Personality traits of successful military pilots

Recent researches have shown that the broad domain of job performance can be influenced by personality traits of personnel. In this study, the relation of five big personality traits of the pilots with their job performance was measured based on the NEO-PI-R (240-question form). Forty military pilots were selected through cluster sampling. The results of this study indicated significant relation between three dimensions of personality traits, openness experience (O), agreeableness (A) and conscientiousness (C) and of flight standardization check (considered as job performance of pilots). But no relationship was found between two dimensions of personality traits, neuroticism (N) and extraversion (E) with grades of flight standardization check of pilots. The result of stepwise regression showed that the personality dimensions of openness experience and agreeableness could be important predictors of pilot's job success with an accuracy of twenty six percent. The findings have numerous implications for research and practice in aviation psychology field, especially in the subfields of personnel employment and performance evaluations.