ABSTRACT

The method of inquiry is a content analysis, and the data are information contained in letters of recommendation written on behalf of candidates for academic positions. Prominent in the letters is the theme that if an individual is congenial, cooperative, likeable, and/or effective in interaction he will have "no difficulty in fitting into [a] colleague group". The central place that the evaluation of personality has in the letters cannot be overstated. The letters for those who promise to add most to the visibility of a department differ from the letters for those whose appointment would not obviously do this. There are as many references to a man's personality in the letters of the literary scholars as in those for chemists, and being "pleasant" is without question a quality held dear. Given the chimera surrounding declarations about a man's capacity to teach, it is not difficult to understand how extraneous considerations come to infect professional assessment, and, ultimately, professional life.