Philip E. Vernon

Philip Ewart Vernon (6 June 1905 – 28 July 1987) was a British-born Canadian psychologist and author. He studied intellectual ability with a focus on race and intelligence.

Life Philip Vernon was born in Oxford, England on 6 June 1905. His father was H. M. Vernon who was a lecturer in physiology at the University of Oxford, and was Great Britain's foremost figure in industrial psychology. His mother Dorothea Ewart was author of several works on Italian history. Philip worked with his wife, Dorothy, in the study of gifted children. They had one son, Philip Anthony Vernon, who also researched intellectual abilities.

Career Vernon studied and lectured in at least twenty-eight countries; and held a number of posts throughout his career. Research and teaching fellowship at St. John's College in Cambridge. Psychological research advisor to the admiralty and war office creating training methods and selection tests during World War II. which he used to document the substantial social class differences in IQ scores found in both the US and the UK. According to the Pioneer Fund website,

In 1968, at the age of 63, he abandoned a secure academic career in England to start a second career at the University of Calgary. The Philip E. Vernon Award at University of Calgary is named in his honour.

Major contributions Vernon preferred factor analysis for research and applied this approach to intelligence. At the top of his hierarchical model was Spearman's g and then there were two major group factors; verbal-educational ability (v:ed) and practical-spatial-mechanical abilities (k:m) which could always be decomposed into smaller factors. The factors at the top were more general abilities that affected a wide range of intelligent behaviors while those factors at the bottom involved specific skills for an act. Vernon extended intelligence theory by adding the importance of the test which he called Intelligence C.

In looking at possible causes for higher IQ scores, Vernon found that people who had faster conduction velocity in the median nerve of the arm had higher IQs.

Publications Author of 14 books and approximately 200 journal articles: Study of Values: A Scale for Measuring the Dominant Interests in Personality. (1931) The Measurement of Abilities (1940) The Structure of Human Abilities (1950) Intelligence and Attainment Tests (1960) Personality Assessment: A Critical Survey (1964) Intelligence and Cultural Environment (1969) Creativity: Selected Readings (1970) [editor] The Psychology and Education of Gifted Children (1977) Intelligence: Heredity and Environment (1979) The Abilities and Achievements of Orientals in North America (1982) Speed of Information Processing and Intelligence (1987)