Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionIV. Dispositional Theories 14. Eysenck, McCrae, and
Costa’s Trait and Factor
Theories(^410) © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
psychology. While in the United States, he had begun The Structure of Human Per-
sonality(1952b), in which he argued for the efficacy of factor analysis as the best
method of representing the known facts of human personality.
Eysenck was perhaps the most prolific writer in the history of psychology,
having published some 800 journal articles or book chapters and more than 75
books. Several have titles with popular appeal, such as Uses and Abuses of Psychol-
ogy (1953); The Psychology of Politics(1954, 1999); Sense and Nonsense in Psy-
chology (1956); Know Your Own IQ(1962); Fact and Fiction in Psychology(1965);
Psychology Is About People(1972); You and Neurosis(1977b); Sex, Violence and
the Media(with D. K. B. Nias, 1978); Smoking, Personality, and Stress(1991d); Ge-
nius: The Natural History of Creativity (1995); and Intelligence: A New Look
(1998a).
Eysenck’s range of interests was exceedingly broad, and his willingness to step
into almost any controversy was legendary. He was a gadfly to the conscience of psy-
chology since he first entered its ranks. He upset many psychoanalysts and other
therapists in the early 1950s with his contention that no evidence existed to suggest
that psychotherapy was more effective than spontaneous remission. In other words,
those people who receive no therapy were just as likely to get better as were those
who underwent expensive, painful, prolonged psychotherapy with expertly trained
psychoanalysts and psychologists (Eysenck, 1952a). Eysenck maintained that belief
for the remainder of his life. In 1996, he told an interviewer that “psychotherapies
are no more effective than... placebo treatments” (Feltham, 1996, p. 424).
Eysenck was not afraid to take an unpopular stand, as witnessed by his defense
of Arthur Jensen, whose contention was that IQ scores cannot be significantly in-
creased by well-intentioned social programs because they are largely genetically de-
termined. Eysenck’s book The IQ Argument(1971) was so controversial that ele-
ments in the United States “threatened booksellers with arson if they dared to stock
the book; well-known ‘liberal’ newspapers refused to review it; and the outcome was
that it was largely impossible in the land of free speech to discover the existence of
the book or to buy it” (Eysenck, 1980, p. 175).
In 1983, Eysenck retired as professor of psychology at the Institute of Psychi-
atry, University of London, and as senior psychiatrist at the Maudsley and Bethle-
hem Royal hospitals. He then served as professor emeritus at the University of Lon-
don until his death from cancer on September 4, 1997. Eysenck, who frequently
argued that cigarette smoking was not a major risk factor for cancer, had been a
heavy smoker until middle age when he gave up cigarettes because he believed that
they affected his tennis game.
During his later years, his research continued to reflect a variety of topics, in-
cluding creativity (Eysenck, 1993, 1995; Frois & Eysenck, 1995), behavioral inter-
ventions in cancer and heart disease (Eysenck, 1991d, 1996; Eysenck & Grossarth-
Maticek, 1991), and intelligence (Eysenck, 1998a).
Eysenck won many awards, including the 1991 Distinguished Contributions
Award of the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences. The
American Psychological Association presented him with its Distinguished Scientist
Award (1988), the Presidential Citation for Scientific Contribution (1993), the
William James Fellow Award (1994), and the Centennial Award for Distinguished
Contributions to Clinical Psychology (1996).
404 Part IV Dispositional Theories