Cattell, Raymond

Raymond Cattell's major influences on the profession of education include his work on the behavior of groups, his perspective on traits as determinants of behavior, and his precepts related to intelligence and intellectual ability. His work focused on the hereditary and cultural determinants of both personality and motivation. He wrote more than 50 books and 500 articles and/or book chapters. Cattell (1905–1998) earned a BA in chemistry and physics, an MA in education, and a PhD in psychology from the University of London. Cattell changed his focus to psychology after hearing a lecture by Sir Cyril Burt and chose as his mentor Charles Spearman, the creator of factor analysis.

Cattell believed that the goal of psychology and personality theory was to formulate laws that would enable the prediction of behavior under many conditions. He even created his own religion called “Beyondism,” because he found traditional religions unscientific and unorderly. He believed that personality is that which permits a prediction of what a person will do in a given situation. He placed emphasis on the structure of personality, both in regard to biological background and social determinants. Cattell wanted to create a “periodic table of personality.”

Cattell identified two major kinds of traits in his work: source traits and surface traits. Surface traits are clusters of observable, behavioral events; they are less stable and merely descriptive, and therefore less important in his viewpoint. On the other hand, he felt that source traits are the genuine influences that help to determine and explain human behavior. Source traits are stable, extremely important, and are the major material that the personality psychologist should be studying. Source traits may be divided into constitutional traits and environmental mold traits. Constitutional traits are internal and have their basis in heredity. Environmental mold traits came from the environment and are molded by events.

Cattell divided traits into three groups: temperament, dynamics, and ability. Temperament traits are often tied to constitutional bodily characteristics. Dynamic traits concern themselves with getting started or initiating any act. Ability traits, in a way, measure or express the efficiency of the personality in behavior directed to solving cognitive problems.

Cattell held the self to be of prime importance. He divided his consideration of the total self into three [Page 111]parts: self-sentiment, real self, and ideal self. Selfsentiment means one's attitudes concerning the conception of self. The real self is actually the personality. The ideal self is what one would wish to be, granted all things and all power.

In relating groups to individual personality, Cattell introduced the concept of group syntality. Syntality is defined as the relevant characteristics of an entire group that determine consistent behavior by that group and thereby lead to possible predictions of group performance. He stated that social situations and values have a profound effect in individual behavior. Thus, the individual's family and culture were significantly important to the personality formation of the individual.

In addition, Cattell formulated the concepts of fluid and crystalline intelligence. Crystalline intelligence is seen as being a “fixed” aspect of intellectual ability and is related to the accumulation of knowledge and facts. Crystalline intelligence forms the basic intellectual ability of each individual. Fluid intelligence, on the other hand, is related to an individual's ability to apply knowledge in functional ways. It involves reasoning, one's approach tendencies toward new problems, and openness to new ideas.

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