Preference for people and tasks

The authors investigated the preferences of Social (S) and Investigative (I) people for performing S and I tasks with either S or I people or alone. Participants, 38 upper division undergraduates in Social majors and 15 upper division undergraduates in Investigative majors, were administered a paired- comparison inventory in which the stimuli to be compared were task (S or I) and people (S, I, or alone) combinations. As expected, S participants preferred to work with S people, particularly on S tasks, although they preferred (slightly) to perform an I task with S people rather than an S task with I people. I participants most preferred to perform I tasks with I people and least preferred to perform an I task with S people, confirming the conjecture that I people avoid S environments that require emotional interactions, in spite of the tasks that might be performed in the environment.