Personality Variables and Skill Acquisition: Performance While Practicing a Complex Task

Many studies have looked at the influence of abilities on skill acquisition. There is reason to suspect, however, that skill acquisition may also be influenced by certain personality constructs. In this article, background data items measuring relevant personality constructs were administered to 234 subjects along with measures of certain basic abilities. Subjects were then asked to practice a complex skill acquisition task for 4 hr in which the conditions of performance were manipulated to influence task difficulty, mapping con- sistency, and feedback. In a structural modeling effort, it was found that both personality constructs and abilities influenced skill acquisition, but that dif- ferent constructs influenced performance in different practice periods. The implications of these findings for understanding the role of personality in skill acquisition were discussed.