Predicting Age in the Adult Years from Psychological Assessments of Abilities and Personality

Abstract

Predictions of chronological age at the time of examination were made from scores on the 12 subtests of the General Aptitude Test Battery and the Cattell Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire for 970 men ranging in age from 28 to 83 years. Performance on the three ability tests, Disassemble, Tool Matching, and Turn accounted for about 25 percent of the variability in chronological age. Three scales from the Cattell Questionnaire, Factor F (surgency-desurgency), Factor Q₃ (high vs. low self-sentiment), and Factor I (sensitive-insensitive) accounted for 8 percent of the variance in age. The combined contribution of both sets of measures to the prediction of age was about 30 percent; the amount of common variance was about 5 percent when these measures were used together to predict age. Scores on the ability tests and the measure of surgency decline with age, while scores on the measures of self-sentiment and sensitivity increased with age.