Without a doubt, Cattell’s model is one of the best known and his attempt to describe personality has come to us through his famous test, the 16 PF. Today, of course, the original version of Cattell itself is not used, but much of its original spirit. Remains.
Cattell, for his part, stands out for having proposed two types of intelligence: fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence; fluid intelligence would be closer to the current concept of intelligence. For example, we use it to solve logic problems where a person’s experience doesn’t matter, but their ability to work with the problem on their own. Crystallized intelligence would take the whole person’s experience and be used to answer essentially memory-related questions and problems.
- As the topic of intelligence and development that Cattell has made of it is very interesting.
- In this article we will focus on its interesting personality model and the questionnaire that serves to apply it.
- The 16 PF.
The study of personality has been one of the most controversial in psychology, this type of self-ownership, conditioned by the environment and its genetics, has given rise to an infinity of models that fight for hegemony.
Not only is the origin of personality (genetic environment) discussed, but there is also an open debate about the extent to which personality can change or influence a person’s behavior. Another interesting debate about personality is related to its division, segmentation and dynamics.
In this sense, we can regard Cattell as a synthesizer of works by British and American authors in the field of mental skills and basic personality, both for the scientific study of intelligence and for the scientific study of personality a very powerful methodology was used for time. Its goal was to isolate different primary factors.
Three sources were used for his studies, such as data collection techniques:
Methodologically, his work is characterized by a serious and rigorous attempt to analyze and build a solid, stable and reliable model from the three sources we have listed. In addition, we can divide the development of your model into three phases:
The personality factors we list would not be independent (orthogonal), but they would also have positive and negative correlations, resulting in other basic factors (second order factors):
In addition to these first- and second-rate personality factors, Cattell created one of the most famous and used quizzes in history. On the other hand, Cattell classifies these personality characteristics in two ways:
Thus, this author and researcher has already defended an idea that is still accepted today by most experts in the study of personality. It is this idea that affirms that the composition of an individual’s personality is a product of their genetics and the environment in which it has developed.
Finally, it emphasizes that to control possible anomalies in the answers, 16 PF uses four scales: response style scale (reliability and validity), image manipulation (to control social desyability), acescence (to control the tendency to give the same answer regardless of the question), frequency index or random index (to detect randomly answered questionnaires and override them by chance is based on the consistency of the answers within each factor).
Cattell’s merits can be divided into two main branches, which meet almost closely. On the one hand, it aims to accurately measure or give mathematical form to a model, in this case that of personality. Certainly a difficult task, because we are talking about a construction that can only be measured indirectly.
In addition, in these measures there is almost always a pollutant variable: in most questionnaires or psychometric tests (with acceptable validity and reliability, as in the case of the 16 PF), it is the subject who makes a judgment to answer what he asks. In this sense, let us think that self-perception often has little to do with reality.
To explain this, I recall an example that, besides being ironic, is as clear as it is human, it is a memory: to walk down the street and hear how two ladies were called big-headed, repeatedly and constantly. , without recognizing this characteristic in themselves. Paradoxical, isn’t it?Because this same paradox also arises when one responds to many personality tests.
Cattell’s second great merit is related to the articulation of his model, history, although sometimes false, is often a good filter for humanity to leave behind all those useless facts or silly ideas that constitute a dead end. This did not happen with the Cattell model and the best proof is that, to pay you a little tribute, today we want to dedicate this article to you.