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Public Domain · 1921

Pressey X-O Test of Emotion and Personality: First standardized attitude test

Not strictly an IQ test - one of the first standardized measures of attitudes and personality. Sidney Pressey at Ohio State developed the X-O Test (so called because the test booklet was filled with X's and O's marking attitudes) in 1921. Influential as a precursor to attitude scales and modern personality inventories.

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About the Pressey X-O Test of Emotion and Personality

By 1920 it was clear that intelligence was not the only individually-varying psychological trait that could be measured. Could attitudes, emotional reactions, and personality also be measured with paper-and-pencil instruments? Sidney Pressey, a young psychologist at Ohio State, set out to answer this question.

Pressey's X-O Test consisted of long lists of words and phrases. The subject crossed out (X) items they considered 'wrong' or 'unpleasant' and circled (O) items they considered 'pleasant' or 'right'. Different sections tested different attitudes: moral judgments, aesthetic preferences, fears, interests. The pattern of X's and O's was scored and could be compared to norms.

The Pressey X-O Test was not a great success on its own terms - the scoring proved unreliable - but it was the first widely-used standardized measure of attitudes and personality, and it pioneered the format that would later be refined into the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI, 1943) and other modern personality scales. Pressey himself went on to develop the first 'teaching machine' in 1924.

The 4 subtests

#1
Moral Judgment X-O List of acts; mark X for wrong, O for acceptable.
Interactive
#2
Aesthetic Preference X-O List of items; mark X for unpleasant, O for pleasant.
Interactive
#3
Fears X-O List of objects/situations; mark items the subject finds frightening.
Interactive
#4
Interests X-O List of activities; mark items the subject would enjoy.
Interactive

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Sample items from the original Pressey X-O Test.

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About these items: These Pressey X-O Test of Emotion and Personality items are originally-written reconstructions in the tradition of the original 1921 test, NOT verbatim copies of the historical items. Where the original is a 1-on-1 oral or physical-apparatus test (e.g., examiner shows a card, child draws a shape), we have adapted the format to self-administered multiple choice.

Source

All test materials and historical content on this page are transcribed from:

Pressey, S. L. (1921). A group scale for investigating the emotions. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 16, 55-64.

Public domain. Sidney Pressey (1888-1979) was an early innovator in educational testing technology - he also developed the first 'teaching machine' for programmed learning in 1924.

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This page is part of the Historical IQ Tests Archive. Editorial content, transcription notes, and curation are released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). Public-domain primary sources retain their public-domain status. BibTeX · RIS

Historical test materials are obsolete and are not valid modern IQ assessments. This page is preserved for educational, research, and historiographic purposes.

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