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Louis Leon Thurstone (May 29, 1887 – September 29, 1955) was an American pioneer in the fields of
psychometrics Psychometrics is a field of study within psychology concerned with the theory and technique of measurement. Psychometrics generally covers specialized fields within psychology and education devoted to testing, measurement, assessment, and rela ...
and
psychophysics Psychophysics is the field of psychology which quantitatively investigates the relationship between physical stimulus (physiology), stimuli and the sensation (psychology), sensations and perceptions they produce. Psychophysics has been described ...
. He conceived the approach to measurement known as the
law of comparative judgment The law of comparative judgment was conceived by L. L. Thurstone. In modern-day terminology, it is more aptly described as a model that is used to obtain measurements from any process of pairwise comparison. Examples of such processes are the compa ...
, and is well known for his contributions to
factor analysis Factor analysis is a statistical method used to describe variability among observed, correlated variables in terms of a potentially lower number of unobserved variables called factors. For example, it is possible that variations in six observe ...
. A ''
Review of General Psychology ''Review of General Psychology'' is the quarterly scientific journal of the American Psychological Association Division 1: The Society for general psychology. The journal publishes cross-disciplinary psychological articles that are conceptual, theo ...
'' survey, published in 2002, ranked Thurstone as the 88th most cited psychologist of the 20th century, tied with John Garcia, James J. Gibson,
David Rumelhart David Everett Rumelhart (June 12, 1942 – March 13, 2011) was an American psychologist who made many contributions to the formal analysis of cognition, human cognition, working primarily within the frameworks of mathematical psychology, symbo ...
, Margaret Floy Washburn, and Robert S. Woodworth.


Early life and career

Thurstone was born in
Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
, Illinois, to Swedish immigrant parents. His family returned to
Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...
, Sweden, when he was eight years old, before returning to the United States in 1901, settling in
Jamestown, New York Jamestown is a city in southern Chautauqua County, New York, United States. The population was 28,712 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Situated between Lake Erie to the north and the Allegheny National Forest to the south, Jamesto ...
. Thurstone originally received a master's degree in
mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines and mechanism (engineering), mechanisms that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and engineering mathematics, mathematics principl ...
from
Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...
in 1912. Thurstone was offered a brief assistantship in the laboratory of
Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February11, 1847October18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, ...
. In 1914, after two years as an instructor of geometry and drafting at the
University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...
, he enrolled as a graduate student in psychology at the
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...
(PhD, 1917). He later returned to the University of Chicago (1924–1952) where he taught and conducted research; among his students was
James Watson James Dewey Watson (born April 6, 1928) is an American molecular biology, molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist. In 1953, he co-authored with Francis Crick the academic paper in ''Nature (journal), Nature'' proposing the Nucleic acid ...
, who co-discovered the structure of DNA. 1952, he established the L. L. Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory at the
University of North Carolina The University of North Carolina is the Public university, public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referre ...
at Chapel Hill.


Factor analysis and work on intelligence

Thurstone was responsible for the standardized mean and
standard deviation In statistics, the standard deviation is a measure of the amount of variation of the values of a variable about its Expected value, mean. A low standard Deviation (statistics), deviation indicates that the values tend to be close to the mean ( ...
of IQ scores used today, as opposed to the
Intelligence Test An intelligence quotient (IQ) is a total score derived from a set of standardized tests or subtests designed to assess human intelligence. Originally, IQ was a score obtained by dividing a person's mental age score, obtained by administering ...
system originally used by
Alfred Binet Alfred Binet (; ; 8 July 1857 – 18 October 1911), born Alfredo Binetti, was a French psychologist who together with Théodore Simon invented the first practical intelligence test, the Binet–Simon test. In 1904, Binet took part in a comm ...
. He is also known for the development of the
Thurstone scale In psychology and sociology, the Thurstone scale was the first formal technique to measure an attitude. It was developed by Louis Leon Thurstone in 1928, originally as a means of measuring attitudes towards religion. Today it is used to measure att ...
. Thurstone's work in factor analysis led him to formulate a model of intelligence centered on "Primary Mental Abilities" (PMAs), which were independent group factors of intelligence that different individuals possessed in varying degrees. He opposed the notion of a singular
general intelligence The ''g'' factor is a construct developed in psychometric investigations of cognitive abilities and human intelligence. It is a variable that summarizes positive correlations among different cognitive tasks, reflecting the assertion that an indi ...
that factored into the scores of all psychometric tests and was expressed as a
mental age Mental age is a concept related to intelligence. It looks at how a specific individual, at a specific age, performs intellectually, compared to average intellectual performance for that individual's actual chronological age (i.e. time elapsed sin ...
. In 1935 Thurstone, together with EL Thorndike and JP Guilford, founded the journal ''
Psychometrika ''Psychometrika'' is the official journal of the Psychometric Society, a professional body dedicated to psychometrics and quantitative psychology. The journal focuses on quantitative methods for the measurement and evaluation of human behavior, in ...
'' and also the Psychometric Society, going on to become the society's first president in 1936. Thurstone's contributions to methods of factor analysis have proved valuable in establishing and verifying later psychometric factor structures, and have influenced the hierarchical models of intelligence in use in intelligence tests such as WAIS and the modern Stanford-Binet IQ test. The seven primary mental abilities in Thurstone's model were ''verbal comprehension'', ''word fluency'', ''number facility'', ''spatial visualization'', ''associative memory'', ''perceptual speed'', and ''reasoning''.


