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Advances in knowledge about personality will be fostered by improved research methods, but corresponding improvements in our theories will be needed also, better methods will not be enough. Theory itself can have methodological functions, and some methods provide strong impetus toward greater theoretical clarity and rigor. Distinctions between methodological developments in research design, measurement, and analysis need to be maintained, and we badly need more research directed specifically toward improving methodologies. Some papers in this volume point quite clearly to the need for all aspects of our research to be better rationalized and deliberate, casual and opportunistic decisions about how to carry out research simply will not do. These papers indicate, for example, that the trait vs situation controversy would likely never have occurred had the issues been addressed with greater methodological, and logical, rigor. This volume is not complete in its coverage of the potentially useful methods for personality research, and attention should ultimately be devoted to such methods as life histories and case studies and cross-cultural comparisons. In general, however, the papers in this volume offer an opportunity to raise the level of research in personality to a new plane of sophistication and revealingness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research conducted during the last few years has investigated the relationship between these personality variables and several dependent variables including performance on classroom tests, preference for certain degrees of risk, estimation of future success, persistence at tasks, and several others. The extent of these findings has seemed substantial enough to warrant the use of achievement-motivation variables as predictors of performance in applied as well as laboratory studies. This is not to imply that the reported findings are always consistent or that significant differences are always discovered. Since the theory of achievement motivation does appear to be of considerable potential use in several areas, any attempt at clarification would seem to be a contribution in a practical as well as a theoretical sense. In this paper one such attempt will be reviewed and data will be presented that seem to clarify some of the inconsistencies in the literature. In particular, control-of-reinforcement theory, originally devised by Julian Rotter, will be reviewed and an attempt will be made to show how a consideration of this theory along with the theory of achievement motivation can aid in understanding the conditions under which both theories apply.

Spence and Helmreich's (1978) claim that individual differences in four components of achievement motivation (mastery, work, competitiveness, and personal unconcern) are attributable to masculinity and femininity rather than to gender was generally supported, with one exception: Masculinity was associated with competitiveness for males but not for females. Furthermore, competitive women were more likely than noncompetitive women to have mental and physical health problems, but there was no such difference for males. In general, masculinity emerged as a beneficial constellation of traits for both males and females, correlating negatively with achievement conflicts and stress symptoms, and positively with mastery and work. Femininity, on the other hand, appeared to be a detrimental cluster of traits for both sexes, at least in terms of academic performance and health. Implications for the controversial concept of androgyny were discussed, and it was suggested that, in the future, research inspired by an ideal conception of adult behavior confront the ideal directly rather than describe it in terms of the traditional concepts of masculinity and femininity. Any such research effort will have to deal with the pivotal role of competitiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study differed from the earlier studies in substituting a test of thematic apperception for the word-association test. Although disadvantageous in some respects, the thematic responses were expected to offer a richer sample of content than responses in a word association. It was hoped the thematic material would allow for a more adequate test of responses to stimuli of high relevance to parachuting, would provide verification of the previous findings with a different technique, and would uncover information on personality dynamics related to conflict. Specially constructed pictures differing in relevance to parachuting were used to test predictions on content measures of approach and avoidance, a GSR measure of activation, and several measures of cognitive deficit. It was predicted that parachutists would produce positive gradients of GSR and cognitive deficit as a function of an increasing dimension of stimulus relevance, and that the gradients would be steeper and higher on the day of a jump than on a control day. With respect to content, it was predicted that parachutists would produce stronger approach responses than nonparachutists to stimuli of relatively low relevance to parachuting, and that parachutists on the day of a jump would produce stronger approach responses to stimuli of low relevance and weaker responses to stimuli of high relevance than parachutists on a control day.

The purpose of the present investigation was tentatively to establish adult apperceptive norms for selected pictures of the 1943 published TAT series. It was intended to determine the common ways in which the cards are described and interpretively used by a group of normal men and women. The test was to be administered in the usual fashion and the responses for each card then subjected to analysis with the human figures, the objects and the story content as the chief headings. The aim was not to examine the productions for any "deep" interpretations or to study thematic sequences in the record of an individual subject, but to ascertain merely what the subjects as a group made of the stimulus materials descriptively. Since such treatment of the figures and objects is readily understood, the handling of the plots or stories alone requires further comment. Problems and outcomes were to be analyzed not in relation to the subject's personality but purely as literary expressions. For example, a story involving murder was to be classified as murder, or, at most, as an instance of hostility, never as indicating latent or repressed aggression.