Charles Spearman
English psychologist and statistician who proposed the g factor
English army officer turned psychologist who proposed that performance on varied mental tests reflects a general factor, g, published the rank correlation coefficient in 1904 and is credited with coining the term factor analysis.
Why this person matters
Spearman's g is the starting point of many later debates about whether intelligence is one ability or several. His rank correlation coefficient still bears his name, and his theory was contested by contemporaries and successors.
Main contributions
General intelligence (g)
His 1904 paper in the American Journal of Psychology, 'General Intelligence, Objectively Determined and Measured', reports experiments on sensory discrimination alongside independent estimates of intelligence. It argues for a 'universal unity of the intellective function' and a 'hierarchy of the intelligences'.
Factor analysis
He is credited with coining the term 'factor analysis'. He explained correlations among tests through a factor common to all of them and a specific factor for each.
Rank correlation
He published the rank correlation coefficient that bears his name in 1904, and work on the correction for attenuation in 1907.
Context and limits
Louis Thurstone argued for several primary abilities but eventually accepted a general factor. Godfrey Thomson critiqued Spearman's model, Raymond Cattell built on the idea of general ability, and Spearman feuded with Karl Pearson. His work belongs to the early twentieth-century testing movement, whose eugenic uses are discussed in the profiles of Binet and Cattell.
In your introductory course
Thinking, language and intelligence.Appears in the intelligence chapter in debates over a single general ability versus multiple intelligences.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 7.4. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1897
Resigned from the army to study psychology at Leipzig, where he worked mainly with Felix Krueger and Wilhelm Wirth.
- 1904
Published 'General Intelligence, Objectively Determined and Measured' and the rank correlation coefficient.
- 1906
Obtained his Leipzig PhD.
- 1931
Retired from University College London.
Sources
- Classics in the History of Psychology (York University), Spearman, 'General Intelligence', Objectively Determined and Measured (contents page)Original work. Abstract inspected.
- Store norske leksikon, Charles E. SpearmanReference work. Reference article inspected.
- Wikipedia, Charles SpearmanReference work. Reference article inspected.