Biographies of Robert R. McCrae and Paul T. Costa Jr.

• • born on April 28, 1949 in Maryville, Missouri, a town of 13,000 people located about 100 miles north of Kansas City.

  Robert Roger Mccrae
• McCrae nevertheless was not completely happy with the open ended and nonempirical nature of philosophy.
• Given his inclination and talent for math and science, McCrae found himself intrigued by the psychometric work of Raymond Cattell. In particular, he became curious about using factor analysis to search for a simple method for identifying the structural traits found in the dictionary.
• At Boston University, McCrae’s major professor was Henry Weinberg, a clinical psychologist with only a peripheral interest in personality traits. Hence, McCrae’s interest in traits had to be nourished more internally than externally.
• • questioned the notion that personality traits are consistent, claiming that the situation is more important than any personality trait.

  Walter Mischel
• • an adult developmental psychologist at the Normative Aging Study at the Veterans Administration Outpatient Clinic in Boston.
  • referred McCrae to another Boston-based personality psychologist, Paul T. Costa Jr., who was on the faculty at University of Massachusetts at Boston.

  James Fozard
• • born on September 16, 1942 in Franklin, New Hampshire, the son of Paul T. Costa, Sr. and Esther Vasil Costa.
  • earned his undergraduate degree in psychology at Clark University in 1964 and both his master’s (1968) and PhD (1970) in human development from the University of Chicago.

  Paul T. Costa Jr.