The Personality of Select Theological Students

When 72 male students in a southern theological institution were compared by the manner in which they intended to fulfill their religious vocation (i.e., as missionaries, pastors, or religious education workers), a homogeneity of personality behavior was observed on each of 16 factors. The total sample, however, was reported to be substantially and significantly different from the general population on four factors. No significant difference was reported among the three groups in their need for social approval as measured by the Marlowe-Crowne SDS.     

Personality Types and Vocational Choice: A Test of Holland's Theory

In order to test the adequacy of Holland's theory of vocational choice with reference to a broad segment of entering college students, a sample of the freshman class entering the Pennsylvania State University evaluated themselves in terms of the six personality styles of Holland's theory. Relationships between the personality styles and vocational choices were studied for groups of Decided, Tentative, and Undecided students. While several inversions in the data are evident, the data possess sufficient consistency to indicate that the personality identifications these students made in Holland's frame of reference were related to their initial vocational choices.     

Individual response patterns in binary choice tasks with nondiscriminable stimuli

The present experiment sought to determine whether individual Ss tend to employ repeatedly the same response patterns in binary choice tasks containing nondiscriminable stimuli and, if so, whether the response sequences when used to constructstimulus sequences improve the performance of other choice tasks. Information and frequency analyses of the response sequences of 48 Ss showed moderate consistency of patterning within a light and within a tone task. Performance of a card task following the light and tone tasks was closely related to the task (light or tone) from which the stimulus sequence was obtained. The frequency analysis showed that repetition patterns were preferred by most Ss but at the expense of alternation responses. The presentation of reinforcement in the card task did not improve performance over that observed in the light and tone tasks.     

Negative recency and event-dependence

In a two-choice situation with event-probabilities of 0.67 and 0.33, recency effects were studied as a function of (a) event-dependence and (b) fore-knowledge of event-probabilities. The following conclusions are drawn: (1) Belief in some kind of event-dependence is a necessary condition for the occurrence of negative recency; (2) Foreknowledge of the event-probabilities does not affect recency phenomena; (3) The behaviour of subjects in the two-choice situation, is less irrational than some writers have claimed.