Search

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (https://www.elsevier.com/about/our-business/policies/article-withdrawal). This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor in Chief following a report by the institute of one of the co-authors, King's College London. Following concerns raised by Dr A.J. Pelosi and Professor D.F. Marks, King's College London organized a committee to analyse data relevant to personality and physical health outcomes and to ascertain (as far as possible) whether this and related publications were safe in terms of presenting scientifically rigorous results relating personality factors with cancer, coronary heart disease, and other outcomes. The report stated that, "The committee did not have access to any data but have carried out an assessment based on the current literature which includes peer reviewed papers and reviews from critics as well as from collaborators. We also identified some attempted replications of the results either from data available on the jointly authored studies or new studies (for example, Amelang, SchmidtRathjens et al., 1996; Amelang 1997)." The Committee concluded that the results and conclusions of these studies are unsafe and recommended retraction. The report in full is available here: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/statements/docs/hans-eysenck-enquiry-final-may-2019.pdf. Having reviewed the Committee's report, the Editor in Chief decided to retract the article. The corresponding author is unfortunately deceased but has previously published a rebuttal to critics of his work with R. Grossarth-Maticek (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1449072?seq=1). The second author has objected to the retraction of the paper and has previously rebutted (https://www.krebs-chancen.de/referenzen-und-gutachten/denunziation-englisch) papers by Dr A. J. Pelosi (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1359105318822045) and Professor D. F. Marks (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1359105318820931) published in the Journal of Health Psychology outlining concerns and asking for an investigation into the data by H.J. Eysenck and R. Grossarth-Maticek.

What is meant by the term "intelligence" and, once defined, how do we go about achieving a valid measurement of this faculty? This classic textbook, originally published in 1979, and now reissued with a new preface by Sybil Eysenck, incorporates a broad range of findings and reanalyzes much of the existing literature in this area. In The Structure and Measurement of Intelligence, Hans Eysenck draws on methods for determining the effect of genetics and environment on the development of intelligence and examines the validity of the term as defined in relation to internal as well as external criteria. He tests a number of hypotheses on intelligence against empirical research findings and considers various criticisms in detail. The significance of intelligence and its measurement in society are explored in depth. Eysenck greatly expands upon such questions as: Does IQ measure intelligence? How valid is the nature versus nurture argument? and, How might socioeconomic status influence one's intelligence? Designed primarily for students and scholars in psychology and education, this text will make thought-provoking reading for all concerned with the development and measurement of intelligence in the individual.

Personality is a term used to combine the many trait measures of a given person; another term often used is “temperament”. The most widely used measures of personality are ratings and self-ratings. The personality dimension measures a predisposition, the clinical entity an actual psychological disorder. The personality attributes were deduced from psychoanalytic theory, and have not found much support. The study of personality is divided into descriptive or taxonomic and causal. A taxonomy of behaviours, however provisional, must of course precede any type of causal analysis; traits as popularly conceived clearly cannot as they stand serve as the basis for any kind of scientific study. The most widely used measures of personality are ratings and self-ratings. Large areas of psychology depend on personality theory and an accurate measurement of personality variables, and the scientific study of these fields has separated them most markedly from the former reliance on Freudian speculation and untestable interpretations.

This chapter reviews some of the literature that suggests that the rejection of psychological causes in criminality may have been premature. Concurrent with the apparent failure of sociological theories has been an increase in research into personality correlates of criminality, suggesting that genetic factors, personality features, and temperament variables do play a very important part in the genesis of antisocial conduct. T. Berman and T. Paisey investigated the relationship between antisocial behavior and personality in thirty juvenile males convicted of offenses of assault or confrontations with a victim, and thirty juvenile males convicted of offenses involving property without confrontation with the victim. Personality traits characteristic of antisocial and criminal behavior are also found correlated with behavior that is not criminal, but is regarded as antisocial, such as smoking. The results are incompatible with a purely situational analysis of criminal behavior, and suggest an important contribution by dispositional factors.

Depressant drugs definitely cut down the length of after effects, and there is some evidence that the amount of decrement is negatively correlated with extraversion; this too line with expectation. Large amounts of stimulant drugs, by pushing the individual on to the descending branch of the inverse-U, would have decremental effects, although this effect would be very dependent on the precise shape of the regression obtaining between arousal and performance. Even though physiological and pharmacological evidence may pinpoint the effects of a certain drug in affecting the reticular formation, and through it the arousal state of the cortex, many problems clearly remain. The inclusion of neurotic depressions raises the old problem of whether neurotic patients can in fact be regarded as fundamentally different from psychotic depressions. Claridge’s view about the importance of taking into account neuroticism as well as extraversion in relating personality and sedation thresholds is borne out strikingly in a study by E. Rodnight and R. N. Gooch.

