Raymond Cattell

"Subjectively the possession of a role factor is felt as a mental set which modifies all ordinary responses. The very same stimulus is perceived in a different way when one is in the role and when one is out of it... Technically, we handle this change of perception the same way in a role as in a mood—both of which can intrude on the ordinary personality — by this special factor, L, which can be called a modulator factor. A modulator factor comes into action only when the usual ordinary focal stimulus comes into the orbit of a set of role cues which we may call the ambient or surrounding stimulus."

"The first way in which one notices that a sentiment structure is different from an erg is that the emotional (ergic goal) qualities which enter it are very diverse, whereas in an erg they are all of one quality, e. g., gregariousness, sex... The sentiment brings together attitudes, in fact, with several different ergic roots, but only one source of learning."

"A taxonomy of abilities, like a taxonomy anywhere else in science, is apt to strike a certain type of impatient student as a gratuitous orgy of pedantry. Doubtless, compulsions to intellectual tidiness express themselves prematurely at times, and excessively at others, but a good descriptive taxonomy, as Darwin found in developing his theory, and as Newton found in the work of Kepler, is the mother of laws and theories."

"Of course, science lives by confusing theories, but what were accepted as theories even by the many professional psychologists and psychiatrists were very poor limitations of what physical scientists call a theory."

"(Personality is)... that which tells what a man will do when placed in a given situation."

"Overt anxiety... that part of anxiety of which the individual is aware and ready to speak."