Intelligence, motivation and personality as predictors of training performance in the South African Army Armour Corps

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: It is well documented that intelligence (g, or general cognitive ability) is one of the bestpredictors of job and training performance (Ree, Earles & Teachout, 1994; Schmidt & Hunter,1998). However, research evidence suggests that its predictive validity can be incremented bymeasures of personality and motivation. In this study, measures of general cognitive ability,training motivation and personality were administered to South African Army trainee soldiers(N = 108) to investigate the ability of the measures to predict training performance criteria.Hierarchical multiple regression was used to investigate the relationship between the predictorcomposites and two composites of training performance. Multiple correlations of .529 (p < .01)and .378 (p < .05) were obtained for general soldiering training proficiency and core technicaltraining proficiency respectively. Findings reveal different prediction patterns for the twocriteria, as general cognitive ability contributed to significantly predicting the criterion of generalsoldiering training performance, but not core technical training proficiency. Similarly, trainingmotivation and openness to experience were not found to predict general soldiering trainingproficiency, but predicted core technical training proficiency. Therefore, the results indicate thatthe addition of motivation to a model already containing measures of general cognitive abilitydoes add incremental validity; R2 increased from .051 to .109 (p < .05). Adding personality to amodel already containing general cognitive ability and motivation also explains additionalvariance; R2 increased from .109 to .143, although this change was marginal (p = .055).Furthermore, evidence of interaction between intelligence and training motivation was foundwhen predicting training performance, as motivation influenced performance only for individualswith lower intelligence scores. The implications of the results are discussed and areas for furtherresearch are highlighted.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University