Contributions to measurement

Despite his contributions to factor analysis, Thurstone (1959, p. 267) cautioned: "When a problem is so involved that no rational formulation is available, then some quantification is still possible by the coefficients of correlation of contingency and the like. But such statistical procedures constitute an acknowledgement of failure to rationalize the problem and to establish functions that underlie the data. We want to measure the separation between the two opinions on the attitude continuum and we want to test the validity of the assumed continuum by means of its internal consistency". Thurstone's approach to measurement was termed the
law of comparative judgment The law of comparative judgment was conceived by L. L. Thurstone. In modern-day terminology, it is more aptly described as a model that is used to obtain measurements from any process of pairwise comparison. Examples of such processes are the compa ...
. He applied the approach in
psychophysics Psychophysics is the field of psychology which quantitatively investigates the relationship between physical stimulus (physiology), stimuli and the sensation (psychology), sensations and perceptions they produce. Psychophysics has been described ...
, and later to the
measurement Measurement is the quantification of attributes of an object or event, which can be used to compare with other objects or events. In other words, measurement is a process of determining how large or small a physical quantity is as compared to ...
of psychological values. The so-called 'Law', which can be regarded as a measurement model, involves subjects making a
comparison Comparison or comparing is the act of evaluating two or more things by determining the relevant, comparable characteristics of each thing, and then determining which characteristics of each are similar to the other, which are different, and t ...
between each of a number of pairs of stimuli with respect to magnitude of a property, attribute, or attitude. Methods based on the approach to measurement can be used to estimate such scale values. Thurstone's Law of comparative judgment has important links to modern approaches to social and psychological measurement. In particular, the approach bears a close conceptual relation to the
Rasch model The Rasch model, named after Georg Rasch, is a psychometric model for analyzing categorical data, such as answers to questions on a reading assessment or questionnaire responses, as a function of the trade-off between the respondent's abilities, ...
(Andrich, 1978), although Thurstone typically employed the
normal distribution In probability theory and statistics, a normal distribution or Gaussian distribution is a type of continuous probability distribution for a real-valued random variable. The general form of its probability density function is f(x) = \frac ...
in applications of the Law of comparative judgment whereas the Rasch model is a simple
logistic function A logistic function or logistic curve is a common S-shaped curve ( sigmoid curve) with the equation f(x) = \frac where The logistic function has domain the real numbers, the limit as x \to -\infty is 0, and the limit as x \to +\infty is L. ...
. Thurstone anticipated a key
epistemological Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowled ...
requirement of measurement later articulated by Rasch, which is that relative scale locations must 'transcend' the group measured; i.e. scale locations must be invariant to (or independent of) the particular group of persons instrumental to comparisons between the stimuli. Thurstone (1929) also articulated what he referred to as the ''additivity criterion'' for scale differences, a criterion which must be satisfied in order to obtain interval-level measurements.


Awards and honors

Thurstone received numerous awards, including: Best Article,
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 ...
(1949); Centennial Award,
Northwestern University Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...
(1951); Honorary Doctorate,
University of Gothenburg The University of Gothenburg () is a List of universities in Sweden, university in Sweden's second largest city, Gothenburg. Founded in 1891, the university is the third-oldest of the current List of universities in Sweden#Public universities, S ...
(1954). Thurstone was President of
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 ...
(1933) and first President of the American Psychometric Society (1936). He was elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...
in 1937, the United States
National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...
in 1938, and the
American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...
in 1938.


Selected works

* ''The Nature of Intelligence'' (London: Routledge. 1924) * ''The Effect of Motion Pictures on the Social Attitudes of High School Children'' Ruth C. Peterson & L.L. Thurstone, MacMillan, 1932 * ''Motion Pictures and the Social Attitudes of Children'' Ruth C. Peterson & L.L. Thurstone, MacMillan, 1933 *''The Vectors of Mind. Address of the president before the American Psychological Association, Chicago meeting, September, 1933'' ( Psychological Review, 41, 1–32. 1934) * '' The Vectors of Mind'' (Chicago, IL, US: University of Chicago Press 1935) *''Primary mental abilities'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1938) * ''Multiple-Factor Analysis'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1947) * ''The Fundamentals of Statistics'' (MacMillan: Norwood Press. 1925)


See also

*L. L. Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory *
Law of comparative judgment The law of comparative judgment was conceived by L. L. Thurstone. In modern-day terminology, it is more aptly described as a model that is used to obtain measurements from any process of pairwise comparison. Examples of such processes are the compa ...


References


Sources

* * * * * * * * *


External links


The Vectors of Mind 1934


{{DEFAULTSORT:Thurstone, Louis Leon Cornell University College of Engineering alumni University of Chicago alumni American intelligence researchers Fellows of the American Statistical Association American people of Swedish descent 1887 births 1955 deaths Presidents of the American Psychological Association Members of the American Philosophical Society 20th-century American psychologists