Joy Paul Guilford

Guilford, Joy Paul 

Born Mar. 7, 1897, in Nebraska. American psychologist.

Guilford became a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California in 1940. He is one of the leaders of the psychometric school of research on thoughts and personality. He is the author of a three-dimensional theoretical model of the “structure of the intellect,” according to which the intellect may be represented by three aspects—the operation, products, and content of thoughts. These different components of mental activity are revealed by methods of factor analysis (originality, mobility, flexibility of intellect, and so forth; in all, there are up to 120 factors), with the help of which the level of intellectual ability is determined. Using his model and related mathematical methods, Guilford initiated the development of a system of psychological tests for the study of productive thought and creative ability. The more significantly the individual choice deviates from the standard, the higher it is evaluated as an index of the creative abilities of the individual. Since the 1950’s, Guilford’s methods have been widely used in the USA, with the practical aim of identifying the creative potentialities of engineers and scientific workers. The general defect of factor analysis of the intellect is that the application of these methods of exposure to this or that factor allows one only to ascertain the system of the individual’s knowledge and action that has been formed but not his intellectual potentialities.

WORKS

The Nature of Human Intelligence. New York, 1967. In Russian translation: Tri storony intellekta. In the collection Psikhologiia myshleniia. Moscow, 1965. (Translated from German and English.)

REFERENCE

Iaroshevskii, M. G. “Logika razvitiia nauki i deiatel’nost’ uchenogo.” Voprosy filosofii, 1969, no. 3.

V. V. MAKSIMOV