Percival Mallon Symonds (April 18, 1893 – August 6, 1960) was an American educational psychologist. He was known for his development of several tests in the fields of

educational Education is the transmission of knowledge and skills and the development of character traits. Formal education occurs within a structured institutional framework, such as public schools, following a curriculum. Non-formal education also fol ...

, clinical, and

school psychology School psychology is a field that applies principles from educational psychology, developmental psychology, clinical psychology, community psychology, and behavior analysis to meet the learning and behavioral health needs of children and ado ...

, including the Foreign Language Prognosis Test, the Personality Survey, and the Symonds picture-study test, a

projective test In psychology, a projective test is a personality test designed to let a person respond to ambiguous stimuli, presumably revealing hidden emotions and internal conflicts projected by the person into the test. This is sometimes contrasted with a ...

administered to adolescents.

Early life and education

Symonds was born on April 18, 1893, in Newtonville,

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

. He received his

B.A. A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree ...

from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

in 1915, followed by an A.M. and Ph.D. from

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

in 1920 and 1923, respectively.

Career

Symonds was a professor of education and psychology at the

University of Hawaii A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...

from 1922 to 1924. In 1924, he began teaching at the

Teachers College, Columbia University Teachers College, Columbia University (TC) is the graduate school of education affiliated with Columbia University, a private research university in New York City. Founded in 1887, Teachers College has been a part of Columbia University since ...

, where he remained a faculty member until his retirement in 1958. He died on August 6, 1960, in Salem, Massachusetts. He served as the first chairman of the American Association of Applied Psychologists' Education Section and, from 1947 to 1948, as president of the

American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychologists in the United States, and the largest psychological association in the world. It has over 170,000 members, including scientists, educators, clin ...

's Division of Educational Psychology. He was also president of the

American Educational Research Association The American Educational Research Association (AERA, pronounced "A-E-R-A") is a professional organization representing education researchers in the United States and around the world. AERA's mission is to advance knowledge about education and ...

from 1956 to 1957.

Research

Symonds researched the relationship between

personality trait In psychology, trait theory (also called dispositional theory) is an approach to the study of human personality. Trait theorists are primarily interested in the measurement of ''traits'', which can be defined as habitual patterns of behavior, thou ...

s in

teacher A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. w ...

s and their teaching abilities. His work, which included twenty-one books and over two hundred articles, emphasized the importance of

dynamic psychology Psychodynamics, also known as psychodynamic psychology, in its broadest sense, is an approach to psychology that emphasizes systematic study of the psychological forces underlying human behavior, feelings, and emotions and how they might relate t ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Symonds, Percival Mallon 1893 births 1960 deaths People from Newton, Massachusetts American educational psychologists 20th-century American psychologists Harvard University alumni Columbia University alumni University of Hawaiʻi faculty Teachers College, Columbia University faculty Psychometricians