Percival Symonds

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Percival Mallon Symonds (April 18, 1893 – August 6, 1960) was an American educational psychologist who created several important tests, including the Foreign Language Prognosis Test, the Personality Survey, and the Symonds picture-study test for adolescents.

He was born in Newtonville, Massachusetts, and earned a B.A. from Harvard in 1915, followed by an A.M. and Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1920 and 1923. His doctoral advisor was Edward Thorndike, and his thesis was on Special disability in algebra. He taught at the University of Hawaii from 1922 to 1924, then moved to Teachers College, Columbia University, where he worked from 1924 until retiring in 1958.

Symonds was the first chairman of the American Association of Applied Psychologists' Education Section, and he served as president of the American Psychological Association’s Division of Educational Psychology (1947–1948) and of the American Educational Research Association (1956–1957). His research looked at how teachers’ personality traits relate to their teaching abilities, and he emphasized dynamic psychology. He wrote about 21 books and more than 200 articles, and he mentored students including Arthur Jensen. He died in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1960 at age 67.