Charles Spielberger

Charles Spielberger, Ph.D. is a clinical/community psychologist well-known for his development of the State/Trait Anxiety Inventory.

Spielberger is a former president of the American Psychological Association. He currently belongs to a think tank at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida and was formerly Chairman of the Psychology Department there.

In 1972, as in coming president of the Southeastern Psychological Association (SEPA) he appointed the first SEPA Task Force on the Status of Women, chaired by Ellen Kimmel.

State Trait Anxiety Inventory
Spielberger, like Raymond Cattell and others before him, made the conceptual distinction between chronic or trait anxiety (a general propensity to be anxious) and temporary or state anxiety (a temporary state varying in intensity). To measure these concepts, he developed the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI).

Additional work on anxiety
His work on anxiety has been famously cited by Rollo May. He also co-wrote the book Anxiety in Sports: An International Perspective

State Trait Anger Scale
Carrying this concept further, Spielberger distinguished between state and trait anger. State anger is definded as a temporary emotional state while trait anger is a general tendency  to react angrily to perceive situations. (Spielberger et al., 1983). Speilberger became a well known authority on anger and its manifestations.

Early career
One of his first vocations was as an electronics technician in the U.S. Army (1945-1946). His post secondary education includes a B.S. in chemistry from the GA. Inst. of Technology (1949) and a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Iowa.