Personality and Motivation

Two pilots with the same licence, the same hours and the same simulator results can behave very differently when a flight starts to go wrong. One stays calm and methodical, another becomes irritable and rushed, a third defers to whoever sounds most confident. Human performance texts explain these differences through personality, the relatively stable pattern of traits that shapes how a person typically thinks, feels and acts, and motivation, the drive that decides how much of a person's ability is actually used.

The subject belongs to the EASA Human Performance and Limitations (040) syllabus and runs through airline selection and crew resource management training. It connects with stress, with flight deck leadership and with fitness to fly, since some mental health conditions are incompatible with holding a licence.

Personality, attitude and behaviour

Personality traits are deep-seated characteristics that are largely innate, inherited or acquired very early in life. They are stable and very resistant to change, although heredity, upbringing and experience all leave their mark over a lifetime. An attitude is different: it is a learned tendency to respond favourably or unfavourably to an object, a person or an idea, and there is no real evidence that attitudes are inherited. Behaviour is the outward result of both, and it is what other people see and judge. Personality is hard to change, but behaviour is chosen, so a pilot can decide to act calmly and constructively whatever his or her temperament.

Personality can be assessed by interviews, role play and projective tests, but on the whole the written questionnaire is the most reliable method. First impressions based on appearance are often wrong, yet they tend to persist, so structured methods are preferred to impressions (see recruitment and selection).

The traits usually described for a good pilot are stability (calmness), a slight tendency to extroversion, reliability and self-discipline, the ability to control one's own emotions and actions. Stability is regarded as the most important trait for crew decision making, because a stable person keeps performing under stress and resists impulsive choices.

Eysenck's PEN model

The psychologist Hans Eysenck described personality along three broad dimensions, known from their initials as the PEN model: psychoticism, extroversion-introversion and neuroticism.

Extroversion is an outward orientation: sociable, talkative, seeking company and stimulation. Introversion is the opposite: reserved, reflective and at ease alone. Neuroticism, the opposite pole to stability, is a tendency to anxiety and emotional instability; Eysenck linked it to a sympathetic nervous system that reacts too quickly, so that arousal rises easily. Psychoticism, the third dimension, is the one exam questions rarely go beyond naming.

The first two dimensions are usually drawn as a graph, with introversion-extroversion on one axis and stability-anxiety (neuroticism) on the other. Each quadrant has a typical description:

The ideal pilot sits near the centre of the graph, with a slight tendency towards stable extroversion. Positions far from the centre carry risks: the aggressive, changeable reactions of the anxious extrovert and the brooding of the anxious introvert both sit badly with calm crew decision making.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

A second approach, common in CRM courses, treats personality as psychological preference. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), developed from Carl Jung's theory of psychological types by an American mother and daughter, sorts preferences into four pairs of opposites:

Four pairs give 16 possible combinations, or types. No preference is right or wrong; each has strengths and weaknesses. The value for a crew lies in awareness. A pilot who prefers detailed facts and a fixed plan will brief, decide and react differently from one who prefers the big picture and room to adapt, and knowing this helps each adjust to the other rather than judge.

People and goal orientation

EASA human performance texts also describe a pilot's interactive style on a simple grid. The P axis measures concern for people: consulting colleagues and caring for the morale and well-being of the crew. The G axis measures goal direction: the drive to complete the task and operate the flight efficiently. A plus sign marks a strong concern and a minus sign a weak one.

The P+ G- risk deserves attention. People accept deficiencies of style in a colleague whose ability they rate highly, and a P+ G- crew member may let such a colleague continue much further on an inappropriate course of action, on the assumption that he or she probably knows what they are doing. The same two concerns reappear in Blake and Mouton's managerial grid, whose 9,9 team style corresponds to P+ G+.

The authoritarian personality

The authoritarian personality has a clear and rigid view of hierarchy, rank and status. Authoritarian individuals are dogmatic with subordinates and do not easily tolerate dissent, yet they become submissive when confronted by someone they perceive as having higher status. On the flight deck an authoritarian captain steepens the authority gradient until the first officer stops contributing, while an authoritarian first officer may defer completely to a senior captain.

