The Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting Performance: Implications for Aptitude Testing for Interpreting 9819963346, 9789819963348

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Xing Xing

The Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting Performance Implications for Aptitude Testing for Interpreting

The Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting Performance

Xing Xing

The Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting Performance Implications for Aptitude Testing for Interpreting

Xing Xing South-Central Minzu University Wuhan, Hubei, China

ISBN 978-981-99-6334-8 ISBN 978-981-99-6335-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6335-5 Jointly published with Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press The print edition is not for sale in China (Mainland). Customers from China (Mainland) please order the print book from: Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press. © Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publishers, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publishers nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publishers remain neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore Paper in this product is recyclable.

Acknowledgements

Many people have contributed to this book, without whom this completion would never have been possible and to whom I’m perpetually grateful. Above all, I owe my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Prof. Chen Jing. She not only teaches me to think critically and present clearly my arguments, guiding me with profound incisiveness and patience in writing and revising this book, but also encourages me with her words and deeds. From her, I have seen a teacher who truly concerned about students’ development and progress, a mentor who provides mental support and wise advice, as well as a friend who offers trust and help. She always imparts us how important it is to work as a team, which is a life-long benefit to me. I’m indeed thankful to Prof. Li Dechao and Prof. Wang Binhua at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University for offering me a precious opportunity to study at a top-notch university with abundant academic resources and furnishing me with valuable insights. During the year at the PolyU, I have opportunities to meet Prof. Liu Minhua, Prof. Daniel Gile, Prof. Mona Baker, and Ms. Jiang Hong. Meetings with them individually or together have been the most valuable experience I have had. I wish to give my appreciation to all the members of our admirable team: Prof. Xiao Xiaoyan, Prof. Su Wei, Prof. Han Chao, Dr. Yang Liuyan, Dr. Deng Yi, Dr. Fu Yanqi, Dr. Liu Ying, and Dr. Zhao Xiao. It is under their guidance or instruction that I am trained to do, teach, and study interpreting. I want to acknowledge the good friends I have made mainly during my stay at Xiamen University and CBS of the HK PolyU. They are: Chen Yuping, Dr. Fu Rongbo, Wang Ronghua, Qian Yifei, Lu Lichun, Dr. Su Yajuan, Jin Lu, Dr. Zhang Aizhen, Ren Defa, Chen Xiangmei, Hu Juan, Xiao Rui, Chen Pushun, Yang Huabo, and Fang Wenhong. I will always cherish the days we talked and laughed together when life on campus became extremely monotonous. And Zha Jianshe, Yang Xiaolin, Wang Yunhong, Lin Minfen, Ma Xingcheng, Zhang Lejin, Wang Yan, and Yu Jing in the PolyU dissolved my loneliness in the hectic Hong Kong. Their company over the past four years is a treasure to my journey of doctoral study. Gratitude for the family support through the years of my academic pursuit could never be thoroughly expressed. I feel particularly indebted to the beloved ones: v

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Acknowledgements

My husband, my son Anan, my parents, and my father- and mother-in-law for their unconditional love, unwavering understanding, and sustaining encouragement. I wish what I have accomplished today is worthy of their devotion. Finally, I am also grateful to the Springer team and the team of Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press for their generous help, especially Song Yan. Any error is, of course, of my own making. In addition, my sincere thanks also goes to South-Central Minzu University and South-Central Minzu University Social Science Foundation; without this fund, this book would not be possible.

About This Book

Interpreters are made not born (Mackintosh, 1999: 67). It is believed that everybody has the potential to become an interpreter after training. Nonetheless, time constraints and financial limitations make it advisable to select applicants who need the least training. Aptitude testing for interpreting, with a purpose to admit the most promising candidates, has thus become not only a practical necessity for institutions, but also a concerned issue among interpreting researchers. Literature review and empirical survey discover that aptitude testing for interpreting attaches great importance to cognitive aptitude, such as language transfer, comprehension, analysis, and the like, which is characterized by being standardized, quantified, and replicable. Most importantly, it determines success or failure of a specific task. Comparatively, non-cognitive attributes, personality in particular, albeit recognized as important, are seldom measured, due to their complex structure and shortage of scientific measurement tools. Bearing this void in mind, I intend to focus this book on the research of personality traits in aptitude testing for interpreting, with an aim to expand objective ways of testing candidates for the requisite knowledge and skills. Personality hardiness, underpinning in existential psychology, is such a vital and valuable personality trait for interpreters. With a constellation of three crucial characteristics, namely commitment, control, and challenge, personality hardiness is presented as facilitating perception, evaluation, and coping that lead to successful resolution of the situation created by stressful events. It not only contributes to decreasing physical and psychological illness but also conduces to improving performance under stress in a wide range of contexts from the military to medical schools and to colleges. Interpreting is a highly stress-provoking activity and interpreters normally work under great pressure. Accordingly, an ideal interpreter is expected to possess personality traits of “stress-resistance,” “resilience,” “psychological stamina,” and “nerves of steel,” to name but a few. Apparently, personality hardiness shares similarities with the aforementioned aptitudes. Indeed, available research reveals that it is a better predictor of effective coping with stressful circumstances. Hence, I attempt to borrow this useful psychological concept—personality hardiness to interpreting

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About This Book

studies, exploring whether it facilitates the performance of interpreters as it does among lawyers, military cadets, nurses, teachers, and so forth. Since the current research is an exploratory study of the relations between personality hardiness and interpreting performance, it is worthwhile to investigate whether there lies a mediator or moderator to affect this relationship. Given the hardiness model that it is via alleviating stress that hardiness enhances performance as well as the evidence that hardiness and self-efficacy are intimately associated, this dissertation is devoted to an empirical investigation into the effects of personality hardiness on interpreting performance, with interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy as two intermediates. Toward this end, a quantitative method of questionnaire survey and a qualitative in-depth interview are adopted among 149 Chinese student interpreters at postgraduate level. In this book, Chap. 1 presents a succinct introduction to the research motives, questions, and methodology. In Chaps. 2 and 3, relevant literature is thoroughly and critically reviewed, and a research framework is clearly unfolded. Chapter 4 introduces in detail the research designs, hypotheses, data collection procedures, and analysis methods, followed by findings pertaining to each hypothesis. In Chap. 5, an elaborated discussion on the effects of personality hardiness on interpreting performance, self-efficacy as well as interpreting anxiety is provided. With the substantiated effectiveness, a framework for personality hardiness measurement in aptitude testing for interpreting is tentatively proposed in Chap. 6, aligned with a detailed illustration on measuring tools and procedures. Chapter 7 concludes the book with a summary of major findings, significance, and suggestions for follow-up endeavors in the future. The major findings of the current research are: Firstly, personality hardiness, interpreting anxiety, self-efficacy, and interpreting performance are interrelated. Specifically, personality hardiness is significantly negatively correlated with interpreting anxiety and positively related to self-efficacy and interpreting performance; secondly, personality hardiness is of significant predictability on interpreting performance, interpreting anxiety, and self-efficacy, respectively; thirdly, interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy play a mediating role in personality hardiness and interpreting performance linkages separately, which indicate, in addition to a direct correlation with interpreting performance, personality hardiness influences students’ interpreting performance via relieving interpreting anxiety and enhancing sense of self-efficacy. The present investigation reveals that personality hardiness is a valuable trait to student interpreters. By presenting systematically the effects of personality hardiness on interpreting performance, this book is believed to contribute theoretical as well as empirical stepping stones to understanding the position of personality hardiness in aptitude testing for interpreting, providing the stakeholders with insights or blueprints in selecting the most teachable candidates for interpreting training programs. In addition, findings of this book will shed light on personality dispositions research on interpreter performance, injecting fresh impetus to embark on a new research agenda designed to further understanding of hardiness-performance linkages in interpreters.

About This Book

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Finally, this study, taking an interdisciplinary viewpoint of and drawing a heavy load of scholarship from research on psychology and second language acquisition, will in return lend itself to these flourishing domains in one way or another.

Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Motivations for the Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.1 Rational for the Research on Aptitude Testing for Interpreting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.2 Rational for the Research on Personality Hardiness . . . . . . . 1.1.3 Rational for the Research on Interpreting Anxiety and Self-Efficacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Research Significance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Research Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Research Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Layout of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 1 1 2 3 5 6 7 8

2 Literature Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Working Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.1 Defining Aptitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.2 Aptitude, Ability, Intelligence and Personality . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Overview of Aptitude for Foreign Language Learning . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 Foreign Language Aptitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2 Foreign Language Aptitude and SLA Process . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.3 Affective Variables in SLA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Overview of Aptitude for Interpreting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.1 Research at an Earlier Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.2 Research in More Recent Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Overview of Personality Hardiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.1 Construct of Personality Hardiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.2 Measurement of Personality Hardiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.3 Empirical Research on Personality Hardiness . . . . . . . . . . . .

9 9 9 10 11 11 12 14 20 21 24 30 30 31 32

3 Personality Hardiness and Aptitude Testing for Interpreting . . . . . . . 3.1 Conceptualization of Personality Hardiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.1 Underpinning in Existential Courage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.2 Dimensionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

37 37 37 38 xi

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Contents

3.1.3 Personality Hardiness Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Aptitude Testing for Interpreting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.1 Necessity of Aptitude Testing for Interpreting . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.2 Aptitude Testing Models for Interpreting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.3 Personality Hardiness and Aptitude Testing for Interpreting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Research on the Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting Performance: With Interpreting Anxiety and Self-efficacy as Intermediates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Quantitative Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1.1 Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1.2 Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Qualitative Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.1 Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.2 Semi-Structured Interview Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.3 Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Data Collection and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.1 Data Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.2 Data Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Results of Quantitative Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.1 Correlations Between the Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.2 Predictive Validity of Personality Hardiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.3 Mediating/Moderating Effect of Interpreting Anxiety . . . . . . 4.4.4 Mediating/Moderating Effect of Self-efficacy . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Results of Qualitative Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.1 Information Triangulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.2 Roles of Personality Hardiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

39 41 41 42 45

49 51 51 53 59 59 59 60 60 60 61 62 63 65 70 76 81 82 84

5 Implications of Research on the Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 5.1 Correlations Between Personality Hardiness and Interpreting Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 5.2 Predicative Validity of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 5.3 Mediating Effect of Interpreting Anxiety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 5.4 Mediating Effect of Self-efficacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 5.5 Personality Hardiness in Aptitude Testing for Interpreting . . . . . . . . 104 6 A Tentative Framework for Personality Hardiness Measurement in Aptitude Testing for Interpreting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Personality Hardiness and Related Personality Traits in Interpreting Aptitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.1 Personality Hardiness and Stress-Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.2 Personality Hardiness and Resilience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

107 107 108 109

Contents

6.1.3 Personality Hardiness and Other Stress-Resistance Qualities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Incorporating Personality Hardiness in Aptitude Testing for Interpreting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.1 Significance of Incorporating Personality Hardiness into Aptitude Testing for Interpreting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.2 A Tentative Framework for Personality Hardiness Measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Measurement of Personality Hardiness in Aptitude Testing for Interpreting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.1 Measurement Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.2 Sub-components of Personality Hardiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Overview of the Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Major Findings of the Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.1 Personality Hardiness and Interpreting Anxiety . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.2 Personality Hardiness and Self-efficacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.3 Personality Hardiness and Interpreting Performance . . . . . . . 7.2.4 Personality Hardiness in Interpreting Aptitude . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.5 Personality Hardiness Measurement in Aptitude Testing for Interpreting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Contributions of the Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4 Limitations and Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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110 111 111 114 116 116 118 121 121 122 122 123 123 124 125 126 127

Appendix A: Questionnaire for Student Interpreters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Appendix B: Script for English–Chinese Consecutive Interpreting Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Appendix C: Script for Chinese–English Consecutive Interpreting Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Appendix D: In-depth Interview Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Abbreviations

3Cs ACIT BA CI EFL EIC FLA FLL GSE HS IA IAS IP IRR MA MTI PH SE SLA

Commitment, Control, and Challenge Accreditation Center for Interpreters and Translator Bachelor of Art Consecutive Interpreting English as a Foreign Language English Interpreting Certificate Foreign Language Aptitude Foreign Language Learning General Self-efficacy Hardiness Scale Interpreting Anxiety Interpreting Anxiety Scale Interpreting Performance Interrater Reliability Master of Art Master of Translation and Interpreting Personality Hardiness Self-efficacy Second Language Acquisition

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List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 3.4 Fig. 3.5 Fig. 3.6 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4 Fig. 4.5 Fig. 4.6 Fig. 4.7 Fig. 4.8 Fig. 4.9 Fig. 4.10 Fig. 4.11 Fig. 4.12 Fig. 4.13 Fig. 4.14 Fig. 4.15 Fig. 4.16 Fig. 4.17 Fig. 4.18

Foundational cognitive aptitude model (adapted from Macnamara 2012: 11) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Unidimensional conception of personality hardiness (Kobasa et al. 1982) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A hierarchical multidimensional construct of personality hardiness (Hystad et al. 2011) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The hardiness model for performance and health enhancement (Maddi and Kobasa 1984) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aptitude model for simultaneous interpreting by Chabasse (2009, cited in Chabasse 2014: 22) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aptitude testing model for interpreting by Xing (2015: 12) . . . . Aptitude testing model for interpreting by Zha (2016: 59) . . . . . Geographical constitution of the participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . University distribution of the participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Relations among PH, IA and IP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Relations among PH, SE and IP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Predictive power of PH on IA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Predictive power of PH on SE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Predictive power of PH, IA and SE on IP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mediator model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Three-stepped regression analysis model (Wen et al. 2004: 617) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hypothetical relations between PH, IA and IP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mediation diagram of IA on PH and IP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mediation diagram of IA on perseverance and IP . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mediation diagram of IA on commitment and IP . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mediation diagram of IA on challenge and IP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mediation diagram of IA on control and IP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Path diagram of moderating effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hypothetical relations of SE, PH and IP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mediation diagram of SE on commitment and IP . . . . . . . . . . . . .

25 39 39 40 43 44 45 52 53 64 65 66 68 69 70 71 72 72 74 74 74 74 75 77 79 xvii

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Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2

List of Figures

Stress-resistance qualities structure (Zhang et al. 2006: 49) . . . . A tentative framework for PH measurement in interpreting aptitude testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

110 115

List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 2.3 Table 2.4 Table 2.5 Table 2.6 Table 2.7 Table 2.8 Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 4.3 Table 4.4 Table 4.5 Table 4.6 Table 4.7 Table 4.8 Table 4.9 Table 4.10 Table 4.11 Table 4.12 Table 4.13 Table 4.14 Table 4.15

Definition and specification of language aptitude (Carroll 1981) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SLA processing stages and potential aptitude components (Skehan 2002: 90) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . An ideal interpreter’s profile across a 40-year span (Russo 2011: 10) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aptitudes for interpreters (Szuki 1988: 111) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Knowledge and aptitudes indicating interpreting proficiency (López et al. 2007: 78) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tests administered by the schools participating in the 1965 Paris Colloquium (Russo 2011: 15) . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aptitude tests among 18 postgraduate programs in conference interpreting (Timarová 2008) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Skills tested by different test types among 10 Chinese universities (Xing 2016) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Distribution of participants by gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Distribution of participants by levels of universities . . . . . . . . . Distribution of participants by provinces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Internal consistency of Hardiness Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Inter-correlations among the four dimensions of personality hardiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Internal consistency of Interpreting anxiety scale . . . . . . . . . . . Internal consistency of general self-efficacy scale . . . . . . . . . . . Scoring criteria for interpreting performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interrater reliability for scoring consecutive interpreting . . . . . . Pearson correlations among PH, IA and IP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pearson correlations among PH, SE and IP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Model summary of multiple regression analyses for IA . . . . . . Model summary of multiple regression analyses for SE . . . . . . Model summary of multiple regression analyses for IP . . . . . . . Model summary of linear regression analysis for IP of IA . . . .

12 13 22 23 23 24 28 29 53 53 53 55 55 56 56 58 58 63 64 66 67 68 69 xix

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Table 4.16 Table 4.17 Table 4.18 Table 4.19 Table 4.20 Table 4.21 Table 4.22 Table 4.23 Table 4.24 Table 4.25 Table 4.26

List of Tables

Model summary of linear regression analysis for IP of SE . . . . Mediating effect test of IA on PH and IP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mediating effect tests of IA on four dimensions and IP . . . . . . . Moderating effect test of IA on PH and IP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Moderating effect test of IA on four dimensions of PH and IP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mediating effect test of SE on PH and IP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mediating effect test of SE on four dimensions of PH and IP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Moderating effect test of SE on PH and IP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Moderating effect test of SE on four dimensions of PH and IP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Background information about the interviewees . . . . . . . . . . . . Interviewees’ scores in the questionnaire survey . . . . . . . . . . . .

69 72 73 76 77 78 78 79 80 82 82

Chapter 1

Introduction

The present research, building itself upon interpreting studies and drawing on a host of theoretical and methodological insights from psychology and second language acquisition (SLA), is an interdisciplinary study that focuses on incorporating personality hardiness (PH), a valuable and more inclusive personality trait, into interpreting aptitude testing. More specifically, an empirical study on the relationship between personality hardiness and interpreting performance, with interpreting anxiety1 and self-efficacy as two intermediates, among Chinese student interpreters at postgraduate level would be carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of hardy personality characterized with Commitment, Control and Challenge, based on which a tentative framework for personality hardiness measurement in aptitude testing will then be proposed. To start with, this chapter is designed to briefly outline the research motivations, significance, questions and organization of the whole book.

