PERSONALITY AND ATTAINMENT: AN APPLICATION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES TO EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES

Abstract

In education it is important for applied research systematically to apply and test current psychological theories. However oversimplification of a theory will generally lead to inappropriate hypotheses and hence to inconclusive or inconsistent results, in research on personality and academic attainment it has been common to derive hypotheses about the effect of neuroticism directly from an early Hullian formulation. Examples in terms of the academic behaviour of students are used to explain recent adaptations of this basic theory. In particular it is necessary to distinguish between “trait” and “state” anxiety and to incorporate allowances for the effect of previous habit systems. Strongly established habits will control the type of behaviour elicited by drive stimuli, such as imminent examinations. Anxiety, even as a trait variable, can be seen as operating in opposite directions, facilitating or debilitating performance according to the nature of the individual and of the drive stimuli. In the progression from primary to higher education there will be a tendency for individuals whose high neuroticism adversely affects their performance to be eliminated; hence a positive correlation between achievement and neuroticism at this level might be anticipated. While there is considerable complexity in the relationship between anxiety and achievement, it is clear that introversion is consistently linked with success in higher education. This high performance is probably due to the introvert's better study habits and his ability to become conditioned easily to the predominant academic mores. In addition the build-up of reactive inhibition in extraverts during lectures or prolonged periods of study is likely to lead to “avoidance symptoms” in time.