The recommended response to an authoritarian captain is to approach with as positive an attitude as possible and to cooperate in a form that is conciliatory but with content that stays firm. Meeting aggression with aggression only escalates the tension.

Neurosis and psychosis

Human performance texts divide mental health conditions into two broad groups. A neurosis is the less serious kind: anxiety states, phobias, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The person keeps insight and contact with reality, the conditions are treatable, and a pilot may return to flying after recovery. Chronic stress is among their documented contributors. A psychosis, such as schizophrenia, is a serious psychiatric illness with loss of insight or of contact with reality; the same texts also group bipolar disorder here. They state that a psychosis results in permanent loss of the licence, and that is the expected exam answer. The medical rules are close to it but not absolute: under the Part-MED guidance for class 1 certificates, a history of a functional psychotic disorder leads to an unfit assessment, and a fit assessment may be considered only if a transient cause has been unequivocally identified, has ceased and carries minimal risk of recurrence.

Fitness in an individual case is assessed by aeromedical examiners and the licensing authority under the medical rules (see medical certification and fitness to fly). After the Germanwings accident of 24 March 2015, the French BEA recommended better follow-up of pilots with a history of mental illness, a reduction of the financial consequences of losing a licence, and peer support programmes, so that pilots seek help early instead of hiding a problem.

Motivation and Maslow's hierarchy of needs

Frank Hawkins summarised motivation as the difference between what a person can do and what he or she will do. Airlines spend heavily on selection, training and checking to make sure pilots are capable of operating to the highest standard; motivation decides whether they actually do.

Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, published in 1943, arranges human needs in five levels, usually drawn as a pyramid. From the base upwards:

1. Physiological needs: food, water, sleep and the other needs of survival.
2. Safety needs: security, stability and freedom from threat.
3. Belonging needs: acceptance, friendship and membership of a group.
4. Esteem needs: respect, recognition and self-respect.
5. Self-actualisation (self-fulfilment): realising one's full potential.

Lower needs must be satisfied first; once a level is met, the next one up becomes the priority, and self-fulfilment is the final stage. Each level has a flight safety side. A hungry, dehydrated or tired pilot is dominated by physiological needs. Fear for one's job can push a pilot to fly when unfit. The wish to belong can keep a first officer quiet on a new crew, and esteem needs can make a go-around or an admitted error feel like a loss of face.

Achievement motivation and the aggressive impulse

Achievement motivation is the drive to succeed and to meet a standard of excellence. It is valuable: achievement orientation is one of the characteristics generally agreed to typify good leaders. In excess it becomes a hazard. When an individual driven by extreme achievement motivation meets an obstacle that blocks the goal, a range of emotions can be released, among them anger, frustration and stress. This is the aggressive impulse. The textbook example is a commander determined to land at the destination whatever the weather, a close relative of the macho and press-on attitudes described under hazardous attitudes.

Excessive motivation therefore raises stress and degrades performance. Too little is just as dangerous. Overconfidence breeds complacency, complacency removes the motivation to practise and keep learning, and performance can then only deteriorate. Human performance texts call this the deterioration effect and use it to explain why general aviation pilots with 1,000 to 3,000 flying hours have a higher accident rate than less experienced pilots.

Rewards and job design

Performance produces rewards of two kinds. Intrinsic rewards come from the work itself: pride and a feeling of achievement. Extrinsic rewards are given by others: pay and promotion. How strongly a reward motivates depends on two independent factors, its perceived value and the perceived probability of attaining it. When rewards are clearly tied to performance, job satisfaction is higher.

Organisations can also raise satisfaction through the design of the job itself:

• Job enrichment gives staff an active part in policy and decisions about their own work, for example cabin crew involved in deciding meal timings, or flight crew consulted on instrument layout.
• Job enlargement widens the job. Horizontal enlargement adds variety, as when a captain delegates tasks to the first officer; vertical enlargement adds control, as when crews have a say in their own rosters through self-rostering.

A crew with realistic ambition, satisfying work and fair rewards is more likely to follow procedures because it wants to, not because it is being watched. The same understanding helps the captain, whose behaviour sets the motivation of the whole team, and the first officer, who has to work with personalities very different from his or her own.

Library articles are written for study and exam preparation. They do not replace your aircraft's approved documentation, your operator's procedures or the regulations themselves.