1.1 Motivations for the Research 1.1.1 Rational for the Research on Aptitude Testing for Interpreting Interpreters are made not born (Mackintosh 1999: 67) and it is believed that everybody has the potential to become an interpreter after training. Nonetheless, time constraints and financial limitations make it advisable to select the people who need the least training (Niska 2002). Aptitude testing for interpreting, with the purpose to admit the most promising candidates, has thus become not only a practical necessity for training institutions, but also a concerned issue among interpreting researchers. From 1

According to Chiang (2009), interpretation anxiety and interpretation stress are often used interchangeably in interpretation literature. In this book, unless a distinction is intended, interpreting anxiety is used to highlight the connection to second language anxiety research. © Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press 2023 X. Xing, The Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting Performance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6335-5_1

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1 Introduction

intuition-based or experience-driven test batteries at an earlier stage to reliable and validated testing procedures in more recent time, aptitude testing mainly targets cognitive or interpreting-related skills, while little research or progress has been made in assessing non-technical attributes or “soft skills”, personality traits in particular. A survey of the literature reveals that a large body of interpreting training institutions, schools in the AIIC Interpreting Schools & Programs Directory2 without exception, employ different test types to examine applicants’ “hard skills” like language and world knowledge, memory, comprehension and expression, which are needed to successfully fulfill an interpreting task. In contrast, such soft qualities as “stress-resistance”, “optimism” and “extroversion”, among others, although claimed important, have hardly been assessed, let alone measured with scientific methods. According to an empirical study I myself conducted on aptitude testing practice among 21 Chinese universities entitled to recruit interpreting candidates at postgraduate level, consecutive interpreting (CI) with or without note-taking, interview, written translation and sight translation are frequently adopted to examine interpreting-related skills, which is in agreement with the findings by Timarová and Ungoed-Thomas (2008). On the contrary, notwithstanding more than half of the schools under investigation convey their value on personality traits, and around 46% express their willingness to take personality traits into account, no specific methods have been reported to measure them. Bearing this void in mind, I intend to focus my book on the measurement of personality traits in aptitude testing for interpreting so as to expand “objective ways of testing candidates for the requisite knowledge and skills” (Pöchhacker 2004: 180).

1.1.2 Rational for the Research on Personality Hardiness Personality hardiness, building upon the theorizing of existential psychology and being a way of dealing effectively with life’s stresses, has become a cogent topic among psychologists and professionals. As a constellation of three crucial personality characteristics, namely, Commitment, Control, and Challenge (normally 3Cs for short), personality hardiness is presented as facilitating the kind of perception, evaluation, and coping that lead to successful resolution of the situation created by stressful events (Kobasa and Puccetti 1983). Personality hardiness, in the literature, not only lends itself to decreasing physical and psychological illness, but also helps to improve performance under stress in a wide range of contexts from the military (Bartone et al. 2008; Hystad et al. 2011) to college (Lifton 2006), in which individuals are acknowledged to work under stress or experience stressful changes, with the mechanism that hardiness provides them 2

Only those interpreting programs that meet the AIIC’s basic criteria will be listed in the interpreting school directory, and the AIIC makes best practice recommendations to those schools. Hence, schools in Interpreting Schools & Programs Directory enjoy a high reputation. For more information, please refer to the website: http://aiic.net/directories/schools/.

1.1 Motivations for the Research

3

with courage and motivation to cope with stressful circumstances through hardy actions, for example transformational coping, which may turn them from potential strains to opportunities and advantages, thereby maintaining or improving health and performance. Interpreting is a form of translation in which a first and final rendition in another language is produced on the basis of a one-time presentation of an utterance in a source language (Kade 1968; cited in Pöchhacker 2004). It is considered to be a highly stress-provoking activity and interpreters normally work under great pressure. For instance, source-language text cannot be reviewed or replayed, targetlanguage text is of little chance for correction or revision, high density of information input, great intensity for instant production, fewer resources to refer to at hand, etc. Accordingly, an ideal interpreter is expected to possess personality traits of “stresstolerance” (Longley 1989; Moser-Mercer 1985), “stress-resistance” (López Gómez et al. 2007), “resilience” (Napier et al. 2006), “extroversion” (Szuki 1988), “psychological stamina” (Keiser 1978), strong sense of “self-control” and “nerves of steel” (Henderson 1984; Keiser 1978), to name but a few. Apparently, personality hardiness shares similarities with the aforementioned aptitudes proposed by interpreting practitioners and interpreter educators. Indeed, available studies reveal that personality hardiness is not merely related to these positive psychological concepts, but actually “a better predictor of effective coping with stressful circumstances” (Maddi and Harvey 2006: 415). To this end, I attempt to borrow the useful psychological concept—personality hardiness to interpreting studies, exploring whether it contributes to improving the performance of interpreters as it does among lawyers, military cadets, nurses, teachers and the like.

1.1.3 Rational for the Research on Interpreting Anxiety and Self-Efficacy The literature on personality hardiness suggests that alternative processes possibly affect the hardiness-outcomes relationship. Perception of stress is one of the examples. Kobasa (1982) presumes that individuals with hardiness are more liable to perceive a potentially stressful situation in a benign manner and thus minify the unhealthy effects of coping with negative events. Admittedly, there also exist some other variables influencing this relationship, such as motivation (Cole 2001), optimism (Maddi and Hightower 1999), transformational coping (Westman 1987) and so forth, since hardier subjects tend to be motivated and optimistic in the appraisal of events, and confront them by engaging more in problem-solving strategies. In the current study which is exploring whether and how personality hardiness influences interpreting performance, it is advisable to take such variables into account. In designing the main research, interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy are meticulously chosen. This book will examine both the main effect of personality

4

1 Introduction

hardiness on interpreting performance and the impacts of interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy on this hardiness-performance linkage, fundamentally based on the following considerations: Firstly, according to the Hardiness Model (Maddi and Kobasa 1984), in encountering stressful circumstances, one’s physical and mental strains mount with the increase of acute stress and chronic stress. The strain tends to be severer and may bring out ineffective behavior, mental burnout and physical illness, his/her health and performance would thus be undermined if the strain hasn’t been buffered and moderated in time. However, this debilitating process is not likely to happen in a person with a hardy trait, which provides him/her with motivation and courage to adopt a series of hardy action patterns for transformational coping (mentally and behaviorally), seeking social support (assistance and encouragement) and engaging in self-care (physical exercise, relaxation, etc.). In this resilient process, stress and strain are buffered, and health and performance are maintained or eventually enhanced. In other words, it is by means of buffering stress and strain that personality hardiness ultimately improves health and performance under stressful circumstances. Besides, numerous studies in the field of second language acquisition have demonstrated a consistent relationship between language anxiety and performance in different contexts with different target languages. However, in the domain of interpreting studies, the relations between these two variables have been underexplored, lacking in-depth and empirical studies, except for Kang (2011/2012), Dong (2013) and Chiang (2006/2010), and research has yielded discrepant findings. Given the evidence that it is via alleviating stress that personality hardiness contributes to improving performance, as well as the status quo of anxiety and performance research in interpreting context, it would be necessary, in this book, to take interpreting anxiety into consideration. Specifically, mediating and moderating effects of interpreting anxiety on hardiness-performance relationship will be explored. Secondly, self-efficacy, grounded in Bandura’s social cognitive theory (1986) and defined as “beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments” (Bandura 1997: 3), has been substantiated to play an important role in human function since “one’s motivation and actions are mediated by what one believes can be achieved with one’s capabilities than by the skills and knowledge that one possesses” (ibid.). To be specific, sense of selfefficacy differentiates people in their feelings, thoughts and actions—people with high self-efficacy prefer to perform more challenging tasks, invest more efforts and persist longer; they get over more quickly and remain committed to their goals when encountering with setbacks compared with those who are low in self-efficacy. As such, it conceptually resembles personality hardiness. Factor analytic analysis conducted by Bernard et al. (1996) also demonstrates a pattern of positive intercorrelations between self-efficacy and personality hardiness. However, some researchers (for example, Maddi and Harvey 2006) question that self-efficacy may be similar to the Control component of hardiness, but it remains unclear whether there is any similarity with the Commitment and Challenge components.

1.2 Research Significance

5

For the other, self-efficacy, by influencing the level of goals learners set for themselves, the amount of efforts they organize, and their determination in the face of difficulties, has been prolifically demonstrated to influence foreign or second language (L2) achievements both directly and indirectly. Nevertheless, self-efficacy has not emerged in the field of interpreting studies until in recent years, being sometimes substituted by such affinitive concepts as “self-confidence” (López et al. 2007; Rosiers et al. 2011), “optimism” (Shaw 2011), and “goal attainment” (Timarová and Salaets 2011). Findings of the links between self-efficacy and interpreting performance seem not to be agreed upon. Considering the intimacy between personality hardiness and self-efficacy as well as their prominent effects on performance, it is worthwhile to take self-efficacy into account in the present study, having a close look at how personality hardiness and self-efficacy are related to each other, and investigating whether self-efficacy plays a mediating or moderating role in the relations between personality hardiness and interpreting performance.

1.2 Research Significance It is not until the mid-twentieth century that interpreting studies received scholarly attention from pioneer conference interpreters and psychologists taking the initiatives, and it has now turned into a flourishing field after decades’ development and reference from other disciplines. Amongst the bulk of literature generated from the study of interpreting, much has been dedicated to the research on interpreting per se. Interpreting education, aptitude testing in particular, has yielded comparably fewer achievements. As a matter of fact, writings on imparting interpreting knowledge and skills to the professionals of the next generation could be traced back to the 1950s by interpreting practitioners and educators. However, “as a research topic as such, the pedagogy of interpreting has generated little systematic investigation but a comparatively large body of experiential description” (Pöchhacker 2004: 177). Aptitude testing, with its purpose to determine a person’s ability to acquire some specific skills through future training and being “the first and foremost step towards success in an integral educational system” (Tang and Li 2013: 103), has become a prime concern to interpreter educators. A wide variety of operations have been implemented by institutions to assess applicants’ knowledge, skills and personal qualities which are viewed as necessities to successfully acquire interpreting professional competence. Notwithstanding considerable consensuses regarding the skills or abilities to be demonstrated upon a training program entrance examination have been achieved, objective and validated methods of testing candidates for the requisite knowledge and skills have generated little certainty (Russo 2011). Aptitude testing for interpreting, from a panoramic review of the literature, shares remarkable similarities with the practice of foreign or second language aptitude testing whose foci are mainly on language and cognitive aptitudes which

6

1 Introduction

include phonetic coding ability, grammatical sensitivity, memory ability and inductive language learning ability. Compared to the popularity of language and cognitive skills, personality traits, albeit acknowledged significant, appear to be much less focused on not only to interpreting researchers but also in general admission practices. Against this backdrop, the present research attempts to take an interdisciplinary approach to borrow personality hardiness—a stress-coping psychological concept— into interpreting studies and aims to make contributions to the following lines of research. First and foremost, substantiation of personality hardiness in improving interpreting candidates’ performance definitely deepens the understanding that personality trait indeed matters in interpreting achievements, which provides empirical supports to incorporate hardy personality measurement into aptitude testing for interpreting. In addition, reliable and validated measurement on personality hardiness supplies institutions with a blueprint and guidelines in admitting the most trainable candidates. Secondly, the present investigation hopes to offer implications to interpreting education and interpreter profession, which would eventually benefit from integrating personality traits, such as personality hardiness, self-efficacy and anxiety management, into the training curricula and professional awareness. Thirdly, this study, mainly drawing upon the Hardiness Model (Maddi and Kobasa 1984) as a key theoretical pillar, is a first effort to introduce a psychological concept to the realm of interpreting studies. Findings would inevitably lend itself to expanding the applicability of personality hardiness from the discipline of psychology to other research fields. Fourthly, bringing interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy as intermediates into the current study and co-investigating their effects on interpreting performance respectively would enrich, to some extent, the study on individual differences in SLA. Last but not least, an interdisciplinary approach per se is a worthy attempt, since interpreting studies, although booming, remains a relatively young discipline vis-à-vis the developed ones. In this sense, the interdisciplinary approach adopted is conducive to expanding research horizons to the field of psychology whilst maintaining specialty of interpreting studies.

1.3 Research Questions The primal aim of the current study is to investigate the effects of personality hardiness on interpreting performance amongst Chinese student interpreters, with an ultimate purpose to integrate this valuable personality trait into aptitude testing for interpreting. In order to identify the mechanism, the research chooses interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy as intermediate variables, by drawing on the relevant theorization in

1.4 Research Methodology

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psychology and bringing forth an analytical framework which incorporates methodological and theoretical insights from SLA. In this regard, the research questions are presented as follows: (1) What’s the relationship between personality hardiness and interpreting performance among Chinese student interpreters? (2) How does personality hardiness affect interpreting performance, directly or via interpreting anxiety as an intermediate variable? (3) How does personality hardiness affect interpreting performance, directly or via self-efficacy as an intermediate variable? (4) How to measure personality hardiness in aptitude testing for interpreting?

1.4 Research Methodology The current investigation adopts a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches to address the aforementioned questions. The research questions originate from a comprehensive and critical overview of the bulk of literature in which personality hardiness has been investigated in different contexts, as well as the state-of-the-art research into aptitude testing for interpreting. Published journal articles, monographs and treatises in such lines of research are read up in an attempt to establish a point of departure for the present investigation. A theoretical framework is proposed by drawing on cross-domain research insights. Interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy are chosen as intermediate variables in the relations between personality hardiness and interpreting performance, considering their effects on foreign or second language learning and achievements. In the main study, a sample of Chinese student interpreters at postgraduate level are measured, on a voluntary basis, in terms of personality hardiness, interpreting anxiety, self-efficacy as well as interpreting performance. Specifically, in the quantitative research, a well-designed questionnaire consisting of demographic information as well as three reliable scales are distributed to and filled out by 149 student interpreters. In the meantime, all participants are tested in the form of consecutive interpreting on the spot. In the qualitative research, nine participants are interviewed with regard to self-evaluation of their personality and introspection of interpreting learning with the purpose to triangulate the quantitative data. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 19.0 is employed in this research to conduct with generated quantitative data. In terms of qualitative data, each interview is discreetly transcribed and analyzed by using the qualitative coding and analysis method proposed by Lincoln and Guba (1985).

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1.5 Layout of the Book The research objectives and questions determine the overall structure of the whole book with a layout as follows: This chapter presents a succinct introduction to the motives of this study, followed by a description of areas it aims to contribute to, questions it plans to address and the methodology it adopts. In Chap. 2, literature concerning personality hardiness as well as aptitude testing in SLA and in interpreting studies has been thoroughly and critically reviewed in order to seek the conjunction point and provide theoretical support for the present interdisciplinary research, which borrows a psychological concept to the field of interpreting studies. Chapter 3 unfolds a framework with which personality hardiness is examined in this study and incorporated to aptitude testing for interpreting, theorizing in psychology and coupling with anxiety and self-efficacy studies in SLA. Chapter 4 introduces the research design on how personality hardiness affects interpreting performance, including a pilot study and a formal study respectively. As a prelude, hypotheses are proposed in accordance with the research questions, followed by quantitative research design with participants and instrumentations, as well as qualitative research design with a semi-structured interview. Data collection procedures and data analysis methods are introduced. This chapter also presents the results of the investigation. It firstly reports the reliability of the three scales, namely, Hardiness Scale, Interpreting Anxiety Scale, and Self-Efficacy Scale. Interrater reliability of interpreting performance test in the formal study is also presented, which is followed by an illustration on findings pertaining to each hypothesis. In Chap. 5, an elaborated discussion on the relations between personality hardiness, interpreting anxiety, self-efficacy and interpreting performance is provided, based on relevant theoretical and analytical framework in psychology, SLA and interpreting studies. Chaps. 3 to 5, with an expectation to address the first three research questions, constitute the main body of this book. Chapter 6 intends to resolve the last research question by proposing a tentative framework for personality hardiness measurement in interpreting aptitude testing. Relations of personality hardiness and other related personality traits in interpreting aptitudes are firstly compared from both conceptual level and empirical point of view. Significance of incorporating personality hardiness into aptitude testing for interpreting is then elaborated. Finally, ways to measure hardy personality in selecting interpreting candidates are elaborately stated. Chapter 7 concludes this book with a summary of major findings and significance of the current investigation, acknowledging potential limitations with a view to provide suggestions for follow-up endeavors in the future.

Chapter 2

Literature Review

In this chapter, working definitions, research on aptitude for foreign language Learning, aptitude for interpreting, as well as personality hardiness will be reviewed.

