In Memory Of… Harrison Gough
Honoring scientists who have made important and lasting contributions to the sciences of mind, brain, and behavior.
Harrison Gough, PhD (1921-2014)
Professor Emeritus
University of California at Berkeley
Harrison Gough was best-known for his work on psychological assessment, in particular the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) and the Adjective Check List (ACL). Both of these widely used instruments have been translated into more than 40 languages and the CPI has a bibliography of more than 2,000 titles. In addition, Gough published 36 other tests, including measures of verbal and nonverbal ability (College Vocabulary Test and Perceptual Acuity Test), attitudes (Population Policy Questionnaire), occupational interests (Correctional Officers’ Interest Blank), information (Drug and Alcohol Information Survey), word associations (Scientific Word Association Test), research styles (Research Scientist’s Q-sort), and the first published test for assessing “integrity” (Personnel Reaction Blank). He wrote the section on psychological tests and measurements for the 16th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the chapter on personality and personality assessment for the first edition of Marvin Dunnette’s Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology.
After a 1942 summa cum laude BA from the University of Minnesota, majoring in sociology, Gough enlisted for military service. He worked first as a psychological assistant in the renowned Air Crew Selection Program, and later had a two-year posting to an 1,800-bed hospital as a commissioned clinical psychologist where his section chief was the noted Adlerian psychiatrist Leopold Erwin Wexberg. In January 1943 he married Kathryn Whittier. They had one daughter, Jane, now Mrs. Jeff Rhodes.
On discharge in 1946 he enrolled in the University of Minnesota doctoral program in psychology, studying primarily with Paul Meehl and Starke Hathaway. He received a Ph.D. degree in 1949, after which Donald MacKinnon and Nevitt Sanford invited him to join them in their new center at the University of California for assessing people of extraordinary talent and creativity. Gough developed the CPI and ACL to help meet the need of this program for measures of self-fulfillment and personal integration. In the Department of Psychology, Gough taught courses in assessment, psychodiagnosis, and personality theory. He directed or co-directed the doctoral dissertations of 91 students. In 1986 the California State Psychological Association named him the most influential teacher in the graduate education of its members. In his career at Berkeley from 1949 to retirement in 1986 he served five years as chair of the Department and 10 years as director of the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research.
In 1960-61 Gough was president of the California State Psychological Association. In the 1960s and 1970s he was a member of the research advisory committees for the California Department of Correction, and the Department of Mental Health. In 1968 Governor Ronald Reagan appointed him to the Governor’s advisory committee for mental health, and in 1969 to a citizen’s advisory committee. From 1967-71 Gough was a member of the Clinical Projects Research Review Committee of the National Institute of Mental Health, and was chair of this committee in 1970-71.
For 11 years Gough was associate editor of the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, and at various times a consulting editor for eight other journals. He published more than 250 articles, chapters, reviews, test manuals, and books, among which were 35 on cross-cultural topics in assessment co-authored with colleagues from nine different countries.
Gough received two Fulbright fellowships and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, for studies in Italy. Other awards include the Bruno Klopfer Distinguished Contribution award from the Society for Personality Assessment, from Division 5 of the American Psychological Association for distinguished lifetime contribution to measurement, the Jack Block award for distinguished contribution to personality psychology from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and designation by the Regents of the University of Minnesota as a distinguished graduate.
Individuals Honoring Harrison Gough:
Anonymous (1)
Richard Arvey, National University of Singapore
Pamela Bradley, University of California, Berkeley
Jane B. Brooks
Wayne F. Cascio, University of Colorado Denver
Isabella Conti
Ugo Conti
Robert J. Devine, CPP, Inc.
Arthur C. Graesser, University of Memphis
Jeffrey A. Hayes, CPP, Inc.
Ravenna M. Helson, University of California, Berkeley
Robert Hogan, Hogan Assessment Systems
* Leaetta M. Hough, The Dunnete Group
Dragos Iliescu, D&D Consultants
Kevin Lanning, Florida Atlantic University
Lorin Letendre, Atwater Publishing
Christina Maslach, University of California, Berkeley
Robert McHenry, OPP Ltd
Pierre Meyer
* Robert B. Most, Mind Garden, Inc.
Deniz Ones, University of Minnesota
Donald A. Riley, University of California, Berkeley
Michael D. Roberts, Critical Personnel Consulting
Avril Thorne, University of California, Santa Cruz
Ansfried B. Weinert, HSU University, Hamburg/Germany
Daniel S. Weiss, University of California, San Francisco
Philip Zimbardo, Stanford University
Ronald Karlsberg, Cardiovascular Research Foundation of Southern California, Cedars Sinai Heart Institute, UCLA School of Medicine
* The FABBS Foundation would like to thank Dr. Leaetta M. Hough and Dr. Robert B. Most for nominating Dr. Gough for this honor and for leading the effort to spread the word about his nomination.
