PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Military experience worthless?
View Single Post
Old 4th Oct 2012, 16:37
  #38 (permalink)  
JW411
 
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: UK
Age: 83
Posts: 3,788
Likes: 0
Received 3 Likes on 3 Posts
I don't know why I am bothering with this but I first got involved in this mumbo jumbo in the 1970's.

I was sent as a "guided volunteer" (ie. I didn't want to go) to RAF Newton on a Management Course. Some of it was interesting and some of it was best described as "dire".

The one interesting day for me was the day we spent with Psychologists from the S4 department of MOD.

The ENI test was interesting. A booklet of about 70 questions that had to be answered in two minutes (Yes/No tick boxes). Within the 70 questions were 5 "lie" questions.

So with the time available, the first answer that came to mind had to be the final answer.

So we would have the introversion/extroversion questions like:

"Would you rather go to a deadly dull party or stay at home and drink on your own".

I went to the party for I figured that I might be able to liven up the party.

To me, the most fascinating bit were the "lie" questions.

For example; "As a child, did you always do what your parents asked you to do". Who in God's name could say "Yes" to that. But, we had one candidate (not aircrew) who got all five lie questions wrong.

My score was 23: 05: 00.

When plotted on the graph, I was in the bottom right corner and the analysis was that I was very extrovert, very stable and my lie quotient was zero.

All of the aircrew were in the bottom right hand corner.

The physicologists told us that however hard we tried, we would not be able to deviate by more than one point around our median.

They told us that the RAF recruitment process was designed to accept stable/extroverts. The top man explained that what we needed were good pilots who, when told by the boss that we were going to bomb Newcastle at 1200Z would say "It's my turn for the napalm". What they did not want was a bunch of pilots asking "Is this altogether wise? Don't you think we could reach a compromise"?

As to civil aviation, I have heard it said that the ideal cockpit contains a stable extrovert and a stable introvert. The introvert stops the extrovert from getting carried away and the extrovert gives the introvert a great deal of confidence.
JW411 is offline