2.1 Working Definitions 2.1.1 Defining Aptitude The term “aptitude”, originated from Medieval Latin aptitudo, means “apt, appropriate, and suitable.” It is defined in Warren’s Dictionary of Psychology as “a condition or set of characteristics regarded as symptomatic of an individual’s ability to acquire with training some (usually specified) knowledge, skill, or set of responses such as the ability to speak a language, to produce music, etc.” (Bingham 1937: 16). In referring to a person’s aptitudes for speaking a language, we are actually looking to the future. His aptitude is, however, a present condition and a pattern of traits, deemed to be indicative of his potentialities. In other words, a person’s aptitudes “are the initial stages that influence later development, given specified conditions” (Snow 1992: 6). So when appraising a person’s aptitudes, whether for speaking a language or for producing music, we should “take him as he is—not as he might have been” (Bingham 1937: 17). Aptitude connotes potential ability in performance, and it also implies fitness, of which one essential aspect is a person’s readiness to acquire proficiency, and another is his readiness to develop an interest in exercising that ability. For instance, how could one say that a person has an aptitude for teaching without first knowing not only his capacity to acquire the necessary proficiencies, but also the degree of satisfaction which the exercise of these proficiencies would yield? Indeed, a person who does not develop an interest or proneness for an occupation along with proficiency in it can’t properly be regarded as having an aptitude for it. © Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press 2023 X. Xing, The Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting Performance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6335-5_2

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Aptitude is an individual difference construct, with its associated measures, that bears a hypothesized or demonstrated relation to individual differences in learning in some particular setting (Snow 1978: 227). In education, aptitudes are students’ characteristics that predict response to instruction under a given instructional treatment. In educational research, accordingly, the defining characteristics of an aptitude are in relation to learning. Within this broad definition, it is nonetheless true that most research on aptitudes for learning has concentrated on knowledge and skills, however, any special ability, cognitive style, personality, motivation or interest variable that shows relation to learning ought also to be considered as identifying aptitude. That is, aptitudes not only embrace cognitive abilities and affective reactions of satisfaction, but also include volitional acts of persistence in the activities.

2.1.2 Aptitude, Ability, Intelligence and Personality Aptitude is an old term for an old concept still widely used, but also widely misused and misunderstood in much scientific, professional and public parlance today (Snow 1992: 5). It is often used to indicate inherited capacity, present ability, aspects of personality, or even equated with intelligence, which is commonly used in everyday parlance and thus easily mixed up their popular meaning with their scientific definition. The term “ability”, in its broadest sense, refers to power to perform designated responsive acts, with no implication whether this power is potential or actual, acquired or inherited. Whereas “aptitude” is a present condition with a forward reference. Besides, aptitude connotes not only a person’s potential ability in performance, but also his relative fitness for the activities, which means, for one aspect, his readiness to acquire the potential ability, and for the other, his readiness to develop an interest in exercising that ability. Hence, “anyone who has come to a clear realization of his capacities, his informed interests, and the nature of the occupations he is considering, has achieved some basis for appraising the relative strength of his aptitudes” (Bingham 1937: 18). From the 17th to eighteenth century, aptitude was synonymous with intelligence. Later, it was generalized to mean a “biologically fixed, single rank order of general intellectual fitness for any situation” in the nineteenth century, and was “captured in this distorted condition by the mental testing movement” in the twentieth century (Snow 1992: 7). Intelligence and aptitude are interrelated but different in the view of human mental capability. Intelligence is a general mental capability that involves the ability to think, reason, comprehend, solve problems and learn, whereas aptitude is often considered as subsets of mental capability which can be independent of each other, providing utile information for an individual’s potential, especially in education and employment. In this regard, aptitude is a specific type of intelligence. A person’s aptitudes for learning a foreign language (FL) or aptitudes for music indicates what he possesses rather than an attribute of what he is. On the contrary, personality is a person’s psychological trait or attribute as an individual instead of

2.2 Overview of Aptitude for Foreign Language Learning

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objects belonging to him. Personality, as one of the most comprehensive psychological concepts, contains the whole system of dynamic tendencies that distinguishes one person from another. It is far more than an individual’s traits, physical or mental, intellectual or emotional, social or temperamental. It is the way in which all traits are organized and integrated, and the pattern according to which they function together. In short, aptitude is what a person has, whereas personality is what a person is.

2.2 Overview of Aptitude for Foreign Language Learning In order to determine whether successful interpreting performance is more a matter of nature or nurture, researchers have long been focusing on aptitudes for interpreting learning. The issues of an aptitude and ways to test it are not only widely discussed by scholars from the realm of interpreting studies, but also thoroughly investigated in the field of foreign language learning (FLL). As a matter of fact, foreign language aptitude has been of keen interest to researchers since the 1920s due to the phenomenon that some people learn a second or foreign language with greater ease, more quickly and with apparently better results than others. Linguists (e.g., Carroll 1981) have started to adopt aptitude tests to predict success in foreign language classes since the 1950s. An impressive body of literature indicates that research on interpreting aptitude closely resembles that on aptitudes for foreign language learning in terms of origin, objects as well as methods. It is therefore arguably clear that interpreting aptitude research has its root in that on foreign language learning. An overview of aptitude for FLL and its testing types would shed light on the present study, and thus provides a step stone on which aptitude could be approached in interpreting studies.

2.2.1 Foreign Language Aptitude Foreign language aptitude has been of interest to FL researchers in the U.S. since the 1920s (Sparks and Ganschow 2001: 90), when American government language programs supported research in the assessment of language aptitudes to improve selection techniques. In the 1920s and 1930s, language specialists constructed several prognosis tests which were generally practical rather than theoretical. However, the predictive power of these tests was disappointing. It was Carroll and his colleagues that brought about the development of usable language aptitude tests, and contributed to the understanding of the nature of language aptitude (Spolsky 1995: 321). What is language aptitude? According to Carroll and Sapon (1959: 14), “it is not a unitary factor but rather a complex of basic abilities that are essential to facilitate foreign language learning”. In other words, language aptitude covers a range of different cognitive factors constituting a composite measure, which can in turn be referred to as learners’ comprehensive ability to learn a foreign language well.

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Table 2.1 Definition and specification of language aptitude (Carroll 1981) Component

Definition and specification

Phonetic coding ability

An ability to identify distinct sounds, to form associations between these sounds and symbols representing them, and to retain these associations

Grammatical sensitivity

An ability to recognize the grammatical functions of words (or other linguistic entities) in sentence structures

Memory ability

An ability to learn associations between sounds and meaning rapidly and efficiently, and to retain these associations

Inductive language learning ability An ability to infer or induce the rules governing a set of language materials, given samples of language materials that permit such inferences

Based on two propositions that learning to speak a foreign language is a specialized talent, independent of intelligence, and that general intelligence tests have been relatively unsuccessful in screening individuals, Carroll proposes that language aptitude construct is composed of four constituent abilities: phonetic coding ability, grammatical sensitivity, rote learning ability and inductive language learning ability (Carroll 1981: 105), which are explicitly illustrated in Table 2.1: Following Carroll’s four-factor model of language aptitude, Skehan (1998) develops an adaptation consisting of only three factors, which are (a) auditory ability, similar to Carroll’s phonemic coding ability; (b) language analytic ability which combines Carroll’s grammatical sensitivity with inductive learning ability, purporting that there is no conclusive evidence that these two factors are indeed distinct; and (c) memory ability, which remains unchanged from Carroll’s conceptualization in its general nature but distinguished among three aspects of memory: coding, storage, and retrieval of material.

2.2.2 Foreign Language Aptitude and SLA Process Although no review of foreign language aptitude research can fail to mention Carroll and his work (Wen and Skehan 2011: 15), language aptitude research in his era is associated with audiolingual instructions. When communicative approach becomes predominant and with the blooming of SLA research, the relevance of aptitude has been questioned (Skehan 2002), thus the research on foreign language aptitude has languished over the last thirty years (ibid.) since an aptitude might be important for classroom learning, but not for acquisition (Gardner 1985; Krashen 1981; Spolsky 1989). In other words, earlier research on foreign language aptitude has a very practical orientation, focusing mainly on predicting how well a foreign language can be learned instead of assessing the speed of learning can be achieved (Skehan 2002).

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When researchers claim that communicative language teaching and SLA research brings out aptitude’s marginalization, Skehan (2002) insists the centrality of language aptitude to L2 acquisition process. He outlines SLA process into nine stages and relates each stage to a language aptitude component, exploring whether the existing aptitude components would be relevant to each of these stages (Table 2.2). It can be observed from the above table that aptitude components are related to SLA stages. Nevertheless, apart from Carroll’s four factors of language aptitude, the putative SLA processing stages demand more cognitive components of aptitude. For instance, at the initial stage of noticing, learners direct their attention to the language system which requires attentional management and working memory apart from phonetic coding ability. At the central processing stage, learners encounter the problem of moving from not knowing the target language to commanding the system of target language and using it for communication. At this stage, learners firstly make a hypothesis or generalization about the target language based on a perceived pattern or regularity. But after apprehending the limitations of the identified pattern, they restructure it and take the output of the process of complexification and integrate the sub-area of interlanguage into a larger structure. During this pattern recognition and restructuring process, grammatical sensitivity and inductive language learning ability need to be supplemented by restructuring ability to make contributions. At the final output stage of lexicalization, learners go beyond rule-based processing to build a lexical system for real-time performance which is to be assessed by tests concerning retrieval memory rather than associative memory. Skehan attempts to link the components of foreign language aptitude (FLA) to the stages of language processing. His processing stage model of aptitude is far Table 2.2 SLA processing stages and potential aptitude components (Skehan 2002: 90) Macro stage

SLA processing stage

Aptitude component

Language input

Noticing

Auditory segmentation, attention management, working memory, phonemic coding

Central processing

Pattern identification

Fast analysis, working memory, grammatical sensitivity

Language output

Extending

Inductive language learning ability

Complexifying

Grammatical sensitivity, inductive language learning ability

Integrating

Restructuring capacity

Becoming accurate, avoiding error

Automatization, proceduralization

Creating a repertoire, achieving salience

Retrieval processes

Automatizing rule-based language, achieving fluency

Automatizing, proceduralization

Lexicalizing, dual-coding

Memory, chunking, retrieval processes

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2 Literature Review

beyond earlier studies of FLA. It not only points out that FLA is a complex cognitive concept composed of multiple components, but also connects FLA with key cognitive processes of SLA.

2.2.3 Affective Variables in SLA Original theories of language aptitude postulate the importance of specific cognitive abilities to language learning success, and current theorists have continued to incorporate such domain-general and specific cognitive abilities into language aptitude as logical reasoning (Pimsleur 1966), inductive reasoning (Carroll 1981), working memory (Robinson 2002), grammatical sensitivity (Carroll 1981; Skehan 2002) and so on. Cognitive ability thus appears to be an important component of any valid theory of language aptitude which is consistent with the more recent shift to cognitive views of SLA in aptitude research. However, it would be too simplistic to conclude that successful language learning solely depends on cognitive abilities. Affective factors are equally important in trying to understand success of language learning, owing to the fact that although all the optimal cognitive factors may be operating in the process of SLA, learners can still fail because of an “affective block” (Brown 1973: 232). Indeed, as early as 1962, Hilgard did warn that “purely cognitive theories of learning will be rejected unless a role is assigned to affectivity” (1962: 267). Understanding the delicate relationship between cognition and affect has been a recurrent puzzle (Forgas 2008) since the dawn of civilization. Even in the modern era of cognition-affect research, their relations continue to generate intense debate. When psychologists focus on the cognitive antecedents of affect, a complementary paradigm explores the cognitive consequences of affect. Theoretical evidence suggests a “complex, multifaceted and bidirectional relationship” between them since “cognitive processes determine emotional reactions and, in turn, affective states influence how people remember, perceive, and interpret social situations and execute interpersonal behaviors” (ibid.: 99). Meanwhile, existing empirical research also points out that how well a student acquires a foreign language is affected by, apart from cognitive factors, affective variables like anxiety, motivation, inhibition, attitude, personality, self-efficacy and empathy, among others, which are emotionally relevant characteristics of an individual that influence how he will respond to any situation (Gardner and MacIntyre 1993). Before proceeding to review the affective variables in SLA, it is necessary to clarify that there exists a debate in L2 aptitude literature whether these aforementioned variables should be considered as a part of a broader construct of L2 aptitude. Some purport negatively because aptitude is purely a static, cognitive trait resistant to change. However, others insist that L2 aptitude, broadly defined, should include non-cognitive factors, and claim that both learners’ cognitive variations and affective states have a direct effect on L2 learning, which may explain why some L2 learners

2.2 Overview of Aptitude for Foreign Language Learning

15

could have better achievements compared with their counterparts under the same instruction. This research takes a side of the latter. In this section, I mainly focus on affective factors of anxiety, self-efficacy and personality considering their intimate relationships with personality hardiness as well as the purpose of the present research. Anxiety Anxiety, originating in the Classical Greek period, is a core construct in all personality theories. It is commonly used in contemporary psychology to denote a palpable but transitory emotional state or condition characterized by feelings of tension and apprehension and heightened autonomic nervous system activity (Spielberger 1972: 24). Different perspectives exist from which anxiety has been investigated. The first perspective views anxiety as a general personality trait, relevant across several situations; the second perspective regards anxiety as a here-and-now experience, known as an emotional state; while the third is interested in the specific forms of anxiety which occur uniformly over time within a given situation. These three standpoints view anxiety as a trait, state and situation-specific one respectively (MacIntyre and Gardner 1991). A Trait-State Theory of Anxiety and Its Measurement Anxiety is an ambiguous construct with different concepts in different ways. Spielberger introduces it by distinguishing trait anxiety from state anxiety, which means anxiety could be either a short term personality “state” or a long term personality “trait”. The former is a complex emotional reaction evoked in the face of threatening demands or dangers, and is therefore transitory but may endure over time when the evoking conditions persist. The latter reflects a stable tendency to respond with state anxiety in anticipation of threatening situations, and it could thus be conceptualized as relatively enduring individual differences among people to perceive the world in a certain way to react or behave in a specified manner with predictable regularity. Generally, people with high levels of trait anxiety tend to experience intense degrees of state anxiety in specific situations and experience anxiety towards a broader range of situations or objects. According to Spielberger (1966), high trait anxiety individuals seem to interpret circumstances more threatening or stressful than low trait anxiety ones, and therefore tend to respond to the situation with elevated state anxiety. In the meantime, stressful situations encountered frequently may cause an individual to develop specific coping responses or psychological defense mechanisms which are designed to reduce or minimize state anxiety. The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), developed by Spielberger, Gorsuch and Lushene (1970), is a 40-item self-report statement to measure state and trait anxiety respectively. The STAI-State, by asking people to describe how they feel at a particular moment in time, assesses how respondents feel “right now” and “at this moment” (e.g., “I feel calm”; “I feel upset”) rated on a 4-point intensity scale ranging from “not at all” to “very much so”. The STAI-Trait, consisting 20 statements describing how people generally feel rated on a 4-point frequency scale ranging from

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“almost never” to “almost always”, targets how respondents “generally feel” (e.g., “I am a steady person”; “I lack self- confidence”). Test–retest coefficients of trait scale (0.84 for men, 0.76 for women) and state scale (0.33 for men, 0.16 for women), as well as coefficients of internal consistencies for the state scale (ranging from 0.83 to 0.92 for male and female) and the trait scale (ranging from 0.86 to 0.92) were reported by the authors in 1970. Although the STAI has been argued, like most self-report measures, for ambiguous items or false answering (respondents are unwilling to admit negative things about themselves), clinical research has shown that adolescents and adults with normal intelligence are capable of and willing to describe the feelings experienced recently. The STAI has therefore been translated into over 30 languages, including Spanish, Turkish, Japanese, Arabic, and Dutch. It has also been popularly employed as a measurement on anxiety in more than 3,000 studies. The Situation-Specific Anxiety Approach and Measurement Albeit illuminating, neither state anxiety nor trait anxiety is specific enough to capture complex person-environment interactions and determine human emotions with behaviors (Endler and Okada 1975), which ultimately lead to a situation-specific approach to study anxiety. As an alternative to the state anxiety, situation-specific construct is regarded as anxiety reactions in a “well-defined situation” (MacIntyre and Gardner 1991: 90), such as in public speaking, during tests, when solving mathematics problems, or in a foreign language class. According to MacIntyre and Gardner (1991), an advantage of this approach, compared with the other two, lies in that it clearly delineates the situation for the respondent so that assumptions about the source of the anxiety reaction could be avoided. In other words, situation-specific studies could provide much more to the comprehension of anxiety since the repliers are queried about miscellaneous aspects of the situation and are required to make attributions of anxiety to particular sources. The role of anxiety in foreign or second language learning is a well-discussed topic. Since the mid-1960s, researchers have attempted to study the possibility that anxiety interferes foreign or second language learning and performance. Early studies have reported conflicting findings, according to Scovel (1978), mainly owing to the different anxiety measures, such as test-anxiety, facilitating-debilitating anxiety, state-trait anxiety, etc. It is thus appealed that language researchers should notice the myriad of types of anxiety identified and be more specific about the anxiety measurement. Responding to Scovel’s suggestions, researchers have been very careful in specifying the types of anxiety. Horwitz and Cope (1986) firstly propose a situationspecific anxiety construct named foreign language anxiety to explain students’ negative emotional reactions to language learning. Conceptually founded on three related performance anxieties, i.e. communication apprehension, test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation, foreign language anxiety is not confined to the combination of these fears, but as “a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings and behaviors related to classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learning process” (ibid.: 128). In identifying foreign language anxiety, a

