thus, cattell's goal in creating the "16pf questionnaire" was to discover the number and nature of the fundamental traits of human personality and to develop a way to measure these dimensions. at the university of london, cattell worked with charles spearman who was developing factor analysis to aid in his quest to discover the basic factors of human ability. cattell thought that could also be applied to the area of personality. he reasoned that human personality must have basic, underlying, universal dimensions just as the physical world had basic building blocks (like oxygen and hydrogen). he felt that if the basic building blocks of personality were discovered and measured, then human behavior (e.g., creativity, leadership, altruism, or aggression) could become increasingly understandable and predictable.