The Scientific Analysis of Personality and Motivation

Cattell and Kline argue that personality and motivation are properly studied through multivariate, factor-analytic methods, which alone can identify the underlying source traits and dynamic structure factors that generate observable behavior. They explicitly reject pre-scientific, literary, and philosophical approaches to psychology on the grounds that such approaches yield hypotheses that are neither falsifiable nor quantifiable . The book is also a polemic against humanistic psychology, which Cattell dismissed in his preface as not being psychology "as developed as a science in the last fifty years" . The scientific analysis promised in the title is specifically Cattellian factor analysis, not a neutral survey of competing methods.

The relationship is explicitly supersessive. A contemporary review states that the 1977 book "supersedes and extends the senior author's Scientific Analysis of Personality which was published in 1965" . Library records confirm the textual link: the 1966 edition was published under the earlier title, and the 1977 volume appeared under the new title with Paul Kline as co-author . The earlier work was single-authored and narrower in scope; the 1977 volume adds Kline's collaboration and expands into motivation, dynamic structure factors, and applications to clinical, educational, and occupational psychology. Readers should treat the 1977 book as the authoritative statement of Cattell's mature position, not as a mere reprint.

The 16PF is the empirical centerpiece. Chapters 4 through 7 trace the development of the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire and related instruments, presenting them as the validated operationalization of Cattell's source-trait theory . The book's methodological chapters (2 and 3) lay the statistical groundwork for interpreting the 16PF's factor structure. However, reviewers noted a lack of objectivity in Cattell's comparisons of his instrument to rival measures. One review observed that the conclusion that Cattell's factor-analytic picture "still remains the clearest" was predictable given the selective and partisan presentation . The 16PF is not merely described; it is defended as the superior product of the factor-analytic method.

Motivation, in Cattell's framework, is not a single drive or instinct but a multidimensional structure of dynamic factors that can be objectively measured through the Cattell Motivational Analysis Tests. Chapters 9 through 11 present research showing that motivational strength can be understood across seven dimensions, with factors labeled Alpha, Beta, and so forth, measuring constructs such as conscious id, realized interest, superego, and unconscious conflict . This is a distinctively Cattellian approach: motivation is treated as a measurable, factorially decomposable structure rather than a theoretical construct to be inferred. The book's contribution is to extend the factor-analytic method from temperament traits to the motivational domain, arguing that the same multivariate logic applies to both.

Reviews were mixed. Benjamin Kleinmuntz, writing in Contemporary Psychology, called it "an important and articulate statement on the state of the art of Cattellian personality theory" while noting that the book's organizing theme—scientific study of personality—translates into the study of personality according to Cattellian theory . A review in Educational and Psychological Measurement was more critical, observing that the presentation is "selective" and oriented toward Cattell's "somewhat unusual and unique application of multivariate statistics," with technical terms (P, O, T, S factor analysis; maxplane, rotoplot) that even statistically literate readers may not recognize . The book is a defense and demonstration of one specific research program, not an ecumenical introduction to the field.

A frequent misconception is that the book is a general textbook or neutral survey of personality and motivation research. It is not. Cattell and Kline state in their preface that the book is "primarily directed" at training the professional psychologist in Cattellian methods, and they explicitly encourage "a critical evaluative attitude to popular theories"—by which they mean theories other than their own . Another misconception treats the 16PF as identical to the Five-Factor Model. Cattell's sixteen primary factors are not the Big Five; they are a more granular, differently derived structure, and Cattell resisted the reduction of his factors to five broad domains. The book documents a distinct psychometric tradition, not a precursor to Costa and McCrae's model.