THE STUDY OF A PERSONALITY STRUCTURE BY P-TECHNIQUE FACTORIZATION

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyse the personality traits of a single person by means of P-technique factorization and to compare them with the common personality traits which have been revealed by the ordinary R-technique studies.
A normal nineteen-year-old female student sat as the subject for forty-eight days successively. Thirteen variables were obtained from experimental objective tests, and twelve variables from self-rating procedures. The centroid method of factorization and the oblique rotations of axes were applied to the matrices of correlations based upon the 48 day-to-day variations of the intra-individual scores. Four significant factors were analysed from both groups of data, and the results were compared with those which Cattell and others had already obtained chiefly by means of R-technique analyses.
The first factor of the objective tests is to be clearly identified with the source trait “C” of R-technique studies, while the fourth of the self-rating data, too, seems to correspond to it. At the positive sides of these factors, therefore, are found the variables associated with mental stability, emotional balance, volitional control, and so forth. Next, on the third factor of objective tests are loaded the variables of PGR deflections; hence it is interpreted to be similar to the factor of “emotional abundance” which has been previously revealed as an objective test factor of a normal individual and been principally associated with the source trait “H”. Finally, the third factor of self-rating data is considered to be common to the source trait “A”, for it clearly shows the symptoms of cyclothymia and schizothymia. These results tell that most of the P-technique factors obtained from our subject have correspondences to some of the R-technique ones already found and recognized in the previous factorial analyses.
Not all the factors analysed here, however, correspond to the common source traits, for there are left some which seem to be peculiar to the subject. So far as this study is concerned, these probable unique factors are not clearly explained, but if we are provided with abundant case-by-case P-technique data not only of normal persons but also of abnormal ones, it may be possible to develop more diagnostic or clinical interpretations of the results.