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17

33-item Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) is written and has still been widely used to date which has been translated into several different languages including Spanish and Chinese. Foreign language anxiety measured by FLCAS has been claimed to best predict language achievement among Japanese learners (Aida 1994), and in French classes (Coulombe and Roberts 2001) as well as Asian EFL classes (Kim 1998). Negative anxiety-achievement relationship in different target language learning has been detected consistently. Horwitz et al.’s (1986) proposal for a situation-specific approach has enlightened a great number of studies on foreign language speaking anxiety. Since then, researchers have started to investigate anxieties specific to the four language skills, and various scales have been established accordingly, for instance, Foreign Language Reading Anxiety (FLRAS) by Saito et al. (1999), Foreign Language Listening Anxiety (FLLAS) by Kim (1998), Second Language Writing Apprehension (SLWAT) by Cheng et al. (1999), to name but a few, which have been applied in the listening context (cf. Elkhafaifi 2005; Vogely 1998), reading context (cf. Mastuda and Gobel 2004; Saito et al. 1999; Sellers 2000) and writing context (cf. Cheng et al. 1999) respectively. In a nutshell, language anxiety is undoubtedly an important learner characteristic with regard to SLA, consistently producing a significant impact on L2 criterion variables. Research on anxiety and FLL reveals foreign language anxiety to be a distinct situation-specific one, which ultimately affects foreign language performance and achievement. Moreover, the situation-specific approach has found language anxiety to be specific to the skills of listening, reading and writing, apart from speaking-dominated foreign language anxiety. Self-efficacy As is known, human function is facilitated by a personal sense of control. Specifically, if people believe they could take actions to settle a problem instrumentally, they would show more inclination to do so and feel determined to this decision. When researchers begin to uncover what distinguishes successful foreign language learners from the less successful ones, they notice that self-efficacy, introduced by Bandura (1977), exerts a powerful influence on learners’ effort, tenacity and achievement. Self-efficacy is defined as “beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments” (Bandura 1997: 3). It is the personal determination of one’s own ability to deal with a certain task, which is based on both actual past experience or existing ability or skills, and individuals’ perceptions of their own knowledge and ability relative to the task or situation. Bandura’s social cognitive theory of self-efficacy (1986), therefore, puts emphasis on the reciprocity between personal, behavioral and environmental influences. It is claimed that more self-efficacious people are apt to regard demanding problems as tasks to be mastered, possess a higher sense of commitment to their interests, and recover as quick as possible from failures. By contrast, less self-efficacious people are more likely to avoid challenging tasks, view difficult tasks unconquerable, center around personal failings and tend to lose confidence in personal abilities. As

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an affective variable, self-efficacy affects people’s decision, behaviors and attempts when facing challenges (ibid.). It is a belief that virtually influences every sphere of a person’s life. Self-efficacy is commonly viewed as domain-specific, which means one can have different self-beliefs in different domains or situations. Whereas, some researchers conceptualize self-efficacy as a generalized one, referring to global confidence in one’s coping ability within a wide range of situations. Accordingly, different instruments have been developed to measure individuals’ generalized self-efficacy or domain-specific self-efficacy. Sherer et al. (1982) write one of the first general selfefficacy (GSE) scales, which is regarded as the most widely cited GSE instrument to evaluate a general set of expectations an individual carries into new situations. However, it has been questioned about having a low content validity and multidimensionality (Chen et al. 2001). Another notable German-version GSE scale, aiming at a broad and stable sense of personal competence to deal effectively with a variety of stressful situations, is developed by Jerusalem and Schwarzer (1989). This scale has been used in numerous research projects, not only yielding internal consistency between α = 0.75 and 0.90, but also achieving convergent and discriminant validity. GSE scale, nevertheless, could not be used as a substitute for domain-specific selfefficacy since individuals tend to describe themselves as efficacious only “in limited domains, not across various domains of functioning” (Bandura 2006: 313). Under the circumstances, instruments for self-efficacy in specific domains successively emerge, like a 32-item computer self-efficacy scale developed by Murphy et al. (1989), a new measure of teacher efficacy written by Tschannen-Moran and Hoy (2001), etc. Both GSE scales and domain-specific self-efficacy scales have been employed in prolific research concerning the relationship between self-efficacy and academic achievement. Findings have suggested that self-efficacy influences aspects of behavior which are important for learning, for example, it mediates learning by encouraging perseverance and providing confidence to try different strategies. Yang (1992) investigates the relationship between Taiwanese English learners’ beliefs and strategy use, and reports a strong correlation between self-efficacy and functional practice strategies. Mills et al. (2007) study shows that self-efficacy for self-regulation is a stronger predictor of intermediate French language achievement, and students who perceived themselves as capable of using effective metacognitive strategies to monitor their academic work time effectively are more apt to experience academic success in intermediate French. Moreover, self-efficacy has been reported to directly influence language-related skills learning. For instance, EFL (English as a foreign language) learners with a sense of self-efficacy tend to perform better in their listening class (Rahimi and Abedini 2009) and high self-efficacious EFL learners are apt to achieve higher scores in reading comprehension course than their low self-efficacious counterparts (Ghonsooly and Elahi 2010). To wrap up, learners’ perceived self-efficacy on language learning has been an important issue for almost three decades. Theorized on Bandura’s social cognitive theory, self-efficacy, by influencing the level of goal learners set for themselves,

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19

the amount of efforts they mobilize, as well as their persistence in the face of difficulties, has been prolifically demonstrated to influence foreign or second language achievements in a direct or indirect way. Personality It is of no doubt that personality is the most individual characteristic of a human being. With the simplest definition of “whole character and nature” but the most extensive adoption to cover different breadths of human nature, personality is a research field “filled with issues that divide scientists along sharply defined lines and lead to alternative, competing schools of thought” (Pervin and John 2001: 25). Research in this realm has been dominated by two taxonomies of personality traits, which are Eysenck’s three-component construct (Eysenck and Eysenck 1985) and the “Big Five” model (Goldberg 1992/1993; McCrae and Costa 2003). The former identifies three principal personality dimensions: (1) extraversion with introversion; (2) neuroticism and emotionality with emotional stability; and (3) psychoticism and tough-mindedness with tender-mindedness. The latter comprises dimensions of openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion-introversion, agreeableness and neuroticism-emotional stability (OCEAN for short). Costa and McCrae (1992) once developed an assessment instrument—the ‘NEO-PI’ to operationalize the “Big Five” model in a psychometrically appropriate manner. Although the Big Five construct and the ‘NEO-PI’ seem almost ubiquitous and gain momentum in the current literature, it is criticized by the fact that “the lack of comprehensiveness becomes a problem when researchers, seduced by convenience and seeming consensus, act as if they can obtain a complete portrait of personality by grabbing five quick ratings” (Funder 2001: 201). The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is another introspective self-report questionnaire designed to indicate psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. It is based on the typological theory proposed by Jung in 1971 who has speculated three bipolar types of psychological functions by which humans experience the world, namely, extraversion–introversion, sensing–intuiting, and thinking–feeling. Later, Myers and Briggs (1976) added a fourth dichotomy— judging–perceiving to Jung’s taxonomy. The MBTI requires people to make choices and decide on one pole of each of the four preferences, the permutation of which yields 16 possible combinations, or called “types”. These 16 MBTI types have achieved remarkable validity since the combinations outline real, recognizable character types. It has thus been regarded a useful tool in a wide variety of circumstances, from counseling to making personnel decisions in industry. It is worth noting that from the biologically-based personality construct proposed by Eysenck, to the “Big Five” model, and to Jung’s typology, there is one dimension in common—extraversion–introversion, which has also become a thoroughly researched personality aspect in language learning. Intuitively, extraversion is a factor posing a positive effect on the development of basic interpersonal skills in foreign language learning, since extraverted learners are likely to interact easily with other foreign language speakers. Whereas, introverted

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learners may also experience an advantage because they probably find it is easier to study language and develop higher levels of cognitive academic language proficiency. However, these hypotheses are lack of potent empirical supports, and studies report inconsistent findings. For example, Strong (1983), by reviewing research on the effects of extraversion and similar traits on L2 studies, concludes that extraverted learners achieve better results in most studies. Similarly, in Dewaele and Furnham’s (2000) review, they find extraverts are generally more fluent than introverts in both L1 and L2 in almost 30 studies of personality. Carrell et al. (1996) discover a correlation between extraversion/introversion and vocabulary test scores among English majors in Indonesia, while no direct relationship is detected between learners’ type-preference and their language performance. Similar results have been yielded in Ehrman and Oxford’s (1995) study among 855 Foreign Service Institute students. However, in some personality studies which incorporate other affective variables such as motivation, selfefficacy, attitude, etc., (cf. Brown et al. 2001; Dewaele 2002; Griffiths 1991; Lalonde and Gardner 1984; Verhoeven and Vermeer 2002), no consistent relations between personality and language achievement have been identified. Personality, compared with affective variables like motivation, anxiety, selfefficacy and the like, is accorded rather less importance in language learning because “the role of personality being investigated in relation to language learning has failed to produce consistently significant finds” (Griffiths 1991: 104). It is probably because personality factors shape the way people respond to their learning environment rather than directly determine the degree of an individual’s academic success, since people of different personality types prefer to pursue differential behavioral patterns, which will have an impact on their participation in a range of learning tasks and eventually achieve different learning outcomes.

2.3 Overview of Aptitude for Interpreting The post-war period saw a massive increase in the demand for conference interpreters, and a few interpreter institutions have been established to meet the needs, such as Institut Supérieur d’ Interprétation et de traduction (ISIT) founded in 1957 and École Supérieure d’Interprètes et de Traducteure (ESIT) founded in 1958 which are the first established interpreter training schools. By 1985, 61 interpreting programs in 24 countries have been recognized by the AIIC. Accompanied with the establishment of interpreter training schools comes the issue of recruiting students, which becomes a controversial topic in the first AIIC Symposium on conference interpreter training in 1965 when candidates’ admission is for the first time discussed. Later, the training committee of the AIIC, officially a yardstick by which the profession rates training standard, codifies criteria that CI training should be provided at postgraduate level, and admission to CI training is supposed to be based on an entrance test to examine candidates’ language skills, cultural and general knowledge, aptitudes for interpretation. Moreover, with the collapse of the myth that interpreters

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21

are born, an increasing number of schools and international gatherings devoted to interpreter training have begun to turn their attention to candidates’ aptitudes so as to verify whether a successful interpreter is more a matter of nature or nurture. As a consequence, aptitude and aptitude testing, which have already been thoroughly investigated in the second or foreign language learning field, have become a popular topic among interpreting researchers as well as educators. It is believed that everybody has an aptitude for interpreting after training, whereas, some will never become interpreters unless they are prepared to work hard for many years. Just as Niska (2002: 133) puts, “in principle I would say yes, but in practice time constraints and limitations on financial resources make it advisable to select the people who need least training”. Selecting interpreting candidates wisely has thus been a practical necessity for training institutions confronting human and financial constraints. What qualities should an interpreter candidate possess to indicate aptitudes? and how should these aptitudes be measured? These questions constitute major tasks for interpreting aptitude research.

2.3.1 Research at an Earlier Stage Since interpreters are made not born (Mackintosh 1999: 67), what kind of qualities should a candidate possess to indicate his aptitude for interpreting? Related studies could be, as mentioned above, traced back to 1965 Paris Colloquium when the conference participants suggest taking an aptitude test to select potential candidates to interpreter training programs. At this very early stage, interpreting aptitude is no more than a “holistic concept” (Russo 2011: 9), and assumptions of an ideal interpreter’s prerequisites, concluded from a handful of practitioners or trainers’ observation and personal experience, are rather intuitive. According to Russo’s (2011) review of interpreter’s qualities seen by trainers, scholars and professionals (Gerver et al. 1989; Herbert 1952; Keiser 1978; Longley 1989; Lambert 1991) from the 1950s to 1990s, an ideal interpreter is expected to have good knowledge of language and general culture, good skills of comprehension, memorizing and information transferring, as well as personal qualities like physical and psychological stamina, which are clearly stated in the following Table 2.3. Apart from the researchers’ observation and intuition, Szuki (1988) conducts a questionnaire survey to 93 practitioners who work for five first-rate translation/ interpretation agencies in Tokyo, by using ten personality items and ten interest items as independent variables, and concludes aptitudes for translators, interpreters and dualists. In his research, interpreters claim they themselves are supposed to have the following aptitudes (Table 2.4): It is of no difficulty to notice, at this early stage, an ideal interpreter’s aptitudes are not only experience-based, but also interchangeably referred to by dictions like “qualities”, “skills” and “abilities”, varying from author to author. López et al. (2007), following the AIIC’s division, propose a more specific taxonomy for the

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Table 2.3 An ideal interpreter’s profile across a 40-year span (Russo 2011: 10) Herbert (1952)

Professional experience perspective; Command of two foreign languages; Lexical fluency; Good memory; Broad general culture; Interpreting attitude

1965 AIIC colloque

Professional and training experience perspective; Foreign language command (B + C); Strong mother tongue (A); Love for languages; Ability to comprehend; Language transfer skills

1974 Paris symposium (Keiser 1978) Professional and training experience perspective; Ability to comprehend and mental rapidity; Expressive ability; General culture; Personal qualities (capacity to adapt to subject, speakers, etc.; public speaking, tact anddiplomacy); Physical and psychological stamina Gerver et al. (1984)

Professional experience perspective; Profound knowledge of active and passive languages and cultures; Ability to grasp rapidly and to convey the essential meaning of what is being said;

Lambert (1992)

Ability to project information with confidence, coupled with good voice; Wide general knowl-edge and interests, and a willingness to acquire new information; Ability to work as a team member

Longley (1989)

Training experience and scholarly perspective; Excellent knowledge of A, B, C languages and cultures; Ability to grasp rapidly and to convey the essential meaning of discourse, irrespective of the language spoken; A memory which recalls the links between logical sequences of discourse; Ability to convey information with confidence, coupled with a pleasant delivery; Broad general knowledge and interests, a curiosity and willingness to acquire new information; Ability to work as a team member; Ability to work under stress for long periods

above-illustrated aptitudes. As shown in Table 2.5, they distinguish “knowledge” from “aptitudes”. According to their taxonomy, an interpreter should possess “linguistic knowledge”, “cultural knowledge”, “cognitive aptitudes” as well as “personal aptitudes”.

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23

Table 2.4 Aptitudes for interpreters (Szuki 1988: 111) Have interest in deepening insight into people Have interest in verbal communication Have interest in journalism, mass communication, and social issues Have interested in physical labor Have strong empathy toward others Progressive Extravert Have high achievement motive

Table 2.5 Knowledge and aptitudes indicating interpreting proficiency (López et al. 2007: 78) Spoken-language interpreting Knowledge (linguistic and cultural)

Aptitudes (cognitive and personal)

High command of A & B languages

To grasp meaning rapidly Processing of connected discourse Attentional division Working memory Logical memory Language accuracy Oral expression

Cultural background

Stress resistance Self-confidence Assertiveness

A general scan of aptitude research at an earlier age finds aptitudes for interpreting are by and large agreed upon, albeit different terminology or categorization has been used. They mainly include linguistic and cultural knowledge, cognitive aptitudes relating to analysis, attention, comprehension and memory, as well as personal aptitudes like stress tolerance, self-confidence, motivation, etc. However, it cannot be denied that these aptitudes are basically generated from researchers’ observation of successful interpreters or by practitioners’ self-perception, and thus lack sound theoretical basis. Different aptitude test batteries have been adopted to screen interpreting candidates at this period. Keiser (1965), in the Paris Colloquium, gave a very detailed account of test types implemented by École de traduction et d’ Interprétation of Geneva (ETI Geneva), Übersetzen und Dolmetschen Institut (Heidelberg), Hautes Études Commerciales (H.E.C., Paris), ESIT (Paris), ISIT (Paris) and École d’Interprétation (Antwerp), according to Russo’s (2011) review. Among these schools, recall, sight translation, consecutive interpretation and interview are commonly employed in accordance with the early basic assumptions that a suitable candidate is supposed to possess good command of languages, broad general

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Table 2.6 Tests administered by the schools participating in the 1965 Paris Colloquium (Russo 2011: 15) School

Test type

ETI, (Geneva)

1. Interview 2. Recall from A into A 3. Interpretation from B into A

Übersetzen und Dolmetschen Institut (Heidelberg)

1. Consecutive from A into A 2. Sight translation from B into A 3. Interview in Language A

H.E.C. (Paris)

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Translation B/C into A; A into B Essay in language A Interview A/B/C Sight translation B/C into A Aloud reading Question on the news of the day

ESIT (Paris)

1. 2. 3. 4.

