On July 21, 2025, the Department of Psychology lost a valued member of our community, Professor Emeritus Arthur (Ralph) Hakstian.
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Dr. Ralph Hakstian, an integral and valued member of the UBC Psychology community. Dr. Hakstian distinguished himself in his scholarship, teaching, and practice as a quantitative psychologist, psychometrician and industrial/organizational psychologist. He completed his undergraduate training at UBC and his graduate studies at the University of Colorado.
Over his academic career, he held faculty positions at the University of Massachusetts, the University of Alberta, and the University of British Columbia, from which he retired with 27 official years of service. At UBC, he taught at the undergraduate and graduate level, worked and published with colleagues across different areas of the Department, and was instrumental in the development of graduate training programs in Psychometrics/Quantitative Psychology and in Industrial/Organizational Psychology.
Throughout his distinguished career, Dr. Hakstian was known not only for his rigorous and innovative research but also for his mentorship and generosity. He mentored his students with care and continued to publish and collaborate with them on consulting projects after their graduation. His commitment to academic excellence and intellectual curiosity shaped generations of students and researchers.
His scholarship included innovations in methods for multivariate statistics including correlation analysis, factor analysis, and scale development. Dedicated to the field of industrial/organizational psychology, his work also extended to areas of research in education, personality, forensic psychology, cognition, perception, and health behaviours.
It is sad to hear that Ralph Hakstian has left us. Ralph and I both arrived at the UBC Psychology Department at the same time in 1972. We immediately struck up a friendship and a collaborative working relationship which resulted in the publication of 11 articles and eight conference presentations together. The articles had to do with perceptual and sensory matters and measurements which were new and unfamiliar to Ralph, just as higher level multivariate techniques were new to me, so we both learned from each other. Our research together has been highly cited and some of the scales that we had developed have been reprinted in introductory psychology textbooks.
Ralph was the brightest psychometrician that I have ever encountered. One of his astonishing skills was the ability to sight rotate a correlation matrix to extract factors, something which I had never encountered before or since, although he claimed that Raymond Cattel could also do it.
Working with Ralph was one of the highlights of my time at UBC. He was a credit to the discipline of quantitative psychology, a good person and a friend. For those of you who knew him you will understand when I say that he will be missed.
We send our deepest condolences to Dr. Hakstian’s family, friends, loved ones, former students, and colleagues.
The BC, Musqueam and UBC flags at the East Mall Entrance and Plaza at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre were lowered on August 30, 2025 in remembrance of Dr. Hakstian and his contributions to the university.
“Right until retirement he was dedicated to teaching, doing research and writing as well as working with many graduate students in the Industrial/Organizational Psychology program which he established. Anyone who had the pleasure of taking a statistics course with him can appreciate the depth of his commitment to this particular field of study!”
