A recently published study found significant differences in trait emotional intelligence (trait EI) in pilots compared to the general U.S. population. For the study, a control group was matched with a pilot group at a 2:1 ratio based on factors including age, gender, ethnicity and educational background. The results indicated that pilots scored consistently lower than their counterparts in global trait EI, as well as three of its four factors: well-being, emotionality and sociability. For the fourth factor, self-control, no significant differences were identified.
Saying the SU-57 is a Gen 5 fighter is a joke. It barely qualifies as Gen 4+ with an RCS slightly smaller than the SU-35 and the ability to carry some internal munitions. They’ve crashed 2 of the 12 built, can’t keep the engines from exploding and it’s range is hampered by it’s lack of volume. Ivan might have fixed the problems with the “Felon” if India hadn’t pulled out of the project and Adolf Putin hadn’t elected to destroy his entire military in a pointless war against the rest of the world.
The jury’s still out on the ChiCom’s J-10 also but building assets to counter future threats, perceived or otherwise, keeps the Military Industrial Complex occupied and I’m okay with that.
Fighter pilot training… you would think they would all be required to fly at fighter pilot standards if you are flying a fighter.
Always seemed odd they were being trained to be fighter pilots coming from the fleet, in combat…
1962 Aden Protectorate, aka Yemen, keeping the Queens Peace, not always an easy task. Target a rebel fort in a deep wadi in high mountains. Elevation, temperature, altimeter setting uncertain. This writer then a 24 year old Flight Lieutenant (Captain USAF) leading 4 ship Hunter formation, 2x FR10 armed with 4 30mm Aden guns, & two FGA9 carrying 8 x 60lb rockets. The lead pair dive attack with guns from 2000’agl at 540kts leaving at 250’ and 600kts avoiding rocks and indignant tribesmen with .5 machine guns. The high pair dive from 4000’ releasing at approx 3000’, I recall seeing the shadow on the desert floor of the high pair as we left, the rockets strike at Mach 1 with a loud bang so it seemed wise to be elsewhere at that time. Then climb to 40000’ and return to base with 5mins fuel remaining on landing. If the awaiting ground crew start pointing then you have battle damage, no paper work to report in those days. Off to the Officers Mess for a cold beer with lunch, unless scheduled for another mission. I have been shown over the RAF Typhoon, a world away from my Hunter. Likewise civil flying in the old Viscount was a world away from my beautiful Boeing 747-400, both now like the Hunter flown into history.
Words . . . Yours are thought provoking and paint a picture of a harrowing moment in time . . . a moment that few could ever appreciate except those who experienced them. Flying off into history sounds pretty nice! Thank You!
Still haven’t seen the movie and I’m in no rush. Not sure why. I really just don’t care. I really like airplane movies. Just not all that excited over this one.
If you like airplane movies, then go see it. When there is little interest shown in a film’s topic, i.e. aviation-related, those types of movies are far and few between. One, storyline/screenplays don’t get picked up, and two, producers have a hard time getting backing to make an aviation picture…and if a similar prior project did not make money, especially with the extra high costs to make a good or great flying story, after getting burned, they and others are reluctant to take another shot at aviation.
I read the source article. It is obviously written for people in the field so it’s hard for a layman to follow in some areas. As I read it, we score lower on three of the four measures, but the lower score means that we are not less “emotionally intelligent”, but less emotional?
For a profession that needs to keep their heads and do their job right up until the impact, that would seem to be a good thing. As a married man with two teenage daughters, I recognize that you are upset/sad/anxious/etc. I also see that those emotions are not making things better so I’m intelligent about emotions, and I keep them locked in a box in a dark room covered in cobwebs like I’m supposed to. I’m wondering why you are so emotional and how you’ll survive in the world.
This reminds me of the TeD talk where the scientist discovered a test for psychosis that worked perfectly except for some reason he scored as a psychopath himself. Upon further research with his family and friends, it turned out he was a psychopath. He never knew.
I have an idea: why not spend hard-earned grant money - not hard-earned by the researchers, but hard-earned by somebody - on something other than generating more psychobabble? How about, oh, modernizing aircraft engines beyond 1950s technology, or doing some real research on whether human-caused “global cooling,” er - “global warming,” er - “climate change” is a Thing or a fantasy, or whether getting rid of nitrogen-based fertilizers and thereby starving much of the world’s human population makes any sense in an atmosphere that is 80 percent nitrogen. I’m sure those would be a better use of scarce resources than whether pilots appropriately cry in their beer.
I’m shocked, shocked I say! Is there a reason there is a pilot type stereotype among people? And I thought we were all mostly on the edge of the autism spectrum.
As I read it, not necessarily “less emotional”, but rather less perceptive to emotions. I believe there have been similar findings for race car drivers and others in highly-dynamic environments.
Obviously being less reactive to emotions (both from ourselves and others) has helpful benefits in stressful situations. But being perceptive to others’ emotions could also be useful; in particular, for flight instructors and mentor captains.
It’s well-known that learning is degraded under stress, so being able to better perceive when others are under emotional stress can be helpful to better adjust the training in those situations to be more effective. And that doesn’t mean coddling the student/mentee; it might just mean backing off a bit on the overall stress level where possible, such as ending a training flight early due to winds/turbulence that the student isn’t yet ready for, or taking the controls to give them a short breather.
This article doesn’t remotely pass the “so what” test. Puking up information with out explaining what it means is not useful. Reminds me so much of what new intelligence analyst would present only to be summarily sent back for more mentoring and work.
Well, my son is a psychoanalyst and my daughter-in-law is a professor of psychology (my son married up). I’ve sent this to them to see if this explains who I am and why I am that way (wonderful father and father-in-law…right?). Yes, Dan, what they write is hard to understand, and sometimes Leroy it all sounds like “psychobabble” to me. But I keep working with them to try to get them down to my level.
I have not read the source article. Still, I have two observations.
First, commenters seems to want to criticize that of which they have no knowledge as “psychobabble.”
Second, since pilots are different than non-pilots on certain measures of trait emotional intelligence, the next question is whether measures of trait emotional intelligence are associated with metrics of performance as a pilot or future undesirable incidents as a pilot. If so, then the measurements may assist in identifying different training needs among pilot as a function of such measures. The obvious place where such scrutiny of pilots might make sense is in military training.
Of course, the devil lies in the details. For example, a sample of 44 pilots is pretty small and a big question is whether those 44 pilots are a representative sample of some larger group of pilots.
Or, perhaps more interestingly, does the sample of 44 pilots differ from the typical middle-aged white male?
If the average pilot, demographically, does not match the demographics of the general population, then we should probably expect some differences. Being a “pilot” may not be causal at all, just correlated.