Interview in A/B/C Explanation in A of a passage in B/C Recall in A from B/C Sight translation from B/C into A

ISIT (Paris)

1. Sight translation or elementary interpretation B into A and A into B 2. Sight translation C into A 3. Interview in A/B/C

École d’ Interprétation (Antwerp)

1. Consecutive from B/C into A 2. Interview in A/B

cultures, and abilities to comprehend and transfer between the languages. Detailed test types are shown in Table 2.6. It is safe to conclude that, from the above test batteries, aptitude tests in an earlier age, in accordance with the notion of interpreting aptitude, are inspired by intuition and common sense, displaying comparatively high face validity which means the tests resemble the tasks that interpreters would perform or skills they would display.

2.3.2 Research in More Recent Time “Theoretical” and “empirical”, together with “cogntive skills” and “non-cognitive attributes” are perhaps the most appropriate diction in describing characteristics of interpreting aptitude research in more recent time. Theoretical Perspective Macnamara (2012), based on research in the domains of SLA, spoken and signed language interpreting and cognitive psychology, develops a theoretical framework of

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foundational cognitive aptitudes for interpreting. The proposed Foundational Cognitive Aptitudes Model (Fig. 2.1) is formed by (1) social-cognitive aptitude guiding operational suitability, (2) intellectual aptitude featured fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence, as well as (3) cognitive skills and cognitive capacities creating processing ability, without which “an individual will be unlikely to succeed as an interpreter” (ibid.: 10). Moving from a macro perspective to a micro view, Macnamara insists social cognitive aptitude, enabling interpreters to function in dynamic settings with a variety of people and contents, should be first considered. Due to the evidence that interpreting stress control attentional control Self-awareness Social-Cognitive Aptitude

performance monitoring online decision-making

(operational suitability)

self-efficacy… boundary balancing

Interpreter

Other awareness

empathic inference

Cognitive

cross-cultural sensitivity

Aptitude

message analysis… Crystallized Intelligence

association

(associated with Intellectual Aptitude

long-term memory)

prediction linguistic abilities

(Perspicacity) Fluid Intelligence (associated with

linguistic abilities

Short-term memory)

logical abilities

performance monitoring multitasking attentional control Cognitive Skills &

memory

Capacities

set shifting

(Processing ability)

chunking online decision-making speed and depth of processing

Fig. 2.1 Foundational cognitive aptitude model (adapted from Macnamara 2012: 11)

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is an activity easily provoking anxiety and other heightened emotional states, the ability to regulate one’s own emotions regains attentional control needed for information processing, language production and performance monitoring. As it is known, an individual who is prone to worry will often experience performance difficulty when interpreting. But fortunately, positive-level emotions such as self-efficacy usually enhance performance ability, since individuals with higher levels of self-efficacy are often more mentally organized, more flexible in their thinking, and generally less anxious. Besides the emotion-cognition interaction and self-awareness, abilities in other awareness are also regarded by Macnamara as important interpreter aptitudes. For example, he claims boundary balancing skills allow an interpreter not to be emotionally involved in the situation in order to perform optimally without disconnecting from the affective functions of conveying communication such as assessing others’ perspectives; emphatic inference skills enable an interpreter to observe subtle and apparent behaviors from the speaker so as to contribute significantly to an effective and accurate interpretation; the ability to analyze the message from a culturally sensitive perspective also affects the accuracy of the interpretation. Additionally, intellectual aptitudes which consist of crystallized intelligence and fluid intelligence affect operational suitability and processing abilities. Whereas cognitive skills and cognitive capacities, including dimensions of attentional control, memory, multitasking, set shifting, etc., are influenced by an individual’s level of intelligence to create processing abilities. Macnamara is the first researcher to analyze and illustrate, in a fairly exquisite manner, interpreter cognitive aptitudes from an interdisciplinary perspective. The theoretical framework of interpreting aptitudes he constructed not only serves as a structure for empirical research, but also calls for developing objective measurement tools to predict aptitudes. Empirical Study Based on the established theoretical framework of interpreting aptitude, empirical study has been carried out concerning developing scientific test methods and procedures to screen interpreting candidates with both cognitive aptitudes and non-cognitive qualities. It is suggested that aptitude tests with a purpose to select the most suitable candidates should possess good predictive validity, in which the uniqueness and value of an aptitude test lies. Otherwise, “it would be appropriate to avoid the term ‘aptitude’ in reference to a specific diagnostic test unless evidence of predictive validity can be provided through scientific methods” (Sawyer 2004: 111). Aptitude test types produced in more recent time, by showing correlation with interpreting performance or achievement, have exhibited high predictive validity and proved to be reliable and validated ones. For example, Russo and Pippa (2004) conduct a longitudinal study with an aim to develop an aptitude test based on simultaneous paraphrasing (on-line oral paraphrase from Italian to Italian) to examine the cognitive-linguistic ability of candidates in conference interpreting courses. Among ten operationalized categories to score candidates’ paraphrasing performance, synonymic substitution and a loss of

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27

coherence are finally reported to be the most predictive parameters. The ability to synonymize is once again demonstrated the highest validity in Russo’s (2014) replicated study with a larger sample, and thus verified useful in identifying prerequisites for effective interpreting. Inspired by Russo and Pippa (2004), Pöchhacker (2011) carries out an aptitude test of SynCloze combining an auditory cloze exercise with a task requiring high expressional fluency to measure students’ interpreting-related subskills, such as online comprehension, oral expressional fluency and reaction times. One-tailed t-test results indicate that SynCloze could effectively discriminate Bachelor of Art (BA)-level beginners from Master of Art (MA)-level interpreting students, and the test scores correlate, albeit moderately, with students’ final exams. Compared with the popularity of cognitive aptitudes, non-cognitive characteristics of interpreting candidates, even though claimed important, are seldom considered or measured. Although it is suggested by Gile (2001) that an aptitude test should not only examine linguistic competence and general cultural knowledge but also take candidates’ personality into consideration, few selection committees adopt standardized measures to determine these non-cognitive qualities. It could be observed from the admission tests in different universities. Timarová and Ungoed-Thomas (2008) carry out a survey on aptitude testing among 18 postgraduate programs in conference interpreting in Europe, Asia and North America concerning skills tested, methods employed and overall efficiency. They find language, communication, comprehension, analysis and general knowledge are the top five skill categories measured with different test types like summary (written and oral), translation and short consecutive tasks. They further comment despite the fact that some schools make reference to look for “motivated”, “teachable”, “open-minded” students, they do not seem to include these skills or traits in their tests (ibid.: 41) (Table 2.7). Timarová and Ungoed-Thomas’ research findings (2008) are coincident with that in Chinse context. Xing (2015) conducts a small-scaled survey on postgraduatelevel admission tests in 10 Chinese universities with an expectation to find out what and how these schools select interpreting candidates. Her study finds out that interview, consecutive interpreting, translation and sight translation are the most widely used tests to assess candidates’ language, comprehension, communication, analysis and general knowledge. Comparatively, candidates’ psychological qualities and personality are roughly assessed in an interview format (Table 2.8). It is not until 2008, with the holding of the Antwerp conference on “Aptitude for Interpreting”, have interpreters’ non-cognitive qualities drawn wide attention. Presentations in the conference are “centering on the enigmatic connection between means of evaluating aptitude(s) at the entry phase and students’ prospects of success in ultimately joining the ranks of the interpreting profession” (Pöchhacker and Liu 2011: 1). Among which, four studies investigate affective factors with measurement tools of Achievement Motivation Test (Timarová and Salaets 2011), the inventory of Learning Styles (ibid.), Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (Rosiers et al. 2011), the Achievement Motivation Inventory (Shaw 2011), Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Bontempo and Napier 2011), and the New General Self-Efficacy Scale

28 Table 2.7 Aptitude tests among 18 postgraduate programs in conference interpreting (Timarová 2008)

2 Literature Review

Skill category

Test

Frequency (schools)

Language

Short consecutive

14

Short speech

9

Interview

7

Communication

Comprehension

Analysis

General knowledge

Summary

7

Translation

7

Short speech

11

Short consecutive

10

Summary

6

Interview

5

Summary

8

Translation

8

Short consecutive

5

Summary

11

Short consecutive

6

Translation

5

Interview

8

Written test

4

Short speech

3

(ibid.) from such developed realms as social psychology, cognitive psychology and SLA. For example, Timarová and Salaets (2011) explore individual differences of learning style, motivation and anxiety, hypothesized as contributing factors to the performance of three groups of subjects at Lessius University College in Belgium. They discover that self-selected interpreting students score higher on achievement motive scale and lower on debilitating anxiety scale, and among the conference interpreting students, final exam passing ones achieve higher than those failing ones by the Achievement Motivation Test. Besides, personality traits of self-efficacy, goalorientation and negative affectivity, and their relations to performance of accredited signed language interpreters in Australia are researched by Bontempo and Napier (2011). Their study reveals emotional stability to be a predictor of interpreters’ self-perceived competence. It is obvious the cognitive complexity of an interpreting task is irrefutable, and it cannot be denied that cognitive abilities fulfill a vital role in acquiring interpreting skills. As a consequence, an ideal interpreting candidate is expected to have profound cognitive skills and a vast majority of aptitude tests put great emphasis on them no matter in which historical period. Compared to cognitive skills characterized by being standardized, quantified, replicable, and most importantly, determining success or failure of a specific task, non-cognitive or affective factors are nontechnical, intangible, and the effects are much less striking and imperceptible. In addition, affective

4.81

4.69

4.69

4.56

4.00

3.86

Expression

Communication

Analysis

Psychology

Personality

Motivation

Language

Psychology

General knowledge

Memory

Analysis

Expression

Comprehension

Language

Skills

Average

4.81

Skills

Consecutive interpreting

Interview

Skills tested Average

3.56

3.75

3.81

4.31

4.63

4.69

4.94

General knowledge

Transferring

Expression

Comprehension

Language

Skills

Translation

Table 2.8 Skills tested by different test types among 10 Chinese universities (Xing 2016)

Average

4.18

4.45

4.55

4.82

4.91

General knowledge

Psychology

Interpreting skills

Expression

Comprehension

Language

Skills

Sight translation Average

3.86

4.14

4.33

4.57

4.86

4.86

2.3 Overview of Aptitude for Interpreting 29

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2 Literature Review

factors like ability to work under stress, self-motivation and emotional stability, will not by themselves enable an interpreter to do his work satisfactorily, and have therefore been focused on less. The scantiness of research on these non-cognitive qualities does not mean they are insignificant. On the contrary, it indicates future research directions and calls for more attention from researchers, educators and professionals. To sum up, different from the research at an earlier stage, research on aptitude for interpreting in more recent time are theoretically grounded, drawing inspirations from other established disciplines. In addition, it starts to attach more importance to interpreters’ non-cognitive qualities beyond cognitive aptitudes, highlighting “the complex of the notion of aptitude for interpreting and the diverse ways in which cognitive skills and personality traits complement each other” (Pöchhacker and Liu 2014: 5).

2.4 Overview of Personality Hardiness 2.4.1 Construct of Personality Hardiness Personality hardiness, alternatively referred to as psychological hardiness, is a personality style firstly introduced by Kobasa in 1979 when she proposed that people who experienced high degrees of stress without falling ill had a stress-resistance personality differentiating them from people who became sick under stress, and she characterized this personality difference by “hardiness”. According to Kobasa: Hardy persons are considered to possess three general characteristics: (a) the belief that they can control or influence the events of their experience, (b) an ability to feel deeply involved in or committed to the activities of their lives, and (c) the anticipation of change as an exciting challenge to further development. (Kobasa 1979: 3)

In the meantime, Maddi also noticed that “although stressful changes may be debilitating for some people, perhaps they are developmentally provocative for others” (Maddi 2002: 173). Since then, personality hardiness has been studied in a 12-year natural experiment at Illinois Bell Telephone (IBT) from 1975 to 1987 when IBT has suffered cataclysmic deregulation. During the deregulation hit, nearly half of the employees were terminated in the downsizing. The collected data showed that two-thirds of the samples collapsed and suffered from physical problems like heart attacks, cancer, and mental disorders, as well as psychological problems like depression, anxiety, and suicides. In a sharp contrast, the rest of the samples were resilient and thriving, demonstrating more enthusiasm, excitement and motivation. In comparing the debilitated two-thirds with the resilient one-third, the supposition “there are individual differences in the reaction of people to stressful circumstances” (Maddi 2012: 12) was proved to be true since the high-pressure but low-illness samples displayed a specific “constellation of personality characteristics that function as a resistance resource in the counter with stressful life events” (Kobasa et al.

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31

1982: 169). Comparing with their counterparts, the resilient employees, who were high in the hardy attitudes, coped with stressful circumstances by facing them rather than being in denial, and struggled to turn them from potential disasters into opportunities rather than avoiding them. They were also more involved in interacting with others that emphasized mutual assistance and encouragement, rather than undermining competition (Maddi 2007). Hence, it is concluded that people high in hardiness possess the dispositions of Commitment, Control and Challenge which constitute three dimensions of hardiness, just like Funk (1992: 335) claims, “a hardy person views potentially stressful situations as meaningful and interesting (Commitment), sees stressors as changeable (Control), and sees change as a normal aspect of life rather than as a threat and views change as an opportunity for growth (Challenge)”.

2.4.2 Measurement of Personality Hardiness The measurement of personality hardiness has been improved over the years. During the early stages of hardiness research when hardiness is conceptualized as a single underlying personality dimension, dozens of different scales are used to measure the three subcomponents of hardiness individually. In more recent time, two widely adopted hardiness scales have been developed, which are the 50-item Personal Views Survey (PVS; Hardiness Institute 1985) and the 45-item Disposition-Resilience Scale (DRS; Bartone et al. 1989). The PVS by Hardiness Institute has undergone adaptation from the first version to PVS III-R and become a frequently employed scale. The 50-item PVS, composed of six available scales to test temperaments which seem relevant to Commitment, Control and Challenge, is criticized for that it “(a) is not a unitary characteristic, as the Challenge component is unrelated to the Commitment and Control components in some samples, and (b) is little more than the opposite of negative affectivity or neuroticism” (Maddi and Harvey 2006: 578), and is thus quickly supplanted by the 30-item PVS II and the PVS III to ameliorate the aforementioned two problems. The latest version—the Personal Views Survey III-R (PVS III-R) is comprised of the empirically best 18 out of the 30 items in the previous versions. In PVS III-R, the 3Cs show strong positive inter-correlations with each other, and with the total hardiness score as well. Besides, internal consistency reliability is adequate for each of the 3Cs and for the total hardiness score with growing evidence of empirical validity (Maddi 2013). Nonetheless, the PVS III-R manifests an inevitable problem of low reliability in measuring the hardy personality of non-native English speakers, notwithstanding it has so far been translated into different languages. For instance, Lu and Liang (Lu and Liang 2008) detect low internal consistency coefficient and large differences of exploratory factor analysis results with the original questionnaire when revising it to apply to Chinese context. They claim it is probably because of the cultural differences. To be specific, different comprehension on hardiness between easterners and westerners makes the scale fail to reflect the hardy qualities in Chinese people.

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As a consequence, Lu et al. (2012), according to the hardiness theory and Chinese culture, develop a 27-item Hardiness Scale (HS) with four dimensions: Perseverance, Commitment, Control and Challenge. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses suggest that HS has high test–retest reliability and internal consistency, as well as satisfactory criterion-related validity among Chinese samples. Another scale has to be mentioned is a 65-item HardiSurvey III-R questionnaire, which includes measures of hardy coping (problem-solving), hardy interactions (socially-supportive) as well as measures of stress, strain, and regressive coping (avoidance) besides hardy attitudes. Scores on this scale not only produce an overall report on stress resilience and stress vulnerability, but also reflect the coping strategies a subject may take in encountering stress or difficulties. With the advantage of comprehensiveness, HardiSurvey III-R is used in a wide range of studies.

