The Cattellian Method of Predicting Child Personality

Abstract

Summary A close reading of papers by Barton, Dielman, and Cattell suggests that supposed relationships reported between parental attitudes and child personality may have been less significant than at first appears. They may have been nothing more than the occasional large correlation that is to be expected in any large matrix of correlations by chance alone. A partial replication of the Barton, Dielman, and Cattell work was carried out by using two samples of 328 girls and their mothers and 327 boys and their mothers reached through schools of rural Punjab. Results very similar to those reported earlier were found—confirming suspicions that nonsignificant results had previously been reported as significant.