A STUDY OF IMAGERY IN RESEARCH SCIENTISTS *

The data reported here were gathered in the course of a study of personalities of research scientists as related to vocation The 64 subjects of that study are eminent research scientists in the fields of biology, physics and physical chemistry, psychology and anthropology Most of the men are members of the National Academy of Sciences, or the American Philosophical Society, or both Age range is 31 to 60, with a mean of 47 7 Further data on the sample are given m the full reports (10,11,12) The research plan included intensive interviews on life history, discussion of their work and working habits, and three tests, the Rorschach, the Thematic Apperception Test, and a special test of verbal, spatial, and mathematical functions During the first year's work, which dealt with biologists, I slowly became aware that their description of working habits very frequently implied mental processes quite foreign to my own, and It occurred to me that these might have some relevance to the problems under investigation. From then on I made attempts to get definite information on this point, and also checked it with the subjects already visited The results of this part of the study are embodied in this paper It must be explicitly stated that the raw data on thinking processes are highly unsatisfactory They are introspective reports by subjects of whom few (even among the psychologists) were trained m introspection, in order to get any information at all it was frequently necessary to ask leading questions There are no standardized tests or techniques by which anything in the way of objective evidence can be obtained The justification for this paper lies in the fact that, despite the crudeness of the data, psychologically mean-