Method
In much research on the relationship of personality to occupations and on personality to academic categories, the focus has been placed on personality traits, capacities, and skills. Whatever merits this approach may have, its principal weakness is that it is based on a distorted, or at least partial, conception of personality in that it ignores the fundamental properties of organization and structure. Many of the shortcomings in the prediction of academic and/or occupational success have been due to such faulty and/or inappropriate conceptions of personality. Roe pointed out some time ago that "programs in individual psychology have not gone farther than they have... because job allocation has been conceived in terms of aptitude rather than in terms of the whole personality who is to do the job". One promising alternative dimension for this analytical problem may be that of personality structure.
The personality measure was derived from the conceptual orientation of dogmatism offered by Rokeach (1954, 1960) as an alternative approach to that of The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno, et al. 1950). With the concept of dogmatism, Rokeach is concerned essentially with the organization of belief systems and more especially with what he calls the openness and closedness of belief systems. The theoretical utility of this approach is that the Dogmatism Scale concentrates on the structural properties common to authoritarian ideologies to delineate personality structure. It is not so much what one believes as how one believes that distinguishes the dogmatic personality structure. He may be described as one who has a closed or dogmatic way of thinking about any ideology regardless of its content, is rigid in regard to opinions and beliefs, and makes an uncritical acceptance of authority. Central to the dogmatic syndrome, moreover, is the intolerance of ambiguity. Intellectual ambiguity in many respects is a focal characteristic of the higher educational enterprise, especially in the Humanities and the Liberal Arts. The dogmatic personality structure in its ideal-typical form is one that prefers stereo typic thinking and black-white, categorical judgments to subjective speculation on un-resolvable questions involving judgments of personal value. Such a personality structure should have crucially functional significance in the academic enterprise.
Were 198 male students, representing a 20 per cent random sample of the undergraduate student body of a small, private, Eastern university. Our sample is distributed uniformly in terms of class status.
Were administered Form E (complete version) of the Rokeach Dogmatism Scale (1960) as part of a questionnaire concerned with measuring attitudes toward student roles and academic life in general. The personality inventory was scored on a positive/negative basis along a continuum of scores polarized from -120 to +120. Directions for answering the Dogmatism Scale were essentially those used by Rokeach in his original research. The standard Liker response-format, with no neutral category, was used. These data were collected on the final day of the academic year. Accordingly, all 5s had at least one, complete academic year in their curricula.
Our hypothesis is that significant differences in personality structure modally characterize the major curriculum/career areas. More specifically, relatively structured fields (such as those disciplines which comprise the physical and natural sciences) are more likely to attract students with dogmatic personality structures than are the relatively non-structured fields (such as those disciplines which comprise the humanities).
Results
Our findings, show that significant differences in personality do characterize the principal academic areas of curriculum/career choice, precisely as hypothesized (x2, p = .02).
Behavioral Sciences and Liberal Arts majors show a distribution of dogmatic and non-dogmatic scores in 1:2 ratio respectively; Business Administration majors, despite a slight dominance of non-dogmatic scorers, are rather evenly divided between both types of scorers, but for Physical and Natural Sciences majors an antithetical pattern obtains with a more than 2:1 distribution of dogmatic to non-dogmatic scorers.
There is a progressive change in personality distribution as one moves from the Liberal Arts and Behavioral Sciences (relatively unstructured disciplines) toward the Physical Sciences (highly structured disciplines). The modal personality structure for Behavioral Sciences and Liberal Arts is non-dogmatic, and for Physical Sciences dogmatic. Such a-polarity of modal types in the frequency distribution of dogmatic and non-dogmatic personality structures substantiates our specific hypothesis. Further support both individually and collectively comes from the categories of Behavioral Sciences and Humanities being markedly distinguished from Business Administration and Physical-Natural Sciences, which in turn are notably distinguished from each other.
The distribution of these gross personality types by grade-point levels is not statistically significant (x2=.06, df = 1, p>.90). These findings are generally consistent with those of Low (1972), but not with those of Hanson (1972) who utilized much smaller samples.
One curious finding concerns the Behavioral Sciences. The results for these disciplines reflect the various directions (scientific, humanistic, activistic, and empirical) which characterize these fields today, as well as the significant difference in subject matter (human behavior) when contrasted with the Physical and Natural Sciences.
Individuals seem to be attracted to particular academic pursuits, and may be recruited into specific occupations, in a differential manner such that given academic disciplines and related professional careers are characterized by modal personality types. Further delineation by major findings may prove interesting.
Personality alone, of course, does not determine an academic or career choice, but personality structure may determine the broad areas of one's choices in both respects. Our thesis is one of structural congruence between the personality system and the respective academic and work systems which is functional for both the personal and the social system. With varied options available, personality structure may help channel choice and even play a dominant role in selection of the occupational or professional career.
Crucial to this whole question of structural-functional congruence is the consequence of systemic performance. Certain dynamics of individual behavior within educational systems and processes, such as success and failure (degrees thereof) in academic performance, can be understood more thoroughly in terms of the total personality functioning, and the nature of the congruent relationship with the given processes and system, rather than as simple questions of aptitude and motivation. For example, much of the individual alteration of major fields of study (academic "job changing"), not only at the undergraduate level, but even that observed between the various levels of higher education, might be a consequence of the lack of functional congruence between the structural dimensions of the disciplines and the psychological requirements and capacities of the personalities involved.
The search for systemic congruence between personal and academic systems has a direct parallel in the occupational/professional realm. One example would be that of job changing which for young Americans occurs on an average of seven times in a lifetime (U. S. Department of Labor, 1964). Job changing involves other psychological factors, not to mention economic considerations, but the search for congruency, we suggest, operates more saliently than has been recognized. The awareness and understanding of such dynamics can have notably similar and consistent value, both practically and theoretically for work systems.
