kinds of negative emotions —sadness, anger, anxiety, guilt —that may have
different causes and require different treatments, research consistently shows
that people prone to one kind of negative emotional state often experienceothers (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Individuals low in Neuroticism tend to be
calm, well adjusted, and not prone to extreme emotional reactions.
The second personality dimension, Extraversion , places extreme extraverts
at one end and extreme introverts at the other. Extraverts are very sociable peo-
ple who also tend to be energetic, optimistic, friendly, and assertive. Introverts
do not typically express these characteristics, but it would be incorrect to saythat they are asocial or without energy. As one team of researchers explained,
“Introverts are reserved rather than unfriendly, independent rather than
followers, even-paced rather than sluggish ”(Costa & McCrae, 1992, p. 15).
Raymond B. Cattell
1905 –1998
Raymond Cattell spent most
of his childhood by the seain the resort town ofTorquay in the south ofEngland. There he developed
a lifelong love for the oceanand sailing. Unfortunately,this happy childhood was
interrupted when England entered World War I. Cattellsuddenly found himself treating wounded and maimedsoldiers in a makeshift wartime hospital. He did notrealize until many years later how these experienceswould one day affect his choice of careers. Cattell wona scholarship to the University of London, the only
member of his family to attend college. Images ofwounded soldiers returned to him a few months beforehis graduation with honors in chemistry. Suddenly hisplans for a career in the physical sciences no longerappealed to him. Cattell also was impressed with alecture he attended by the famous psychologist CyrilBurt, who argued that the science of psychology offeredthe best hope for solving many of society ’s problems
(Horn, 2001).
“My laboratory bench began to seem small and the
world ’s problems vast, ”Cattell wrote. “Gradually I con-
cluded that to get beyond human irrationalities one had tostudy the workings of the mind itself ”(1974, p. 64).
His decision to study psychology, which “was then
regarded, not without grounds, as a subject forcranks, ”led him to graduate work at London
University. There Cattell —and psychology —stumbled
into a fortunate association. Cattell was hired as a
research assistant for the famous psychologist andmathematician Charles Spearman, who was studying
the relationship between measures of intelligence.Spearman found evidence for a single general conceptof intelligence, as compared to models arguing formany unrelated aptitudes. In the course of thisresearch, Spearman developed the statistical procedureknown as factor analysis. Cattell would later use factoranalysis to understand the structure of personality.
After 5 years working at various clinics in
England, Cattell was tempted to come to the UnitedStates by an offer to work with the learning theoristE. L. Thorndike at Columbia. He also worked at Clark
University until Gordon Allport invited him to join thefaculty at Harvard in 1941. It was at Harvard, whileworking alongside Allport and Henry Murray, thatCattell first developed the notion that factor analysiscould be a useful tool for personality researchers(“Raymond B. Cattell, ”1997). He put those ideas into
practice after joining the faculty at the University ofIllinois in 1945, where he spent most of his career.
Cattell was always a hard worker, sometimes
going into his office on Christmas day. The result ofthis diligence was 56 books and more than 500research articles. His decision to study personality
clearly was psychology ’s gain and physical science ’s
loss.Reproduced by permission of the Cattell Estate160 CHAPTER 7 The Trait Approach