ABSTRACT

Currently, US Air Force clinical psychologists, and other clinical psychologists who assess aviators, use standardized personality measures such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) when evaluating referred pilots. These tests have been normed on the general population, and several studies (Ashman and Telfer, 1983; Picano, 1991; Retzlaff and Gibertini, 1987) demonstrate that pilots, as a group, differ from the general population. For this reason experienced aviation psychologists use pilot-based normative data whenever possible. However, appropriate pilot norms are difficult to establish since psychological tests are rarely given to large representative samples of pilots.