Cattell's 16PF Trait Theory

Cattell was born in 1905 and witnessed the arrival of countless inventions from the 20th century, such as electricity, telephones, cars and airplanes. He is inspired by these creations and eager to apply the scientific methods used to make the discoveries of the human spirit and personality.

In his opinion, personality is not only an incomprehensible and unconscious mystery. It is

something that can be studied well. By means of scientific research, human characteristics and behaviors can then be predicted on the basis of the underlying characteristics of the person. Cattell (1965) disagreed with Eysenck's view that personality can be understood by looking at two or three dimensions of behavior. Instead, he learned that it is necessary to look at a greater number of characteristics to get a complete picture of someone's personality.  Based on these 16 factors, he has made a character assessment with the name 16PF. Instead of a characteristic that is present or absent, each dimension is scored in a continuum, from high to low. For example, your level of heat illustrates how hot, caring and beautiful you are. If you score low on this index, it is probably much colder. A high score in this index indicates that you offer support and comfort. Despite significant cuts in Allport's list of functions, Cattell's 16PF theory is still being criticized for being too broad.

Although Eysenck based his theory on the responses of hospitalized soldiers, Cattell collected data from a group of people through three different data sources.

The three types of data are:

Life data (L-data): information about a person's daily behavior and his behavior patterns. These include things like the numbers they receive at school, their marital status, social relationships and more.

Experimental data (T-data): Response to standardized tests in a laboratory environment, designed to test the reaction of study participants in certain situations.

Questionnaire Data (Q-data): Answers to questions about behavior and participant's feelings. These data are based on introspection and provide a deeper insight into the human personality that is not always clear through behavioral data.  Cattell analyzed T-data and Q-data with the help of a mathematical method, called factor analysis, to see what types of behaviors are combined with both people. He referred to 16 personality traits / factors that all people are the same.

Cattell distinguishes between source and attributes on the surface. The characteristics of the surface are very obvious and easily recognizable by other people, while the characteristics of the origin are not seen by other people and identify different aspects of the behavior. Cattell is considered to be attributes of origin more importantly in personality characterization than above qualities.

The purpose of Cattell's theory of personality is to establish a "common taxonomy" of character traits. He refined the previously established personality traits and diminished them to simplify personality descriptions even more than his predecessors. The previously established taxonomy, created by psychologists Gordon Allport and Henry Odbert in 1936, contains thousands of character traits that are divided into four categories. But this taxonomy contains some "ambiguous category limitations", which reduced the importance of work. The theory of personality Raymond Cattell has tried to refine both previous taxonomies and create more robust boundaries that contributed to the theory's definition.