The distinction made above may seem relatively unimportant, in view of the partial dependence of arousal on activation. Depending on the nature of the information transmitted, the cortex in turn instructs the reticular formation to continue sending “arousal” messages or else to switch to “inhibition.” This loop then is concerned with information processing, with cortical arousal and inhibition, and in its application to personality differences with introversion and extraversion. Cortical arousal can also be produced by emotion, in which case the reticular formation is involved through the ascending and descending pathways connecting it with the hypothalamus. The antagonism of the different branches of the autonomic system has often been suggested as underlying, at least in part, the qualitative differences in the emotions. Cortical arousal can also be produced by emotion, in which case the reticular formation is involved through the ascending and descending pathways connecting it with the hypothalamus.

In animal work, too, there have been many attempts to study rigid behaviour usually under the title “stereotyped” or “fixated” behaviour. The traits themselves are in turn, of course, based on empirical evidence of a similar kind; in other words, persons who behave in a sociable manner in one situation tend to behave in a sociable manner in other situations, and so forth. The picture that emerges from a great variety of different studies then is a fairly clear and concise one. The argument from correlations and factor analysis is possibly unlikely to satisfy biologists who tend to distrust complex statistical manipulations. Other difficulties are of a more technical kind, relating for instance to the structure of the transducer and its attachment to the organism. Until much more is known about the relationship between consolidation and personality, it will always be extremely difficult to predict the results of learning experiments and the relationship between learning, memory, and personality.

(1984). Cattell and the Theory of Personality. Multivariate Behavioral Research: Vol. 19, No. 2-3, pp. 323-336.

This reprinted article originally appeared in Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, & Practice, 1964(MONTH), 1(3), 97-100. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1966-01631-001). Comments on the original article by H. H. Strupp (see record 1965-15636-001). In his recent article in this journal, Strupp (1963) has this to say in relation to the outcome problem in psychotherapy: "A brief review of Eysenck's (1952) widely quoted survey, which capitalized upon and added considerably to the existing confusion may be instructive." In reply I would like to suggest that Strupp's review is, in the lawyer's phrase, irrelevant, incompetent and immaterial. Fortunately, the points I wish to make are so simple that they will not take up much space.

Contemporary epidemiology and health psychology research has pointed out that single risk factors have relatively little influence on ischaemic heart disease (IHD), but that effects are synergistic. The possibility of such interactions has occasionally been noted and indeed might be expected, given the unexplained variance in IHD risk after accounting for the effects of IHD risk factors taken individually. Risk factors of smoking and neuroticism (emotional lability) were investigated simultaneously in groups of 187 male IHD patients and 187 controls. Initially, a logistic regression was used to compare the two groups on the two risk factors. Next, their interaction was tested by dividing the two samples into different subgroups according to the level of neuroticism and presence of smoking. The multivariate regression model and other methods supported both risk factors including a synergistic interaction between the two. The synergistic interaction of smoking and neuroticism plays an important role in predicting IHD. Different potential mechanisms of psychobehavioural pathogenicity have been suggested so far. The presence of a psychobiological synergistic interaction between neuroticism and smoking suggests the involvement of the former risk factor in sudden deterioration in the coronary flow due to vasoconstriction.

Some 8059 healthy women (mean age 58 years) were studied in 1973 with the aim of establishing the presence or absence of a variety of physical and psychological risk factors for mammary cancer. Mortality was established in 1988. factor predictors were highly significant. Physical risk factors were more predictive than psychological ones, but both interacted synergistically to predict mortality. Alone, psychological (stress) factors had little effect, while-physical factors did. However, psychological factors seemed to potentiate the effect of physical factors, particularly in the middle range. The causal relevance of psychological factors was established in a special intervention study using autonomy training as a method of prophylactic therapy and comparing outcome with the effects of no therapy (control).

The objective of this research was to investigate simultaneously biological and psychosocial risk factors in groups of 187 male ischaemic heart disease (IHD) patients and 187 controls. Initially, a multivariate logistic regression was used to compare the two groups on 11 standard biological and 7 suggested psychosocial risk factors. The multivariate regression model supported altogether 9 risk factors for IHD: 5 individual ones with sensitisation amongst them and 4 interactions of risk factors including a synergistic one between neuroticism and smoking. Next, the principal component analysis of all 18 (11 biological and 7 psychosocial) was used to extract 4 biopsychosocial and 2 biological correlates of IHD risk factors. It was concluded that psychosocial coronary proneness plays an important role in predicting IHD, even after taking into account the main, most notably atherogenic, biological risk factors. Two potential mechanisms of psychosocial pathogenicity have been suggested, notably alterations in health related behaviours and behaviourally evoked perturbations of neuroendocrine responses. Moreover, the presence of synergistic psychobiological interaction between neuroticism and smoking suggests the involvement of the former risk factor in sudden deteriorations in the coronary flow due to vasoconstriction. The results and related implications are consistent with the present knowledge about the risk of developing IHD.

