college student attempts the Graduate Record Examination, it is almost cer-
tainly superfluous to verbally encourage the examinee to attempt to perform
well on the test.
In contrast to ability assessment, measures of affect or personality are al-
most always concerned with assessment of typical behaviors (e.g., see Butler
& Fiske, 1955; Cronbach, 1949; Fiske & Butler, 1963). In both structured and
projective techniques of personality assessment, the client or examinee is told
to ‘respond as you would typically behave.’ Structured personality assess-
ments thus ask the individual what he or she likes to do, or how he or she usu-
ally behaves in particular situations. The individual is told that ‘there are no
right or wrong answers’ on personality measures, though the individual may
not actually feel that way when the purpose of the assessment is not counsel-
ing or self-discovery, but organizational selection or placement. Note that
our consideration of affect in this chapter is on the relatively stable aspects—
that is, personality traits, rather than moods or other transient states. (For a
discussion of other approaches to affect in this context, see Linnenbrink &
Pintrich, chap. 3.)
As we discuss in the following, this traditional distinction between maxi-
mal performance and typical behaviors for intelligence and personality is in
some sense an accident of history. These respective approaches may be sub-
optimal for the comprehensive study of intelligence and affect, and it is
most certainly suboptimal for considering how intelligence and affect might
interact with one another. In the criterion domain, however, this distinction
is a useful one. That is, an investigator must understand the nature of the
criterion from this perspective. Is the investigator interested in an individ-
ual’s maximal performance (whether in terms of intellectual activities or
even in terms of personality), or is the interest more in the domain of typical
behaviors? One could reasonably argue that the larger domain of school or
job performance is much more appropriately considered to be typical be-
havior—as the criterion is best conceptualized as what the individual
achieves over an extended period of time, rather than in a brief slice of time.
Or, one might be more interested in what the individual is capable of, when
the conditions are optimized for maximal effort. For example, an individ-
ual’s preference for introverted activities may in fact be largely irrelevant in
determining whether the individual is capable of giving an effective lecture
to a large audience.
We review the constructs of cognition, affect, and conation, in terms of
both typical behaviors and maximal performance. An integrative theory is
presented that focuses on typical intellectual functioning and the inter-
actions between various trait families in determining intellectual develop-
ment and intellectual functioning. Results from empirical studies are also
reviewed, and an agenda for future research is presented.
120 ACKERMAN AND KANFER