project to individuals who are high or low on artistic interests). Clearly, as with
affective traits, the imposed situation may have a substantial overriding effect
on behaviors. A strong environmental press (such as monetary rewards) can be
effective in reducing the variance in behavior attributable to interests, at least
in the short term. In the long term, extant data suggest that a mismatch be-
tween a pattern of underlying interests and occupation or educational activities
may lead to dissatisfaction or withdrawal (e.g., see Super, 1940), which in turn,
would be expected to lead to lower levels of typical performance.
According to Holland’s (1959) theory of vocational interests, there were
two components to consider—the individual’s dominant interest theme (such
as intellectual or enterprising) and the occupational level, which is tied to the
intellectual demands of the particular job. Self-concept (what the individual
thinks he or she is capable of doing) and objective intellectual abilities com-
bine to yield an orientation toward higher or lower occupational level. Al-
though the occupational level aspect of the theory has not received as much
empirical research as vocational themes have, the issue may be complicated
by an underlying asymmetry. That is, individuals with high self-concept and
high abilities may not actually aspire to high occupational levels, but instead
may be quite content with a lower occupational level that may have fewer
work demands, and greater opportunities for avocational interests (such as
family, community, or hobbies). Individuals with low self-concept and low
abilities obviously would not realistically have the kinds of choices in occupa-
tional level that are available to high ability persons.
For distal motivational traits (such as need for achievement—nAch), indi-
viduals are hypothesized to differ in terms of their ad hoc orientation toward
accomplishing tasks, which in turn, would be associated with their desire to al-
locate effort on a task. Ceteris paribus (everything else being equal), individu-
als with lownAch will typically allocate less effort to an assigned task with
some anticipation of evaluation, while individuals with highernAch will allo-
cate more effort. Unlike TIE, we would hypothesize thatnAch would be posi-
tively related to both Gf and Gc. The reason for this is that high levels ofnAch
would be associated with both short term levels of maximum effort (i.e., during
performance of a Gf test) and longer term typical effort expenditures (i.e., for
acquisition of Gc knowledge and skills). A meta-analysis of the literature sup-
ports this general assertion (Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997). Narrower motiva-
tional traits such as a learning orientation, which is conceptually closer in con-
tent to the TIE personality construct, tend to show positive correlations with
Gc and negligible correlations with Gf (Kanfer & Ackerman, 2000).
TRAIT COMPLEXES
The concept that particular constellations of traits may be more or less effec-
tive for learning was first introduced by Snow (1963). Snow called such con-
stellations of traits aptitude complexes—a concept that was central to his in-
- TYPICAL AND MAXIMAL PERFORMANCE 125