Historiometrics

Historiometrics (or historiometry) is a quantitative method for studying eminent individuals at a distance. The method is most often applied to persons who cannot be subjected to direct psychological assessment. For example, historiometrics was first used to study deceased leaders in a variety of fields. Yet the method may also be applied to persons who are still living but who are otherwise unreceptive to direct psychological examination. For instance, it can be used to study contemporary politicians, such as presidents and prime ministers, who for various reasons may not be willing to volunteer their time (or risk their reputations) to participate in empirical studies. Whether the subjects are alive or not, the method does require that the individuals possess a substantial historical record that can provide a reliable source of data. Thus, historiometrics can be considered a specific form of archival data analysis.

Although the term historiometrics was not coined until 1909, the technique itself is among the oldest in the behavioral sciences. The first historiometric investigation was published in 1835 by Adolph Quételet, the same statistician who established the normal curve as the basis for describing individual differences. The first book-length historiometric study was Francis Galton's Hereditary Genius, which appeared in 1869. Other pioneering historiometric inquiries were conducted by James McKeen Cattell, Lewis M. Terman, Edward L. Thorndike, and R. B. Cattell. The majority of the researchers who have applied the technique have been motivated by an interest in individual differences.

Like most other empirical studies, the typical historiometric investigation begins by collecting a representative sample of subjects. However, rather than gathering a random sample from the larger human population, historiometric samples are usually nonrandom. Either the sample exhausts the entire population (e.g., all Nobel laureates, all Olympic gold medalists, all presidents of the United States), or the sample includes the most eminent figures in a given field (e.g., the composers who have had the biggest impact on the classical repertoire, the generals who have fought the most decisive battles). Once the sample is determined, variables can be defined and measured by using raw biographical and other historical information as well as by applying content analysis to speeches, correspondence, or creative products. Frequently, the sampled individuals are measured on the same variables on which more-everyday samples can be evaluated. For instance, historical figures have been assessed on such variables as intelligence or IQ; the NEO Personality Inventory; Cattell's Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire; and power, achievement, and affiliation motives derived from the Thematic Apperception Test. Because historiometric data are necessarily correlational, they are then subjected to such statistical techniques as regression analysis, factor analysis, time series analysis, path analysis, and structural equation models.