A comparative and experimental study of the psychology of set as related to personality.

Examines theoretical aspects of personality from a Western and Soviet viewpoint, and compares the performance by Ss on Soviet and Western personality measures. A theoretical and experimental comparison is made of H. J. Eysenck's and V. G. Norakidze's work. The Soviet interpretation of set is a state of the S in which prior events or activity conditions an individual to perceive stimuli or to react to stimuli in a specific manner. For Western psychologists, set has varied meanings. Experimentally, hysterics and dysthymics significantly differ in set trials on Uznadze set tasks; however, the neurotics and nonneurotics, extroverts and introverts do not differ on set tasks. An experiment with 122 student nurses is described testing 8 hypotheses comparing hysterics with dysthymics, as differentiated by extreme scores on the Eysenck Personality Inventory. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)