Adaption-innovation is a construct of preferred problem-solving style; adaptors work best within clear guidelines and prefer to “do things better”, whereas innovators bridle at structure and prefer to “do things differently”. Adaption-innovation bears considerable putative similarity to self-monitoring and self-consciousness. In this study the relationships among these constructs were explored using the responses of 55 undergraduate students (48 females, 7 males) on the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory (KAI; Kirton, 1976), the Self- Monitoring Scale (Snyder & Gangestad, 1986) and the Self-Consciousness Scale (Fenigstein, Scheier, & Buss, 1975). Higher adaption-innovation scores were significantly and positively associated with higher self-monitoring scores and significantly and negatively associated with social anxiety scores. In addition, multiple regression analyses indicated that the facets of self-consciousness as well as self-monitoring significantly predicted adaption-innovation. The implications of examining cognitive style in relation to interpersonal attributes are discussed.

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In a study based on the contention that response decrement may be interpreted in terms of learned helplessness only if Ss are aware that their poor performance is due to factors beyond their control (N = 60 male and female high school students), awareness was manipulated by varying "task significance" within the learned helplessness paradigm. Evidence was provided for the hypothesis that Test Task performance would vary inversely with task significance: i.e., the degree to which Ss perceived their competence to be reflected in low scores on the (unsolvable) Training Task. Compared to the Control group, Experimentals (a) solved significantly fewer Test Task anagrams of moderate difficulty, and (b) showed markedly decreased confidence and increased anxiety about their performance, which they attributed to uncontrollable personal characteristics. These findings supported the assertion that learned helplessness has been inadequately substantiated as the explanation of the results of several previous studies.

The hypothesis that performance should be comparable in university day and night courses was not supported. Mean grades in morning classes were significantly lower than those for the afternoon and evening. A number of possible contributors to this discrepancy are discussed. Consideration is given to the need to reexamine previous findings that "morning" and "evening" types are normally distributed.

The heuristic similarity between innovativeness and uniqueness motivation was investigated. Fifty-eight male and 107 female first-year undergraduates completed the Need for Uniqueness Scale (NUS; Snyder and Fromkin, 1980) and Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory (KAI; Kirton, 1976). As predicted, Innovators obtained significantly higher scores on uniqueness motivation than did Adaptors (p < .001), and Need for Uniqueness correlated substantially with Innovation (r=0.55). These findings provide support for the hypothesis that uniqueness-seeking may simply be a manifestion of extreme innovativeness rather than an independent dimension of personality.