Charles Spearman
One thread running through every ability
The psychologist who proposed that a single general factor underlies our many talents.
techniques
A single general ability seems to run through them all.
Who they were
Charles Spearman noticed something simple and strange: people who did well on one mental task tended to do well on others, however unrelated they seemed. To explain it he proposed a general intelligence factor, which he called g, and invented factor analysis — a statistical method for finding the hidden structure beneath scattered scores. His work gave intelligence research a mathematical spine and sparked a century of debate over whether the mind has one engine or many.
Famous books
What they left on the shelf
Terms they cared about
Ideas worth knowing
Their techniques
How the work was done
Their big idea
General Intelligence (g Factor)
Charles Spearman noticed that people who do well on one mental task tend to do well on others, and proposed a single underlying ability, which he called g, running beneath them all. In his account, every specific talent draws on this shared well of general intelligence.
Questions in their spirit
What they’d ask you
Sit with one. Answer online, or in the app.
Carry the idea forward
Spearman — What they’d ask you
Psipas asks you one small, honest question at a time — and builds the picture from your answers.