It is suggested that the scientific status of psychology is put in danger by the lack of paradigms in many of its fields, and by the failure to achieve unification, psychology is breaking up into many different disciplines. One important cause was suggested by Lee Cronbach in his 1957 presidential address to the American Psychological Association: the continuing failure of the two scientific disciplines of psychology-the experimental and the correlational-to come together and mutually support each other. Personality study in particular has suffered from this disunity, and the debates about the number of major dimensions of personality illustrate the absurdity of the situation. Examples are given to show that by combining methods and theories typical of these two disciplines, one can put forward paradigms that would be impossible without such unification. Such a paradigm is suggested for personality and intelligence.

It is suggested that addictive behaviour, so called, fits into a psychological resource model. In other words, the habits in question are acquired because they serve a useful function for the individual, and the nature of the functions they fulfil is related to the personality profile of the ‘addict’. For some people this resource function develops into a form of addiction, and it is suggested that the reason this occurs is related to excessive dopamine functioning. This in turn is used to suggest the nature of the addictive personality. Excessive dopamine functioning is related to the personality dimension of psychoticism, and evidence is cited to the eAect that psychoticism is closely related to a large number of addictions. The precise reasons for the addictive eAects of dopamine are still being debated, but clearly there is a causal chain linking personality and biological factors together in the production of addictive behaviour. #1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Originally published in 1969, this book deals extensively with the description and measurement of personality. Beginning with a statement of the principles of typological research in psychology, set against the background of general taxonomic principles in biology, the study discusses in detail results and generalisations from the Eysencks’ previous work. The second part of the book describes several large-scale studies using personality questionnaires prepared by the authors, as well as the standard ones of Cattell and Guilford. There is a comparative study of the Eysenck, Cattell and Guilford inventories, which analyses the degree to which similar factors can be found in these three instruments and discusses areas of agreement and disagreement between the three authors. The third part deals with personality studies in children, and includes a chapter on personality structure in subnormal subjects. These studies are concerned with discovering the extent to which personality structure changes with increasing age, and to what extent it is possible to measure personality in younger children. They also examine sex differences in personality structure, and show quite marked differences between the sexes on a number of primary personality traits. The results of the Eysencks’ work in this field directed new light on the structure of personality and cast doubt on many widely accepted findings of the time.

Originally published in 1953, this third edition was first published in 1970. It was one of the early attempts at bringing together theories of personality organisation and finding empirical evidence to test their hypotheses. This third edition includes additional chapters and updated references to current research of the time. It is a particular feature of this book that a large number of figures are reproduced in the text; this is essentially a consequence of the writer’s belief that diagrammatic representations are better suited to the transmitting and remembering of information than are words or numbers. The first chapter outlines the theories and discusses some of their implications, the second and third look at methods of analysis and projective techniques, while the rest of the book is devoted to a critical presentation of the evidence, arranged according to the technique employed – rating, self-rating, objective testing, constitutional assessment, autonomic measurement, and so on. Today it can be read and enjoyed in its historical context.

Literature is reviewed suggesting that a child's personality determines to a large extent his or her reaction to specific methods of teaching, and even to the whole ethos and atmosphere of the teaching situation. Thus, extraverted children benefit from being taught along the lines of discovery learning, while introverted children benefit from being taught along the lines of reception learning. The apparent lack of difference in achievement in groups taught by these methods hides the large individual differences factor that appears in the interaction term. It is suggested that facts of this kind should be of considerable concern to those who design our courses for future teachers, and for teachers generally. We owe our children care in the design of methods for teaching, and personality differences play an important part in such design.

This article introduces a new personality inventory dealing with self-regulation. This is in some ways the opposite of neuroticism, and measures personal autonomy or independence, particularly as far as emotional dependence is concerned. Our concern was the relation between self-regulation and health, and large samples of healthy men and women were tested and followed up to demonstrate high predictability of mortality from cancer, coronary heart disease and other causes of death from scores on the questionnaire. It was also demonstrated that psychological risk factors were largely independent from physical risk factors, and could be changed by behavioural-cognitive treatment, reducing mortality.