A factor-analytic study of planning abilities.

Abstract

This study is the fifth in a series of investigations designed to explore abilities considered to be important in the successful performance of high-level personnel.2 For the first four studies in 1 Now at System Development Corporation (formerly System Development Division of the RAND Corporation).2 Under Contract N6onr-2g8io with the Office of Naval Research. The ideas expressed in this paper are our own and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Office of Naval Research. Reproduction in whole or in part is permitted for any purpose of the United States Government. Of the authors of this paper, J. P. Guilford is responsible investigator and director of the project, P. R. Christensen is assistant director, and R. M. Berger was in direct charge of this particular study. For a fuller discussion of this study see references no. 2, 4, and 5. P. R. Merrifield participated in the development of the ordering hypothesis and contributed greatly to the construction of items and the devising of scoring methods.We are indebted to the following persons in the University of Southern California departments indicated for making available to us classes for preliminary experimental testing: Dr.

Performance in Planning: Processes, Requirements, and Errors

“…Although other examples of this sort might be cited, the foregoing examples, in fact, suggest that the model of planning capacities proposed by R. M. Berger et al (1957) is indeed plausible. By the same token, however, factoranalytic identification of underlying performance capacities is only one approach that might be used to identify the cognitive processes involved in planning.…”

“…Exactly what cognitive operations, or cognitive processes, are involved in this mental simulation? In an initial study along these lines, R. M. Berger et al (1957) developed a series of 31 performance tests intended to measure key cognitive capacities that might be relevant to planning. This test battery included measures of temporal and hierarchical This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.…”

A Factor-Analytic Study of Flexibility in Thinking

“…Definitions of these factors will be given in the next section, where hypotheses concerning them will be discussed. They have been found a number of times in subsequent studies (1,11,12).…”

Is Being a Jerk Necessary for Originality? Examining the Role of Disagreeableness in the Sharing and Utilization of Original Ideas

“…Divergent thinking ability is defined as the capacity to develop a number of novel solutions to an ambiguous problem. To control for divergent thinking ability, the Unusual Uses Task and Consequences task from Guildford's structure of intellect battery was used (Berger et al 1957). Although scoring metrics vary, in our study we assessed originality, fluency (number of responses generated), and flexibility (number of categories used).…”