Biography of Joy Paul Guilford (1897-1987)

Joy Paul Guilford is a renowned American psychologist, who was born on March 7, 1897 and died on November 26, 1987.

Guilford obtained a lot of popular from his Theory of intelligence and studies he conducted on creativity, because he investigated the multiplicity of personality factors, and even designed a model of human intellect, thus laying the basis of multiple intelligence.

The works of Joy Paul Guilford served as the basis for the creation of various personality tests. When he presented his conference entitled Creativity, He managed to awaken the curiosity of other psychologists, who also felt driven to investigate more about this subject.

Among his works, the most prominent are: The nature of human intelligence, creativity and education, and Fitness for Creation.

Joy Paul Guilford, in addition, exercised as a professor at several universities in the United States, specifically in Kansas, Nebraska and in southern California.

Life of Joy Paul Guilford

According to an article published by the Latin American Journal of Psychology, Joy Paul Guilford from a very young age demonstrated his mathematics skills, advising his brother who was older than him. And, in 1914 he graduated from the College of Aurora with honors.

Joy Paul Guilford was born in Marquette, Nebraska. Being a child he felt restless about the behavior of adults, as well as the skills that each one demonstrated. In 1918 he began his studies at the University of Nebraska and, before graduating, he worked as an assistant in the Department of Psychology in said study center. When he graduated from the University, Guilford continued his studies at Cornell University, following the direction of Edward Titchener and Kurt Koffka. While in Cornell, Guilford administered questionnaires to children, while working as director of the University Psychological Clinic. When his doctorate completed, he began working at the University of Kansas. However, then he returned to Nebraska, becoming an associated professor and teaching until 1940.

During World War II (1939-1945), Joy Guilford had the opportunity to be part of the United States Air Force Psychological Research Unit, a space that allowed him to participate in different projects related to the attitudes of the soldiers.

In fact, these research allowed him.

THE THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE

Guilford He understood that intelligence was made up of a set of intellectual skills that varied among people. This point was differentiator with respect to Charles Spearman's theory, who understood that intelligence was unitary.

That is why this work of Guilford allowed to introduce a change in the way in which the issue of intelligence was addressed, because the way for the theory of multiple intelligences was opened.

Unlike other authors, Joy Paul Guilford positively valued individual differences.

This led Guilford to formulate the Divergent intelligence concept, which was based on the experience he had with people who were very creative, because he noticed that these people tended to think differently, without following the pattern that was expected. Thus, he noticed fluidity, as an ability to produce multiple solutions to a problem, in a short time. He also noticed that they had flexibility, being able to consider different approaches to the same problem. In addition, these people had the ability of originality to produce novel and different ideas to the known. Finally, they had the ability to elaborate and present their ideas interestingly.

Finally, Guilford designed a model of the intelligence structure, contemplating three dimensions with their respective components.

1. Operation dimension: (Memory, cognition, divergent and convergent production, evaluation).
2. Product dimension: (classes, systems, units, relationships, transformations and implications).
3. Content dimension: (auditory, visual, semantic, symbolic and behavioral).

In addition to this, Joy Paul Guilford made criticism of the traditional questionnaires of intellectual quotient, since he considered that they did not favor divergent thinking. This gave way to the development of new personality tests.

With the passing of time, their innovative ideas have been evaluated and updated by other authors.

It should be noted that Guilford's academic life was very productive, because He published 25 books and more than 300 articles, Apart from having developed about thirty psychometric tests.

Bibliography

• Guilford, j. P. (1967). The Nature of Human Intelligence.
• Guilford, j. P. (1954). Psychometric Methods.
• Lorenz, f. OR. K. (1991). Joy Paul Guilford (1897-1987) Latin American Magazine of Psychology, Vol. 23, no. 1, 1991, pp. 125-127 Konrad Lorenz Bogotá University Foundation, Colombia. Latin American Magazine of Psychology, 23(1), 125-127.