The Concept of Expectancy: A Central Factor in Various Personality Dispositions

The hypothesis that the concept of expectancy is a central common core of various personality dispositions was investigated among 228 students of general education and physical education. The participants were scored on the following personality dispositions: global and academic self-concept, optimistic-pessimistic attributional style, motive to seek success, motive to avoid failure, cognitive anxiety, and self-handicapping tendencies. Marital status and geographical location/area of study of respondents were chosen as discriminative variables. The hypothesis was supported in that factor analysis gave a general bipolar expectancy factor, and cluster analysis resulted in two clusters, one corresponding to a positive expectancy and the other to a negative expectancy.