2.4.3 Empirical Research on Personality Hardiness Since Kobasa’s initial study in 1979, personality hardiness has yielded a large body of research indicating its protective role of physical health (cf. Bartone et al. 2008; Eschleman et al. 2010; Soderstrom et al. 2000) as well as mental health (cf. Alarcon et al. 2009; Orme and Kehoe 2014; Pengilly and Dowd 2000). From the 1990s, researchers have started to investigate its potentiality to predict health and performance under stress. In this section, empirical research on the effectiveness of personality hardiness will merely be reviewed from the perspective of performance enhancement due to its direct connection with the present study. Conceptualization of hardiness and an overall view of personality hardiness model bring about an enormous amount of empirical research on the roles of personality hardiness. Accumulated findings have reported that hardy attitudes not only decrease physical and psychological illness, but also improve conduct and performance under stress. Related research has been carried out in a wide range of contexts from the military (Bartone et al. 2008; Hystad et al. 2011) to colleges (Lifton et al. 2004), and samples are diversified involving military cadets (Delahaij et al. 2010; Maddi et al. 2012; Westman 1990), university students (Maddi et al. 2011; Sheard 2009) and sports players (Maddi and Hess 1992; Sheard 2009; Sheard and Golby 2010), among others, who are acknowledged to work or study under stress or often experience stressful changes. In the context of military, Westman’s study (1990) stands as the seminal piece on hardiness-performance linkage. He measures personality hardiness of officer cadets in the Israel Defense Forces (N = 326) with Hardiness Questionnaire at the beginning and the end of the course in order to investigate the effects of hardiness on stress and performance. By comparison with objective measures of performance in Navigation and Obstacle exercise, and with subjective measures based on peer or instructor ratings, personality hardiness is shown to consistently negatively relate to experienced stress, and positively relate to objectively assessed performance throughout the

2.4 Overview of Personality Hardiness

33

course. In addition, hierarchical moderated regression analysis shows that hardiness buffers the military cadets from the detrimental effects of stress on performance. Similar result has been reported in Maddi’s (2012) finding on personality hardiness as an important force in predicting good performance during stressful military training for young cadets at USMA (United States Military Academy) at West Point which is considered highly stressful and challenging. Logistic regression analysis in Maddi’s research (N = 1251), by adopting PVS III-R, indicates that both hardiness and grit are significantly predicative of first year retention scores, among which only personality hardiness predicts first year performance at USMA. Hardiness training has thus been suggested to enhance performance within military training environment in his study. There are also findings showing personality hardiness successfully predicts the admission into military schools or programs. In the final portion of a selection program for border rangers in the Norwegian Armed Forces (N = 178), hardiness is found, by Johnsen et al. (2013), to predict successful completion of a rigorous 250 km ski march over 9 days in Arctic winter conditions. Among the three dimensions of hardiness, Commitment is the most significant predictor of ski march success. The authors advocate that hardiness Commitment is a key factor influencing performance in rigorous and stressful endurance tasks requiring sustained efforts. Hystad et al. (2011) examine the role of personality hardiness in predicting admission into Norwegian Military Officer Schools with data from officer applicants (N = 1111) by using Dispositional Hardiness Measures. Their study demonstrates that successful applicants score significantly higher in hardiness than unsuccessful applicants, and personality hardiness predicts, albeit relatively modest, admission into Norwegian Military Officer Schools after controlling such variables as gender, age, and social desirability. Hardiness is, therefore, suggested in their research to be employed as a valuable, inexpensive and easy-to-use personality factor to predict success in military assessment and selection programs. Their study is later echoed and supported by Subramanian et al. (2013) who examine the role of hardiness and other personality factors in predicting youths’ military enlistment intention (N = 2500) to the Indian Armed Forces which is the second-largest standing army in the world. In the context of sports which is as stressful as it is rewarding, players’ psychological attributes have become a greater interest to the stakeholders since it is closely associated with superior sport performance. Against this backdrop, personality hardiness has been thoroughly studied as a pathway to stress-resilience and performanceenhancement. Golby and Sheard (2004) take into research professional rugby league footballers (N = 115) who represent the top three (International, Super League, and Division One) in Great Britain. Their study reveals that players at the highest standard (International players) score significantly higher in all three hardiness subscales of PVS III-R than players in Super League and Division One. When they replicate the study with a rather larger sample in 2010 to examine the personality hardiness construct in elite-level sport performers (N = 1566) from 16 sport classifications competing at international, national, provincial and regional competitive levels, they detect that international competitors score significantly higher in Commitment and

34

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Total hardiness compared with their counterparts in each of the other three competitive levels. However, this finding is not quite identical with that of Sheard’s (2009) research who conducts a cross-national analysis of mental toughness and hardiness by PVS III-R in elite university rugby league teams. The participants (N = 49) in his study are male elite-level players representing Australia and Great Britain. Multivariate analysis shows the Australian University players who have significantly higher mean scores on mental toughness and Challenge dimension of personality hardiness than their Great Britain counterparts won the international tournament eventually. As a matter of fact, no matter which dimension of hardiness contributes to superior performance, it is believed that personality hardiness as a whole is positively related to players’ adaptive responses to stressors which in turn positively affect performance. Although academic success has traditionally been recognized to associate with intelligence, an increasing amount of research reveals a close association between personality and scholastic achievement (Csikszentmihalyi and Wong 2014; Duff et al. 2004; Farsides and Woodfield 2003; Laidra et al. 2007; O’Connor and Paunonen 2007; Richardson and Abraham 2009). Personality hardiness, as a notable personality trait, has been well studied and reported to predict academic performance and persistence to graduation in school contexts. Sheard (2009) conducts a longitudinal study to examine whether hardiness and demographic variables (age and gender) differentiate and predict university undergraduate students’ (N = 134) final GPA and final-year dissertation mark. He notices that Commitment is significantly and positively related to academic achievement, while Control and Challenge show no correlation with academic performance. In addition, the final degree GPA and dissertation mark are significantly predicted by Commitment. The emerging relevance of personality hardiness to effective academic performance is further supported by Maddi et al. (2011). Attempts in their study are made to determine the relationship between hardiness and such relevant variables as optimism and religiousness, as well as their effects on college performance measured by GPA. Results confirm the expectation that personality hardiness significantly positively affects GPA, and thus becomes a primary predictor of school performance. It is commonly believed that attending university is a pleasurable experience for some students, while it is rather a suffering for others since it represents a highly stressful time of extensive studying to meet academia requirements. Some students therefore endure deteriorating mental health, and some even drop out of school under the severe academic stress. Research by Hystad et al. (2009) and Lifton et al. (2000) concerns the role of personality hardiness in academic stress and university retention. Hystad et al. measure personality hardiness by DRS-15, academic stress and health complaints among a sample of undergraduate students (N = 213) at the University of Bergen. As hypothesized, hardiness is proved to be negatively associated with both academic stress and reported health complaints. In addition, hardiness moderates the relationship between academic stress and health, suggesting students high in personality hardiness tend to be less affected by the stress and thus obtain good academic grades. At the backdrop of undergraduate retention becoming a noteworthy concern, Lifton et al. (2000) conduct a longitudinal research (N = 471) to explore the

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viability of hardiness as a predictor of persistence to graduation within four years. A hardiness survey was distributed to 471 full time freshmen in 1997, four years after the respondents completed the questionnaire upon their arrival at university, only 28% of the sample graduated on time, 26% remained enrolled for continuing coursework, and almost half dropped out. The gradates, dropouts and those who remained enrolled average 60.07, 57.77, and 58.11 (p < 0.01) on the measure of hardiness respectively. Thus, personality hardiness is revealed a correlation linking persistence with graduation, and a hardiness retention model is finally suggested by the authors to be used as an admission criterion to weed out possible future dropouts. In a nutshell, accumulated findings of empirical studies make clear that personality hardiness does provide people with courage and motivation to cope with stressful circumstances through hardy actions (transformational coping) which turn individuals from potential strain to opportunities and advantages, thereby maintaining and improving health and performance in different situations.

Chapter 3

Personality Hardiness and Aptitude Testing for Interpreting

Due to its multitasking and immediacy, interpreting is a highly stressful activity, with interpreters working under great pressure. Accordingly, interpreters are expected to possess hardy personality, with which people suffer from fewer physical and psychological illnesses and perform well in a wide range of high-stress contexts. As such, we may be able to assume that a hardy personality is of great value to interpreters, who are acknowledged to work under stress.

3.1 Conceptualization of Personality Hardiness At a conceptual level, personality hardiness is positively associated with such adaptive personality variables as self-efficacy, self-esteem, extraversion, resilience and optimism. It is negatively associated with maladaptive personality conditions like depression, anxiety and so forth. Hardiness has also been developed in to “stresscoping personality” (Chen and Wang 2008; Huang 2002) with a broader construct, and proved to be strongly related to the Big Five personality traits with a significant correlation coefficient at the 0.001 level among Chinese university students (Zhang 2011). Although personality hardiness appears to share similarities with the above mentioned positive psychology concepts, available findings suggest that it is “a better predictor of effectively coping with stressful circumstances” (Maddi and Harvey 2006: 415).

3.1.1 Underpinning in Existential Courage Life is, by its nature, a stressful phenomenon. The combination of ongoing pressures fueled by developmental requirements and additionally imposed megatrends makes the initial effects of increased stress appear to be increased strain. Fortunately, © Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press 2023 X. Xing, The Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting Performance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6335-5_3

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personality hardiness, emerging as a pattern of attitudes and strategies, is helpful for turning stressful circumstances from potential disasters into growth opportunities. Personality hardiness is an operationalization of existential courage (Maddi 1986). Existential psychology intends to include not only the stressful circumstances imposed on people, but also those that are the natural result of the moment-to-moment decisions inherent in interacting with the environment. According to existentialists, a person continuously makes decisions to deal with stresses by moving toward the future (facing the circumstance and learning from the experience) or shrinking toward the past (denying and avoiding so as to preserve the status quo). In order to grow and develop, one must choose the future, even though it is anxiety provoking with uncertain outcomes. In facing the anxiety and growing in the process, a person requires courage. This emphasis on the importance of courage in making the most out of life is instrumental in building the conceptualization of personality hardiness (Maddi and Kobasa 1984).

3.1.2 Dimensionality Personality hardiness has been conceptualized as a combination of three attitudes of Commitment, Control and Challenge (Kobasa 1979; Maddi and Kobasa 1984). According to Kobasa et al. (1982: 169), the Commitment disposition is a tendency to involve oneself in (rather than experience alienation from) whatever one is doing or encountering; the Control disposition is a tendency to feel and act as if one is influential (rather than helpless) in the face of the varied contingencies of life; and the Challenge disposition is expressed as a belief that change rather than stability is normal in life and that anticipation of changes is an interesting incentive to growth rather than a threat to security. Personality hardiness is a hierarchical multidimensional construct, in which the three subcomponents are under a global domain of hardiness, which means a high hardy individual is supposed to be high in the three dimensions concurrently. In the early days of research, hardiness was defined as a unitary personality structure comprising the three inter-related dispositions, that is, hardiness was regarded as a continuum along which the hardiness level ranged from low-hardiness to highhardiness (Fig. 3.1). In this way, hardiness scores were often calculated by adding scores for the three dimensions. Those whose composite scores were higher than a median split were divided into high-hardy groups, otherwise they were categorized as low-hardy ones. Operationalizing personality hardiness in this way is obviously not consistent with hardiness theory in which hardy individuals have been described as high in all three characteristics—Commitment, Control, and Challenge, because summing across dimensions and forming groups using a median split would bring about one possibility that if a high-hardy subject is not high in all three dimensions, he is probably above the median for only one dimension but below for the other two.

3.1 Conceptualization of Personality Hardiness

39

Fig. 3.1 Unidimensional conception of personality hardiness (Kobasa et al. 1982) Fig. 3.2 A hierarchical multidimensional construct of personality hardiness (Hystad et al. 2011)

With more and more researchers showing great interest in personality hardiness, abundant research (Bartone et al. 2006/2013; Ganellen and Balney 1984; Hystad et al. 2011; Lifton et al. 2004; Maddi 2007/2011; Sheard 2009; Sheard and Golby 2007) suggests that personality hardiness should be better understood as a hierarchical multidimensional construct, depicted as above (Fig. 3.2). In this view, separate frequency distributions for Commitment, Control and Challenge are measured and their sum forms a total hardiness score. Individuals whose scores are above the cutoffs for each of the three distributions would be considered high in hardiness and those who are below all three cutoffs would be considered as low in hardiness. By this means, researchers could investigate the independent effects of Commitment, Control and Challenge, besides the hardiness as a whole, which represents an enrichment of hardiness theory and research.

3.1.3 Personality Hardiness Model The conceptualization and theorizing of hardiness as a source of resistance to the negative effects of stressful life events derives from existential personality theory (Kobasa and Puccetti 1983: 840). In the view of existential psychologists, a person must choose to move forward to the future so as to grow and develop when dealing

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Fig. 3.3 The hardiness model for performance and health enhancement (Maddi and Kobasa 1984)

with stresses, even if the road ahead is full of uncertainty. Courage and motivation contained in hardy attitudes are mostly needed to turn stress into advantage and enhance physical and mental health by applying “transformational coping, supportive social interactions and facilitative self-care” (Maddi 2007: 63). This conceptualized process is depicted in the above model (Fig. 3.3). This Hardiness Model of performance and health enhancement explains that in encountering stressful situations, with the increase of acute stress and chronic stress, the physical and mental strain mounts. The strain tends to be severer and may bring about ineffective behavior, mental burnout and physical illness, one’s health and performance would thus be undermined if the strain hasn’t been buffered or moderated in time. Fortunately, this debilitating process is not likely to happen in a person with hardy attitudes, which provide him/her with motivation and courage to adopt a series of hardy actions of transformational coping (mentally and behaviorally), seeking social support (assistance and encouragement) and engaging in self-care (physical exercise, relaxation and so on). In this resilient process, stress and strain are buffered, and health and performance are maintained or enhanced eventually. As shown in the above hardiness model, Commitment, Control and Challenge provide an individual with courage and motivation to do the hard work of turning stressful circumstances from potential disasters into growth opportunities instead (Maddi 2002). As such, personality hardiness is a pathway to resilience under stress (Bonanno 2004).

3.2 Aptitude Testing for Interpreting

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3.2 Aptitude Testing for Interpreting 3.2.1 Necessity of Aptitude Testing for Interpreting For a practice or occupation to be acknowledged as a profession, it must be perceived to rest on a complex body of knowledge and skills, mastery of which can only be acquired by specialized training (Pöchhacker 2004: 166). The same holds true for interpreting. The Post World-War-II era has seen a great increase in the demand for conference interpreters who are deemed to have a number of prerequisites. It is against this backdrop that conference interpreting institutions have been established to train interpreting professionals, which indeed indicates that interpreters are no longer born but made (Herbert 1978; Mackintosh 1999). Aptitudes of an interpreter have initially been advocated in the 1965 Symposium on conference interpreter training, and it is not until recently that “admission to CI training shall be on the basis of an entrance test, which verifies language skills, cultural and general knowledge, and aptitude for interpreting” (Mackintosh 1999: 72) has been proposed. From then on, schools have started to administer an entry-level test to select candidates. A general literature survey indicates that admission tests, by adopting test types with high face validity such as short consecutive interpreting, have been criticized for determining readiness to start a program rather than ambition to predict completion (Sawyer 2004). Because it places a special demand on candidates who have no previous interpreting experience by asking them to perform a task they have very likely never performed or practiced before (ibid.). Admission tests have also been revealed to fail to select the most suitable candidates. In Timarová and Ungoed-Thomas’s (2008) survey of admission testing practice among 18 postgraduate programs in conference interpreting in Europe, Asia and North America, admission tests reject approximately 76% of applicants and select 24%. However, only an average of 56% of the admitted candidates successfully complete the course. Moreover, Gringiani (1990), in comparing aptitude test results with actual performance by students of SSLMIT in Trieste on an end-ofcourse examination, finds that out of 25 students who failed the aptitude test, seven successfully complete the course and achieve more or less the same grades as those students who are considered to be better equipped to become interpreters. However, out of 17 students who successfully passed the aptitude tests, eight drop out without completing the course. At any rate it is an interim aptitude test and has limited power in deciding candidates’ opportunity to study CI due to the Italian educational regulation that admission into the interpreting specialization late in one’s studies is a student’s decision, it somehow demonstrates drawbacks of existing admission tests. It is safe to conclude that, albeit pervasive, most admission tests have yet played a role in selecting suitable candidates for interpreter education programs and have failed to demonstrate strong predictive validity which is the most important feature of aptitude tests, since the basic aim of an aptitude test is to predict whether an individual will be able to acquire a skill after training (Boyle and Fisher 2007). In this

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sense, most entry-level tests are in fact of a diagnostic nature, examining candidates’ existing abilities and determining “readiness” for interpreter training rather than the probability of success in an interpreter education program, and could not be described as aptitude tests. The paucity of a validated aptitude test will inevitably bring about the following problems: Firstly, prospective interpreters have little way of knowing whether or not they would become successful interpreters. To borrow an analogy by Timarová and Ungoed-Thomas (2009), whether a child can ride a bike could be easily detected by simply asking her to ride it (achievement), but how to find out whether a newborn baby will be able to ride a bicycle in the future (aptitude)? And this is the conundrum of aptitude testing. Without a validated aptitude test, candidates who invested a great deal of time and money in interpreting training probably ended up dropping out, while others who passed the training courses may eventually be found not to have the ability to become skilled interpreters, thus resulting in a massive waste of resources on finance and manpower. Secondly, interpreter educators have no more than subjective tools to evaluate candidates and their intuitive biases may “cause academic or career counseling discordance to actual potential” (Macnamara 2012: 2). For example, for some students who are equipped with interpreting aptitude, they are likely to be weeded out in the entry-level exams only because they do not seem to be “ready” due to low scores on short consecutive interpreting. Validated aptitude tests would thus “allow the teacher/professional to judge the student’s potential with greater accuracy” (Moser Mercer 1985: 100). Thirdly, an invalidated admission test provides interpreter trainers with limited reference concerning candidates’ traits, strengths or weaknesses, so that candidates could hardly be taught or practiced according to their own aptitudes. Therefore, administering aptitude tests with high predictive validity, and developing validated aptitude test types have long been a concern not only to interpreting researchers and educators, but also to the AIIC training committee who acknowledges there is currently no reliable test of aptitude for interpreting (cited in Timarová and Ungoed-Thomas 2009: 226). Serving as an objective measurement tool to predict success and aid in career selection, an aptitude test for interpreting has become the first and foremost step in an integral educational system and is of great importance to all stakeholders.

