Personality and Learning

Abstract

The idea that the affective variables that we have been discussing in the last two chapters, and which together make up what we call personality, have some influence upon the child’s learning is not new to the teacher. Classroom experience shows him that it is not cognitive variables alone which determine the child’s progress. These variables interact with the child’s attitudes and interests, his motivation, and a wide range of emotional responses such as excitement, sympathy and empathy and, perhaps above all, anxiety. We looked at the specific relationship between learning and anxiety in chapter 8, and pointed out how anxiety can affect not only the assimilation of knowledge in the first place but its recall at a later date, particularly if this recall is demanded under test and examination conditions or in a generally unsympathetic environment. But we need now to stress that some children have habitually higher levels of anxiety than others, so much so that these can be regarded as constituting an enduring personality dimension. Thus we say that one child is timid and nervous, that another is full of confidence, that a third is a real worrier, that a fourth takes things as they come and so on.