title: Personality traits and performance of military parachutist trainees.
abstract: Fifty-two Indian military parachutist trainees were studied throughout the training period to investigate effects of stress in parachutist training on performance efficiency. Stress attributable to fear, anxiety, and apprehension about the inherent risk of paratrooping was studied along with physiological and biochemical changes. An attempt is made to correlate personality traits with performance efficiency. In cognitive and psychomotor tests, maximum deterioration was seen before the tower jump and aircraft jump. The deterioration was correlated with the level of anxiety and urinary catecholamine levels. Inter-correlations between anxiety, catecholamine, and blood pressure were positive, and the level of anxiety was seen to be affecting the quality of performance adversely.
authors.affiliation: Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences, Delhi Cantt, India.
authors.forename: V M
authors.initials: VM
authors.lastname: Sharma
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sridharan
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Selvamurthy
authors.forename: A K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Mukherjee
authors.forename: M M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Kumaria
authors.forename: T N
authors.initials: TN
authors.lastname: Upadhyay
authors.forename: U S
authors.initials: US
authors.lastname: Ray
authors.forename: K S
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Hegde
authors.forename: V R
authors.initials: VR
authors.lastname: Raju
authors.forename: M R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Panwar
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001359:Aviation; D003071:Cognition; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D008297:Male; D008889:Military Personnel / Q000523:psychology*; D010551:Personality; D013315:Stress, Psychological; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis