Personality is a strong determinant for success in any career.

---

Each career field has its own set of requirements, expectations, and stressors. People possessing certain personality traits often succeed remarkably well in some careers yet fail in others. As a result, many airlines and large corporations employ personality tests to determine suitability for employment. In the most basic sense, the interview is a personality test - "will you fit in to this organization?"

There is no singular type of person who succeeds the most in aviation, as there is no single profile for any career field. However, most career fields have people who embrace at least some of the most common personality traits. These grouped individuals often speak, act, dress and behave similarly. Pilots are known to be conservative dressers, clear speaking, decisive, law-abiding, intelligent but not intellectual, and emotionally distant. Introverted detail-oriented people make better computer programmers, accountants and researchers. Extroverted, talkative people often succeed in sales, marketing, and criminal law. Risk takers make good firemen and creative people good artists, writers and inventors. People who lack self-confidence, are very emotive or indecisive, or who flaunt rules, regulations and the law make very poor professional pilots.

Personality Traits of Pilots

This list was excerpted from "Stress and Adaptation: The Interaction of the Pilot Personality and Disease", R.J. Ursano, Aviation Space and Environmental Medicine, Nov. 1980. This paper examines group adaptation and stress-related mental illness in pilots.

• Physically healthy
• Lacks signs of neurosis
• Self-sufficient
• High need to achieve
• Prefers short-range goals to long-range goals
• Non-intellectually oriented
• Seeks responsibility and novelty
• Male pilots are unconflicted with other males
• Male pilots exhibit anxiety when feeling too close to women
• Emotionally avoidant
• More concerned with modifying their environment than changing their own behavior
• Limited choice in activities
• Low tolerance toward personal imperfections
• Need excitement
• Need individual initiative
• Ignore and avoid inner feelings
• Inner feelings perceived as external
• Avoid introspection (looking within one's own mind or feelings)
• Cautious about close relationships
• Avoid revealing true feelings
• Avoid brooding and fighting
• Rarely become tearful
• Use humor to cope with anxiety or stress
• Keep thoughts concrete
• Have difficulty with ambiguous situations
• Don't handle failures well
• Find it difficult to cope when confronted with emotional situations

A 2004 NASA study entitled Pilot Personality Profile Using the NEO-PI-R (Amy Fitzgibbons, Donald Davis, and Paul C. Schutte) found that pilots score low or very low for neuroticism, anxiety, angry hostility, depression, self-conciousness, impulsiveness and vulnerability while they score very high for conscientiousness, competence, dutifulness, achievement striving, self-discipline, deliberation, assertiveness, activity and positive emotions. Pilots score average for extraversion, gregariousness, openness, agreeableness, trust, straightforwardness, modesty and tendermindedness. Overall, the authors' finding that "the critical component of this paper is the demonstration that a subset of society (pilots) tends to have personality domains and dimensions that are consistent across background and circumstance. If these types of people are either drawn to this field or selected into it, it is important for researchers of aviation to explore how this finding impacts the field of aviation."

Another paper, Practical Use Of The Pilot Personality Profile (Robert G. Rose, Ph.D, 2001) also finds that pilots as a group are fairly consistent. He found that pilots "generally have good social skills and good reasoning ... are able to deal with complex information, make decisions and deal with people. Thus, they tend to be bright, and capable of good social interaction when called for ... similar to many other white-collar occupational groups." He found that pilots are "the standard for optimism and confidently-expressed attitudes" and do a good job of "keeping emotion out of the cockpit". Since pilots must maintain their health, as a group we are energetic and have good stamina, and while appearing to be "rapid-fire in the cockpit" are actually quite slow and methodical. We process and want quite a bit of information, yet prefer it to be "highly condensed and succinct." Pilots don't do well in long-winded meetings! Lastly, he found that pilots are "cooperative", but when it comes to flying the aircraft and safety issues pilots can be "hard -nosed to the point of intransigence".

In summary, Dr. Rose says that "Pilots are positive, but they remain so by questioning everything that could go wrong. They are diligent but they do not like rushing, especially to meet artificial deadlines. They are interested in what's going on but like to have a quick overview of the big picture at the outset and they like their information to be concise. Finally, they are cooperative but never ask them to delegate decisions about safety; it's not a choice they have nor one passengers would want them to have."

The military has a great interest in assessing pilot personalities for safety, training and adaptability to the military flying environment. Revised NEO personality inventory profiles of male and female U.S. Air Force Pilots by Joseph D. Callister "describes normative personality characteristics of U.S. Air Force pilots based on the Revised NEO Personality Inventory profiles of 1,301 U.S. Air Force student pilots. Compared with male adult norms, male student pilots had higher levels of extraversion and lower levels of agreeableness. Compared with female adult norms, female student pilots had higher levels of extraversion and openness and lower levels of agreeableness."

"... data suggest that the average male student pilot is more extroverted than men in the general population. Although not particularly warm interpersonally, he is much more assertive and physically active, and he seeks excitement and stimulation. The average pilot appears to be altruistic, but at the same time he is highly competitive, skeptical, and toughminded. He describes himself as achievement oriented, highly competent, responsible, and capable of handling high levels of stress. The average female student pilot shows very similar characteristics. She is outgoing, active, and assertive. She is highly competitive, tough-minded, and achievement oriented. However, she is also more open to new experiences, such as new ideas, emotions, actions, and creative thought. Such a finding is not surprising considering that flying a military aircraft is counter to traditional female roles. The average female student pilot also seems to be willing to experience emotions, but she may feel less self-conscious and less vulnerable than women from the general population." Like the NASA study cited above, USAF student pilots scored high for extrovertedness and low for agreeableness. Neuroticism and conscientiousness were average.

There is a tremendous interest by aviation psychologists in quantifying pilot personalities as a safety predictor. An article appearing the International Journal of Aviation Psychology in 1991 entitled "Pilot personality and crew coordination: implications for training and selection." by TR Chidester, RL Helmreich et al., NASA Ames Research Center addresses this issue. The abstract: "The performance of pilots can be construed as a product of skill, attitude, and personality factors. Although a great deal of effort within the aviation community has been focused on ensuring technical expertise, and new efforts highlight attitudes associated with crew coordination, personality factors have been relatively unexplored. Further, it is argued that past failures to find linkages between personality and performance were due to a combination of inadequate statistical modeling, premature performance evaluation, and/or the reliance on data gathered in contrived as opposed to realistic situations. The goal of the research presented in this article is to isolate subgroups of pilots along performance-related personality dimensions and to document limits on the impact of crew coordination training between the groups. Two samples of military pilots were surveyed in the context of training in crew coordination. Three different profiles were identified through cluster analysis of personality scales. These clusters replicated across samples and predicted attitude change following training in crew coordination."

Beginning pilots experience what is called "the killing zone", when they have 40-250 hours of flight time and are the most vulnerable to fatal errors. The Killing Zone: How & Why Pilots Die by Paul Craig addresses this risk by looking at pilot personalities as they impact safe decision making. Included is a "Pilot Personality Self-Assessment Exercise for an individualized survival strategy".