3.2.2 Aptitude Testing Models for Interpreting Aptitude for interpreting has remained substantially the same over the years and thus provides a “fairly stable archetype” (Chabasse and Kader 2014: 31) for aptitude testing models. A literature survey generates three existing aptitude testing models, two of which are concluded from common practice of interpreting admission tests among different schools.

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Chabasse’s Aptitude Testing Model for Simultaneous Interpreting (2009) Chabasse (2009), at the outset, defines aptitude as the interaction of talent and cognitive competences (knowledge), in which talent consists of cognitive abilities (ability that is targeted to strategic use of knowledge) as well as non-cognitive personality traits such as resistance to stress, concentration and motivation. Based on Thurstone’s theory of multi-faceted intelligence (1938), Chabasse proceeds to propose an aptitude model for simultaneous interpreting (SI). In the SI model (Fig. 3.4), competences including language and general knowledge shown on the left side are knowledgebased, and thus can be acquired. Whereas, skills comprising word fluency, verbal comprehension, reasoning and memory represent a candidate’s capability to apply his acquired competences. These cognitive competences are prerequisites for successfully completing a degree program. The non-cognitive characteristics on the right side are made up of motivation, self-management, as well as personality traits like flexibility, self-confidence and team-work spirit. All these cognitive and non-cognitive abilities, aligned with development process exercise, contribute to systematically acquired expertise. Technically, the model proposed by Chabasse is an aptitude model rather than an aptitude testing one. However, just as she claims that only when tests or a test battery based on this model is compiled and administered could the candidates’ aptitude and their likelihood to perform and learn well be determined. After all, the criteria to

Cognitive

Non-cognitive

Competences Native language Foreign language Intercultural General knowledge Skills Word fluency Verbal comprehension Reasoning Memory Perceptual speed

Coincidence Experiences

Motivation Determination Stamina Self-management Concentration Stress-resistance Language transfer Personality Flexibility Ability to communication Self-confidence Ability to work in teams

Development process exercise

Environments: Family, cultural, student-life,

Systematically acquired expertise Fig. 3.4 Aptitude model for simultaneous interpreting by Chabasse (2009, cited in Chabasse 2014: 22)

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3 Personality Hardiness and Aptitude Testing for Interpreting

Aptitude testing model for interpreting

Interpreting-related competences

Language transfer

Interpretingrelated skills

Encyclopedic knowledge

Personal qualities

Physical& psychological stamina

Personality traits

Professional qualities

Fig. 3.5 Aptitude testing model for interpreting by Xing (2015: 12)

be measured must be defined and analyzed before an aptitude test can be developed (Macnamara 2012). Xing’s Aptitude Testing Model for Interpreting (2015) Grounded on previous research findings on interpreting aptitude and a survey on common practice of admission tests conducted by ten interpreting training programs in Chinese universities, Xing (2015) proposes an aptitude testing model for interpreting, as shown in Fig. 3.5. This aptitude testing model consists of two modules, namely, interpreting-related competences and personal qualities. There are three subcomponents beneath each module with interpreting-related skills and professional qualities in dotted line boxes which means optional. In other words, whether these two subcomponents are tested or not at an entrance level depends on training duration and program contents. Xing further illustrates, for a two-year MTI (Master of Translation and Interpreting) education program, candidates are supposed to be examined in terms of linguistic and extra-linguistic knowledge, physical and psychological qualities as well as personality traits, while interpreting-related skills and professional qualities may not necessarily be tested since they are the foci of training. However, for a 6-month SI training course, these skills are supposed to be examined in an admission test. Zha’s Interpreting Aptitude Testing Model (2016) Zha (2016), in The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, chooses “hard skills” and “soft skills” to categorize interpreting aptitude. In his interpreting aptitudinal model, he classifies linguistic ability, communication skills, analytical and comprehensive skills, as well as encyclopedic knowledge into “hard skills”, and motivation, selfcontrol and personality traits are grouped as “soft skills”. Combining the interpreting aptitudinal model with a survey on aptitude test practices in six universities which are on the AIIC Interpreting Schools & Programs Directory, including ESIT, Fu Jen Catholic University, York University, University of Leeds, National Taiwan University and University of Manchester, he puts forward an interpreting aptitude testing model as shown in Fig. 3.6.

3.2 Aptitude Testing for Interpreting

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Language and culture Hard skills (Cognitive skills)

Communication, Analysis and comprehension

Interpreting aptitude testing

Motivation Soft skills (Non-cognitive skills)

Self-control Personality traits

Fig. 3.6 Aptitude testing model for interpreting by Zha (2016: 59)

As can be seen from the three aforementioned models, apart from linguistic and cognitive aptitudes, candidates’ psychological qualities, personality traits, motivation, etc. have additionally been valued in interpreting aptitude testing, suggesting that aptitude testing nowadays is no longer restricted to candidates’ cognitive aptitudes, the importance of their non-cognitive characteristics have, as well, begun to be recognized. It surely is a great leap. However, enormous efforts are urgently required to specify these characteristics and develop reliable and validated measurement tools. Moreover, it is acknowledged that the ultimate goal of any theoretical model is to provide a basis and support for practice, and aptitude testing model for interpreting is of no exception. Although different aptitude testing models for interpreting have been proposed, substantial empirical research and long-term data tracking will be needed before these models are disseminated and play a function in guiding aptitude testing practice.

3.2.3 Personality Hardiness and Aptitude Testing for Interpreting Interpreting is a form of Translation1 in which a first and final rendition in another language is produced on the basis of a one-time presentation of an utterance in a source language (Kade 1968, cited in Pöchhacker 2004), due to which interpreting is considered a highly stress-provoking activity. An interpreter usually works under great pressure: source-language text cannot be reviewed or replayed, target-language text is of little chance for correction or revision, high density of information input, 1

In this book, the term of translation with an uppercase “T” refers to translation of all kinds, including but not limited to: written translation and interpreting; whereas when it appears with a lowercase “t”, the term means written translation only.

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great intensity for instant production, less resources to refer to at hand, etc. There is no wonder why, apart from cognitive abilities, an ideal interpreter is expected to have personality traits of “physical and psychological stamina” (Keiser 1978), “stressresistance and assertiveness” (Rudser and Strong 1986), “ability to work under stress for long periods” (Longley 1989), and should be “progressive and extrovert” (Szuki 1988). In screening and training student interpreters, these qualities should and could be taken into consideration. After all, personality traits are fairly stable throughout life once childhood is reached. Personality trait, defined as “an individual’s characteristic pattern of thought, emotion, and behavior, together with the psychological mechanisms, hidden or not, behind those patterns” (Funder 1997: 1), is an internal and causal process accounting for an individual’s typical manifestations of behavior, feeling, and thought in everyday life. In personality psychology, the stability and change of personality have long been a controversial issue. Exactly as the nature or nurture debate, answers to which are no longer whether genes or environment matters, but how much genes or environment matters. Ample evidence shows that personality traits are neither fixed forever nor rapidly changing from moment to moment (Caspi and Roberts 2001; Conley 1984; Costa and McCrae 1988; Roberts and DelVecchio 2000). A large-scale review of longitudinal personality research by Roberts, Walton and Viechtbauer (2006) concludes an overall pattern of developmental change in personality across entire life span (from Big Five personality factors). In some important ways, most people develop greater maturity as they grow older, not only as they make the transition from adolescence to adulthood, but throughout much of their adult life course as well. Two possibilities illustrate the observed changes in mean levels of personality characteristics across the life span. One is the biological processes of maturation, and the other is the important events and changes in social roles people experience during their lives, which has an influence on their personalities. However, one important aspect of the idea of a personality trait is that individual differences show some stability over fairly long periods of time (Ashton 2007: 86). Meaning that when we say people differ in their levels of some personality trait, we are describing differences in an enduring disposition rather than in a temporary state. Abundant large-scale investigations (for example, Costa and McCrae 1992) have revealed that adults’ levels of personality traits show almost as much stability across a period of several years as they would across a period of several weeks, and this long-term stability of personality traits is equally strong for young adults or adolescents. In short, the fact personality changes over a very long period does not contradict to the idea that a personality trait is an enduring disposition, since it is possible that the strengths of those dispositions would change gradually over the life span (Ashton 2007: 88). As such, personality traits are relatively stable although they change over time. Personality hardiness, as a stress-resistance resource (Kobasa 1979) and a pathway to resilience under stress (Bonanno 2004), is a valuable personality trait. People high in personality hardiness are apt to commit themselves to what they are doing rather than feeling alienated, since they believe that they can at least partially control events rather than feel powerless, and regard change to be a normal challenge or

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impetus to development rather than a threat. Hardiness is presented as facilitating the kind of perception, evaluation, and coping that lead to successful resolution of the situation created by stressful events. It has therefore become a cogent topic among psychologists and related professionals. As reviewed, personality hardiness has been studied in various contexts with samples ranging from university students to military cadets. The main and moderating effects of hardiness on performance-enhancement relationship have been well established, however, no research, to the best of my knowledge, has been carried out on interpretation students, to date. Interpretation students, like most university students on the one hand, are facing university adaptation and academia stress. On the other hand, they would suffer even greater anxiety and stress psychologically from interpretation itself which involves “constant information load, the time factor, the tremendous amount of concentration required, fatigue, etc.” (Kurz 2003: 51). Considering the generalizable role of personality in successful completion of study and skill acquisition (Oakes et al. 2001), job performance (Barrick and Mount 2005; Judge et al. 1999) and career success (Bozionelos 2004), and in view of the highly stress-provoking characteristic of interpreting, as well as with great efforts to screen suitable interpreting candidates, it is worthwhile to explore this personality trait among student interpreters, which accounts for the rationale of the present study.

Chapter 4

Research on the Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting Performance: With Interpreting Anxiety and Self-efficacy as Intermediates

The primary purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between personality hardiness and interpreting performance among Chinese interpretation students, as well as the effects of interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy, acting as intermediate variables, on this relationship. The target population of this study is first-year student interpreters at postgraduate level. First, variables of personality hardiness, interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy of the interpretation students are measured by using the Hardiness Scale (HS), Interpreting Anxiety Scale (IAS) and General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSE) respectively. Then, an on-the-spot consecutive interpreting test is administered to all participants, scores of which are adopted as the indicator of students’ interpreting performance. Third, the relationship between personality hardiness and interpreting performance is examined with the scores of the HS and interpreting performance. Forth, the effects of interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy on the hardiness-performance relations are explored in turn. Last, an in-depth semi-structured interview is given to the participants, with an aim to triangulate the data and supplement findings of the quantitative research. This chapter mainly explains the research procedures of the main study, including research design, participants, instruments, data collection procedures, as well as data analysis methods. The main study addresses the first three research questions initiated in Chapter one, which are: (1) What’s the relationship between personality hardiness and interpreting performance among Chinese student interpreters? (2) How does personality hardiness affect interpreting performance, directly or via interpreting anxiety as an intermediate variable? (3) How does personality hardiness affect interpreting performance, directly or via interpreting self-efficacy as an intermediate variable? In exploring the relationship between personality hardiness and interpreting performance with interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy as intermediates, it firstly © Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press 2023 X. Xing, The Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting Performance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6335-5_4

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needs to determine whether these four variables are correlated significantly with one another, which constitutes the premise of this investigation. Next, mediating and moderating effects of interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy on hardiness-performance linkage would be inspected respectively considering the fact that “a moderating variable affects the relationship between two other variables” (Milin and Hadži´c 2011: 849), whilst “a mediator typically emerges when the influence of some independent variable (predictor) on the dependent variable (criterion) is not direct, but mediated through the third variable” (ibid.: 851). Meanwhile, bearing in mind that the uniqueness and value of an aptitude test lies in its predictive validity, the predictive power of personality hardiness on interpreting performance will also be examined in the main study. In order to illuminate the relations among variables of personality hardiness, interpreting performance, interpreting anxiety as well as self-efficacy, and for the sake of operational and discussion convenience, I continue to, based on the above considerations, specify the three main research questions into the following five sub-questions and propose the hypotheses accordingly. Sub-question 1 What’s the relationship between personality hardiness and interpreting performance by taking interpreting anxiety or self-efficacy as an intermediate variable respectively? Hypothesis 1 Personality hardiness is negatively related to interpreting anxiety, and positively related to interpreting performance; interpreting anxiety is negatively related to interpreting performance. Hypothesis 2 Personality hardiness is positively related to self-efficacy and interpreting performance; self-efficacy is positively related to interpreting performance. Sub-question 2 Is personality hardiness predictive of interpreting anxiety, selfefficacy as well as interpreting performance? Hypothesis 1 Personality hardiness is negatively predictive of interpreting anxiety. Hypothesis 2 Personality hardiness is positively predictive of self-efficacy. Hypothesis 3 Personality hardiness is positively predictive of interpreting performance. Sub-question 3 What’s the effect of interpreting anxiety on hardiness-performance relationship? Hypothesis 1 Interpreting anxiety acts as a mediator in hardiness-performance relationship. Hypothesis 2 Interpreting anxiety acts as a moderator in hardiness-performance relationship. Sub-question 4 What’s the effect of self-efficacy on hardiness-performance relationship?

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Hypothesis 1 Self-efficacy acts as a mediator in hardiness-performance relationship. Hypothesis 2 Self-efficacy acts as a moderator in hardiness-performance relationship. Sub-question 5 What’s the role of personality hardiness in interpreting learning? No hypothesis is posed for this research question. Instead, the findings will be obtained from the above four questions as well as an analysis of the in-depth interviews. The main study employs a mixed methodology utilizing both quantitative and qualitative approaches to understand the effects of student interpreters’ personality hardiness on interpreting performance. For the quantitative survey, a questionnaire composed of three scales is used (see Appendix 1): (1) Hardiness Scale developed by Lu (2008/2012) to measure personality hardiness; (2) Interpreting Anxiety Scale by Dong et al. (2013) to measure the participants’ interpreting anxiety; and (3) General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSE) (Chinese-version) by Zhang and Schwarzer (1995) to measure the participants’ sense of self-efficacy. In the semi-structured interview, nine participants featuring different levels of personality hardiness are interviewed to provide additional information about their self-perception of how personality hardiness affects their interpreting learning. In addition, all participants are invited to participate in a consecutive interpreting test after filling out the questionnaire. This test score is adopted as an indicator of their interpreting performance in the present investigation.

4.1 Quantitative Research 4.1.1 Participants Prior to education of MTI which was first approved by the Chinese State Council Academic Degree Committee in 2007, translation and interpreting are merely courses provided at postgraduate level with inexplicit training objectives and scarce practicing opportunities. As a consequence, neither are the graduates equipped with translation (or interpreting) theories, nor are they capable of becoming skilled practitioners. Against this backdrop, by borrowing insights and successful practices from ESIT (Paris), Monterey Institute of International Studies, University of Ottawa and universities in Hong Kong, a proposal to set up MTI education, with an aim to train highlevel and application-oriented translation and conference interpreting professionals has been initiated. In 2007, 15 universities were firstly ratified as experimental units to hold MTI programs, and another 25 universities were authorized in 2008. Till 2015, MTI education programs have been established in 206 Chinese universities. This research decides to take MTI (interpreting) students as participants since they are trained to be future interpreting professionals. A total of 149 MTI first-year

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Fig. 4.1 Geographical constitution of the participants

interpreting students, aging from 22 to 30, with 124 females and 25 males from 10 different universities in 4 provinces, namely, Guangdong, Fujian, Hunan and Hubei, are voluntarily participating in this study. Their geographical constitution is shown in Fig. 4.1. In order to be representative, all 149 participants are from different universities covering the aforementioned three ratified batches, among which 77 come from the first-ratified universities, 19 come from the second and 53 from the third1 (Fig. 4.2). Language combinations of these participants are Chinese and English. Altogether 149 MTI first-year interpretation students participate in the current study, aging from 22 to 30. As shown in Table 4.1, the sample consists of 124 females and 25 males, occupying 83.2% and 16.8% of the total respectively. The participants come from 10 different universities, among whom 77 come from the first ratified universities to hold MTI education, 19 from the second ratified universities, and 53 from the third ratified universities. All these 10 universities are located in 4 different provinces, namely, Guangdong, Fujian, Hunan and Hubei. Participants’ distributions by levels of universities and provinces are presented in Tables 4.2 and 4.3.

1

In 2007, 15 universities are ratified to run MTI education, including BFSU, SISU, GDUFS, XMU, etc.; In 2008, another 25 universities are authorized, such as BISU, BLCU, CCNU and the like; In 2010, 118 more universities are authorized. For detailed information, please refer to: http:// cnmti.gdufs.edu.cn/MTIjzw.htm

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Fig. 4.2 University distribution of the participants

Table 4.1 Distribution of participants by gender

Table 4.2 Distribution of participants by levels of universities

Table 4.3 Distribution of participants by provinces

Gender

Number

Percent (%)

Female

124

83.2

Male

25

16.8

Universities

Number

Percent (%)

First-ratified

77

51.6

Second-ratified

19

12.8

Third-ratified

53

35.6

Provinces

Number

Percent (%)

Guangdong

60

40.3

Hubei

58

38.9

Hunan

24

16.1

Fujian

7

4.7

4.1.2 Instruments The instruments used in this study consist of Hardiness Scale (HS) developed by Lu (2008/2012); Interpreting Anxiety Scale developed by Dong et al. (2013) and General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSE-C) by Zhang and Schwarzer (1995). All the scales are administered to the participants in Chinese.

