Raymond Cattell- Sixteen Components of Personality

• Born March 20, 1905

• Died February 2, 1998

• Cause of death: Congestive heart fail

      Raymond Cattell was an American and British psychologist. Cattell is well known for his 16 Personality Factor Model. This is utilized to to identify 16 different components of personality. It is a questionnaire that consists of 164 statements about yourself in which you are to indicate  which is most accurate on the scale of (1) disagree (2) slightly disagree (3) niether agree nor disagree (4) slightly agree (5) agree. It takes most people around ten minutes to complete. 

The results are based on a score of one to eight which provides a range of measurements to measures anxiety, emotional stability and behavioral problems. The questionaire  provides a measure of normal personality and can also be used by psychologists, and other mental health professionals as an instrument to help diagnose psychiatric disorders, as well as help with prognosis and therapy planning.

With all personality tests, there are strengths and limitations. They are useful  in categorizing behaviors, but a lot of psychologist also have their criticisms of it.

Strengths :

- Although theories are developed independently of each other, several different trait theorists have often arrived at a similar set of traits using factor analysis.

- Critics argue that traits do a poor job of predicting behavior in every situation. A counter to this argument is that trait theories provide a strong correlation for aggregate behaviors.

-Trait theories provide information about how individuals behave, but they don't explain why individuals behave this way.

Weaknesses:

- Since the results do a poor job of predicting behavior in every situation ,some psychologists argue that  environmental factors are more influential in predicting behavior than traits are and other psychologists argue that a combination of traits and environmental factors influences behavior.

- Test requires self-reports in order to measure.  Spending enough time observing someone else in a number of situations  is needed in order for the test taker to accurately assess their own behaviors.

- Trait theories do not explain why an individual behaves in a certain way. They provide information about people and about which traits cause which behaviors, but no indication as to why these traits interact in the way that they do. 

If self-reported personality tests explained which traits causes which behavior, then they would seem more accurate, and even help people to understand themselves better. They will have a better understanding of why they behave the way they do.