Personality and Flight Training Performance

Current naval aircrew selection research typically focuses on psychomotor and cognitive abilities, but evidence from flight training attrition studies suggests that many failures may be due to personality/motivational factors. This study concerns the relationships found between elements of primary flight training performance and the results of two automated personality assessment instruments: a risk test and a pilot personality questionnaire. Both risk test measures correlated significantly with a simple pass/fail index but not with actual flight grades for either student pilots or flight officers. Several of the pilot personality scales correlated significantly with various flight training criteria but many of these were also not orthogonal to measures of the current Navy/Marine Corps aviation selection test battery, while both risk test measures were.