The Story of PI

In 1942, just a year after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in WWII, twenty-six year old Arnold S. Daniels volunteered for the U.S. Army Air Corps. Shipped off to England, he was placed as a flight navigator and his team soon logged more than 30 missions—all without a single combat casualty.

When commanders noted the team’s record, they sent a psychologist in to work with Daniels—to study just what made their teamwork so successful.

This was Arnold Daniels’ first introduction to psychometric testing, and what would become a lifetime passion: solving business problems  through the lens of understanding individuals.

Since 1955, we have honed his wisdom and guidance to create tools that help you inspire your employees be their most productive and engaged.

After the war, Daniels returned to Boston, where he briefly attended Harvard to study workplace psychology. In 1952, he released the first Predictive Index Assessment.

In 1955, Daniels founded PI Worldwide (now called The Predictive Index®). The Predictive Index Behavioral Assessment™ was created through a normative sample of thousands of people and has since been the subject of nearly 500 validation studies. It has received continual updates and today represents a scientifically-proven, well-established, and business-relevant measure of behavioral tendencies in the workplace.

Over six decades since, thousands of organizations have used The Predictive Index in nearly every job and industry around the world.

In 1998, Arnold S. Daniels passed away, but not before cementing his legacy in organizational psychology and psychometrics, and paving the way for the workplace of the future.

Over time, PI also introduced the PI Cognitive Assessment™ —which provides insight into an individual’s capacity to learn new information and the Job Assessment™ — which defines jobs via individual attributes and needs. Together with the PI Behavioral Assessment™, these tools help fulfill Daniels’ vision to identify what uniquely motivates and drives each of us, and better create the opportunity for success in our work.

PI maintains a Science Advisory Board staffed with university professors, industrial and organizational (I/O) psychologists, and other subject matter experts in psychometrics. The board regularly reviews and evaluates our science and methodology so we can continue to build on the well-established foundation and history that we have, as well as our future.