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In the study of personality, various methods of examination are used for essentially the same purpose: to determine the subject's position relative to actual or theoretical norms for each different characteristics examined. This paper urges use of actual measurements in place of ratings and clinical judgments, and it stresses need for ascertaining the subject's rank order in empirically derived frequency distributions as contrasted with assigning him positions in conceptual rating scales. It is also suggested that the current interest in non-measurable characteristics, such as attitudes, opinions, and beliefs, be subordinated, since these non-measurable factors may be approached as concommitants of the characteristics capable of measurement. An individual's rank orders will yield clues to the way he faces situations and therefore to his mental and emotional set toward those situations. Furthermore, study of the interrelations among the various rank orders of an individual will give insights into his personality, viewed as the outcome of his efforts at adjustment to the problems which arise from the discrepancies and incongruities among his rank orders. His ideas, beliefs, theories, and opinions are rationalizations of his positions (rank orders) in the world and attempts to reconcile their disproportion. Study of personality along these lines will promote better team play among medical, psychological, case history, and psychiatric workers, each of whom now emphasizes unduly the importance of his own methods and data, neglecting the essential unity of the organism from which all these data are derived. Co-operation of students of personality with social scientists is also forecast, to the advantage of both groups and the advancement of their work.
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