An Inventory and Projective Personality Study of a Religious and Lay Group

Robert C Fehr, Fordham University

Abstract

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The swiftly rising tide of interest in the systematic study of personality carries with it a denial of the traditional belief that individuality is beyond the limits of psychological science. Though the primary goal of the psychology of personality is to aid in the understanding of individual forms of mental life, it has as a secondary goal the comparison of one group with another in respect to their common traits (1). To this end, Differential Psychology, with its objective and quantitative investigation of individual differences in behaviour, has contributed in a most fruitful manner. Certain groups are recognized and responded to as distinctive in our present-day society. An analysis of the nature and characteristics of major traditional groupings, the comparative investigation of different groups, and the comparison of psychological phenomena as they occur in different groups have been the aims accompanied with varying degrees of success in Differential Psychology (4). Research projects have included such widely diverse areas of study as the personality characteristics of college (58) and high school students (29), business (68) and sales personnel (63), artists (58), scientists (50), teachers (71), nurses (68), foremen (48), and executives (40). The results of such investigations have led to a richer understanding of the nature of these specialized groups and have brought to the foreground the presence of significant inter-group differences.

Subject Area

Personality psychology

Recommended Citation

Fehr, Robert C, "An Inventory and Projective Personality Study of a Religious and Lay Group" (1958). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI28673359.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI28673359

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