A2.An), states and roles of the person (B1, B2.Bn), the cultural and social meanings of the situation for the person (C1, C2.Cn) and the weighted combination of any other factors that have not been specified (K1, K2.Kn).
The coefficients b1, b2.bn are the weights of each of the factors and indicate the degree to which the factor is involved in the individual’s behavior in a specific situation (if a factor has a weight of 0.9, it is more important in predicting behavior than one with 0.5).
Catell’s 16 factors: personality test
One of the most used tests in personality assessment is the Cattell 16-Factor Personality Inventory (16PF). The 16PF consists of 187 items or items that are assessed on three-point scales. From the scores obtained on each element, the scores of the 16 first-order factors can be calculated, as well as four second-order factor scores.
If you want to know what type of personality you have according to Cattell, do not hesitate to do the following.
Cattell’s theory: conclusions
His proposals have had influence on clinical diagnosis and organizational psychology. Without discrediting his proposal, it is worth making several critics:
- Although there is empirical basis for most of his theory, the economic model has not been tested. Furthermore, although their role is recognized, environmental factors are not included in the prediction of behavior.
- The theory has generated relatively little research, probably due to its technical language.
- The 16 factors are not independent of each other, so they are not totally different.
- Although FA is an objective technique in general, it ultimately depends on certain decisions (extraction technique, for example) made by the researcher.
- The variance explained by each factor (as an isolated factor) decreases as the number of factors increases (the 1st being more important than the 2nd, and so on). This implies that the supposed equality in the importance of the factors has not been empirically tested.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.