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Personality Hardiness Personality hardiness is assessed by Hardiness Scale (HS). HS is a 27-item scale that yields a total hardiness score (a composite of scores on the four subscales), as well as scores on the 4 subscales, which are Commitment, Control, Challenge and Perseverance. HS is originated from the PVS III-R (Maddi 2004) which turns out to reflect a low internal consistency in Chinese context because of cultural differences, that is, inconsistent comprehension of hardiness between easterners and westerners makes the scale fail to reflect the hardy qualities in Chinese people (Lu et al. 2012: 322). HS has high test–retest reliability and internal consistency, and its criterionrelated validity is also fairly satisfactory. To be specific, the internal consistency of the HS using Cronbach’s alpha is 0.927 (0.799 for commitment, 0.853 for control, 0.749 for challenge, and 0.812 for perseverance) with a sample of 251 subjects, and test–retest reliability over a period of two weeks is r = 0.92 (p < 0.01) with a sample of 632 subjects (ibid.). Item examples of HS include, for example, for Commitment, “I look forward to committing myself to work/study everyday”, “I am very fulfilled with a busy lifestyle”; for Control, “I manage to turn the situation around for the better when in adversity”, “I can keep cheerful even if in adversity”; for Challenge, “I like to try anything fresh and stimulating”, “Breaking the routine will inspire me to learn”; and “I can always achieve the goal through my own efforts”, “As long as it is meaningful, I always insist doing it no matter how difficult it is” for Perseverance. Scores are recorded on a 4-point Likert scale anchored by ‘not at all true’ and ‘very true’. Higher scores indicate desirable levels of hardiness. Hardiness Scale is adopted to examine the participants’ personality hardiness. Descriptive statistics are computed to interpret the students’ responses to 27 items of the scale which are rated on a four-point Likert-scale system, ranging from 1 = not at all true to 4 = very true as to how much each item describes their feelings and behaviors. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient is computed to test internal consistency of Hardiness Scale. As a number of previous studies prove that the Hardiness Scale is a highly reliable predictor of hardy personality of Chinese people, Cronbach’s alpha coefficients in the present study is α = 0.908 for the total scale, α = 0.773 for the subscale of Perseverance, α = 0.748 for Commitment, α = 0.794 for Control and α = 0.787 for Challenge respectively, as shown in Table 4.4. The results indicate that the participants’ hardy personality measured by this scale is highly reliable.2 In addition, Pearson’s r correlation is computed to investigate the intercorrelations among the four dimensions of personality hardiness. As demonstrated in Table 4.5, Perseverance, Commitment, Control and Challenge are significantly correlated to one another at the level of 0.01, indicating a close and positive correlation among the four dimensions of personality hardiness.

2

A reliability coefficient of .70 or higher is considered “acceptable” in most social science research situations.

4.1 Quantitative Research Table 4.4 Internal consistency of Hardiness Scale

55

Dimension

Item

Cronbach’s alpha

Perseverance

6

0.773

Commitment

6

0.748

Control

8

0.794

Challenge

7

0.787

27

0.908

Total

Table 4.5 Inter-correlations among the four dimensions of personality hardiness Dimension

Perseverance

Commitment

Control

Challenge

Perseverance

–

Commitment

0.591**

–

Control

0.611**

0.532**

–

Challenge

0.558**

0.535**

0.554**

–

Total

0.843**

0.806**

0.817**

0.815**

Total

–

Note ** p < 0.01 (two-tailed), n = 149

Interpreting Anxiety Interpreting anxiety in the current study is measured by Interpreting Anxiety Scale which is a 20-item scale on a 5-point Likert scale anchored by ‘not at all true’ (=1) and ‘very true’ (=5). Higher scores are signals of higher levels of interpreting anxiety. Item examples include, “I am looking forward to the next interpreting task”, “Interpreting learning is interesting as well as challenging to me”, “I felt very nervous while interpreting” and “To do interpreting well needs so many skills that I cannot handle”. The reason to choose Interpreting Anxiety Scale by Dong et al. (2013) rather than Interpreting Anxiety Scale by Kang (2010) is that the latter is developed to measure interpreting testing anxiety, while the former targets general interpreting anxiety of Chinese student interpreters. Interpreting anxiety measured by Interpreting Anxiety Scale has been reported not only to negatively correlate with interpreting performance (r = −0.417, p < 0.01), but also to satisfactorily predict final-term interpreting performance (N = 56). Test–retest reliability over a period of two semesters is r = 0.84 with a sample of 60 subjects, and the internal consistency of the scale using Cronbach’s alpha is 0.85 to 0.93 (Dong et al. 2013: 60). Interpreting anxiety in the present study is assessed by the Interpreting Anxiety Scale which is designed to measure interpretation students’ levels of interpreting anxiety in training. Interpreting Anxiety Scale is a 20-item scale on a 5-point Likert scale anchored by ‘not at all true’ (=1) and ‘very true’ (=5), among which item 1 to item 8 are scored reversely. Higher scores indicate higher levels of interpreting anxiety. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient α = 0.858 manifests high internal consistency

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Table 4.6 Internal consistency of Interpreting anxiety scale

Item

Cronbach’s alpha

20

0.858

of Interpreting Anxiety Scale (Table 4.6). Thus, participants’ interpreting anxiety measured by this scale is highly reliable. Self-efficacy Self-efficacy is commonly understood as domain-specific, which means one can have more or less firm self-beliefs in different domains or particular situations. Meanwhile, researchers have also conceptualized a generalized sense of self-efficacy. In the present study, I aim to measure students’ global confidence in their coping abilities across a wide range of demanding or novel situations, and accordingly, the General Self-Efficacy scale is chosen instead of a domain-specific scale. Participants are invited to complete the Chinese-version of GSE by Zhang and Schwarzer (1995) with 10 items, such as “I can always manage to solve difficult problems if I try hard enough”, “I can always find solutions when in difficulties”, and the like. Responses to the items range from strongly disagree (=1) to strongly agree (=4). The GSE, originally developed by Jerusalem and Schwarzer in 1981 in the German version, aims at a broad and stable sense of personal competence to deal effectively with a variety of stressful situations. The high validity and reliability of this scale have been reported in many studies across various research contexts and ethnically diverse populations (Luszczynska et al. 2005) where it typically yields internal consistency between alpha = 0.75 and 0.90. Besides. It has also been proved to obtain high convergent and discriminant validity (Schwarzer 1993). The Chinese-version of GSE is constructed and tested by Zhang and Schwarzer in 1995 by using a sample of university students with internal consistency of Cronbach’s a = 0.91, and the mean is 24.6 (SD = 5.3, N = 293). A 10-item General self-efficacy scale by Zhang and Schwarzer (1995) is used to assess interpretation students’ self-efficacy, with responses ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 4 = strongly agree. The scale measures students’ global confidence in their coping ability rather than that in a specific-domain. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient α = 0.872 demonstrates high internal consistency of this scale (Table 4.7), indicating that participants’ self-efficacy measured by the GSE scale is fairly reliable for the current investigation. Interpreting Performance Considering that participants of the present study come from different universities in different provinces, I test them with the same materials in the same manner. In Table 4.7 Internal consistency of general self-efficacy scale

Item

Cronbach’s alpha

10

0.872

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57

order to obtain the most authentic data, all participants are examined at the end of second-semester in their own classrooms, listening to the recorded materials and having their interpretation audio-recorded under supervision of their own teachers. All 149 recordings are then scored by three experienced raters,3 marks of which are used as the indicator of students’ interpreting performance. Participants are instructed to interpret two passages, one is from English to Chinese, and the other is from Chinese to English, levels of which are equivalent to the English Interpreting Certificate (III) of Accreditation Center for Interpreters and Translator (ACIT) of Xiamen University. The first passage is about “protecting hearing at work” with 670 English words, and the second is “a survey on economic depression helps to improve health” with 808 Chinese words (see Appendix 2a and 2b). Students are required to interpret what they have heard consecutively during the signals. To objectively assess interpreting performance of the participants coming from different universities in different provinces, consecutive interpreting of two speeches. One is from English to Chinese, and the other is from Chinese to English, levels of which are equivalent to EIC (III) of ACIT Xiamen University is elaborately designed. The English Interpreting Certificate (EIC) examination, held by Accreditation Center for Interpreters and Translators of Xiamen University, is well-known among universities and society for accrediting qualified English interpreters. EIC (III) examinees are required to interpret two speeches (E-C and C-E) consecutively with professional topics, such as environmental protection, cultural exchanges, public welfare and so forth. EIC (III) holders are acknowledged to possess excellent English and Chinese bilingual competence, and to be equipped with proficient consecutive interpreting professional skills who are eligible to provide consecutive interpreting service for large or medium-sized conferences like business negotiation, symposium, exposition, etc. As such, EIC (III) exam closely resembles what the first-year interpreting students have learned and practiced, as well as reflects their current interpreting competence. Participants are tested at the end of the second-semester, listening to the recorded speeches and having their interpretation audio-recorded under the supervision of their own teacher in their own classroom. All 149 recordings are assessed by three experienced raters who are both interpreting teachers and professionals. Since level of the test is equivalent to EIC (III) of ACIT Xiamen University, scoring criterion4 is also referred to that of EIC (III) accordingly with a small fraction of modification for the purpose of the present study (see Appendix 4). The detailed scoring criteria are depicted in Table 4.8. As indicated in the above table, participants’ interpreting performance is scored from the perspectives of information transfer, language, expression, coping strategies as well as overall quality. More specifically, in terms of information transfer, the interpreting is supposed to contain elements reflecting a complete understanding 3

All these three raters are universities teachers with more than 7 years’ experience in teaching interpreting. The interrater reliability is shown in Chapter 5. 4 Refer to http://www.xiadakouyi.com/pfbz.htm.

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Table 4.8 Scoring criteria for interpreting performance

Scoring criteria

(Total: 100) C-E

E-C

Information transfer

30

30

Language (grammar, logic, context, etc.)

5

5

Expression (enunciation, speed, etc.)

5

5

Coping strategy

5

5

Overall quality

5

5

of the major themes and manner of the source text, which means the meaning of the source text is expected to be proficiently covered and conveyed in a proper manner in the interpreting. In assessing language and expression abilities, more emphases are placed on grammar, logic, cohesion, enunciation, speed and so on which embody students’ linguistic knowledge. The ability to use coping strategies flexibly and appropriately in identifying and overcoming interpreting difficulties is also taken into account. Overall quality is evaluated according to raters’ professional experience, including the examinees’ voice, self-confidence, stress-coping and the like. Interrater Reliability Index Interrater reliability (IRR) refers to the relative consistency in ratings provided by multiple judges of multiple targets (Bliese 2000). Estimates of IRR are widely used to address whether judges rank order targets in a manner that is relatively consistent with other judges (LeBreton et al. 2007). Different to interrater agreement, IRR emphasizes the relative consistency or the rank order similarity between judges and is typically indexed via correlation coefficient. Cronbach’s Alpha analysis is commonly used as a measure of IRR. In the pilot study, the three raters were trained to score students’ interpreting performance according to the above-mentioned criteria. In the formal study, the interrater reliability index by Cronbach’s Alpha analysis is 0.792 (Table 4.9), which indicates an acceptable degree of agreement or consistency among the raters, and thus scores of consecutive interpreting test are confirmed to be reliable for being the indicator of participants’ interpreting performance. Table 4.9 Interrater reliability for scoring consecutive interpreting

Rater

Cronbach’s alpha

3

0.792

4.2 Qualitative Research

59

4.2 Qualitative Research It is widely acknowledged that there would be great benefits in harnessing qualitative and quantitative research given that these two methods are clearly delineated since each of these two research approaches would provide a distinctive kind of evidence to address the research questions. In the present study, the effects of personality hardiness on interpreting performance not only require precise measurement, but also need greater understanding of its nature, the latter of which may offer a powerful resource to illuminate the effects. Hence, an in-depth interview with a key feature of providing an undiluted focus on the individuals and offering clarification and deeper understanding is also adopted in this study, with an expectation to present a detailed investigation of the participants’ personal perspectives on the roles of personality hardiness.

4.2.1 Participants Since the main purpose of the in-depth interview is to triangulate whether and how hardy personality affects interpreting learning and performance, the interviewees are supposed to be distinct from each other in their personality hardiness. According to the scores on PH, a total of nine participants, to be specific, three participants in each level of high hardy, medium hardy and low hardy are picked out randomly to participate in the interview.

4.2.2 Semi-Structured Interview Guide Different from a structured interview which has a rigorous set of questions, a semistructured one is open and allows new ideas to be brought up during the interview, helping interviewers to tailor their questions to the interview context, and the people they are interviewing. A semi-structured interview has thus been made to administer to the interviewees. An interview guide (see Appendix 3) with fundamental topics and issues to be covered during the interview has been drafted in advance following the principles suggested by Seidman (1998). The guide is concerned with four main issues: (1) general self-evaluation of personality hardiness and self-efficacy, (2) anxiety-provoking situations in interpretation classes, (3) effects of anxiety on interpreting performance and the (4) effects of personality hardiness on interpretation learning and performance.

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4.2.3 Procedures Bearing in mind the research purposes and in accordance with the scientific and effective process of interviewing (Ritchie & Lewis, 2003), a semi-structured interview is carried out to the nine participants individually. The place and time are pre-arranged in the most convenient way for the interviewees. All participants are well informed of the purpose of the interview and consent to be audio-recorded. The interview is conducted in Chinese and the length of time for each interview ranges from 20 min to half an hour. All interviews are finally transcribed and analyzed.

4.3 Data Collection and Analysis 4.3.1 Data Collection A pilot study was undertaken in March, 2016, the purpose of which was fourfold. First, to ensure the comprehensibility of the questionnaire; second, to examine the reliability and validity of each scale; third, to examine whether the consecutive interpreting materials are appropriate enough to distinguish participants’ interpreting levels; and fourth, to check the procedures of administering the questionnaire and the time required to complete it. Since personality hardiness was initially co-studied by Kobasa and Maddi, and in view of the popularity of Personal Views Survey III-R, I firstly adopted PVS III-R as the measure of personality hardiness. Back-translation was utilized to check the item-compatibility between the Chinese and English versions of the questionnaire. The PVS III-R was first translated into Chinese by the researcher and checked by two doctoral candidates at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University to ensure its comprehensibility. The Chinese version was then translated into English by a ChineseEnglish bilingual in Hong Kong. The original and the back-translated versions were examined and revised by a native English speaker until each item in the two versions was comparable in concept. A questionnaire, consisting of translated PVS III-R, Chinese-version General SelfEfficacy scale and Interpreting Anxiety Scale, was administered to 29 MTI first-year interpretation students from two universities. It took them around 15 min to view the consent form and complete the entire questionnaire. Statistical analysis suggested that the internal consistency of the PVS III-R using Cronbach’s alpha was 0.73 (0.54 for Commitment, 0.48 for Control, 0.35 for Challenge), which is less satisfactory for the present study, confirming its constraints in Chinese context claimed by Lu et al. (2012). The Chinese-version General Self-Efficacy scale and Interpreting Anxiety Scale achieved a reasonably high internal consistency of Cronbach’s a = 0.85 and = 0.83 respectively. Therefore, PVS III-R was replaced by Hardiness Scale, which was originated from PVS III-R but revised and adapted to Chinese samples. Hardiness Scale was

4.3 Data Collection and Analysis

61

subsequently administered to the 29 students. Statistical analysis demonstrated an internal consistency of Cronbach’s a = 0.95 (0.84 for Perseverance, 0.89 for Control, 0.81 for Commitment, and 0.86 for Challenge) which is desirable for the present study. Five MTI first-year interpretation students participated in the pilot study to test the appropriateness of the interpreting materials. They listened to the audio-recording and consecutively interpreted, with note-taking, what they have heard within the given time limit. Their performance showed that the gist of the source texts could basically be conveyed since the topics are not of unfamiliarity. They also agreed upon the speed and intelligibility of the original speech. Data for the formal study were gathered from May to June in 2016. For the questionnaire survey and consecutive interpreting testing, a total of 149 MTI interpretation students from 10 different universities in 4 provinces were sampled at the end of their first-year training. Except for the data generated from four universities where I administered in person, data from the other six universities were collected with the assistance of the instructors who carried out the survey and testing under detailed instructions. Participants were firstly asked to read a consent form, and then to complete an entire set of questionnaire, including the Hardiness Scale, General Self-Efficacy scale and Interpreting Anxiety Scale. The survey lasted 15 min. All completed questionnaires were collected and coded for further computer processing. The questionnaire survey was followed by a consecutive interpreting test. Participants were instructed to listen to two previously recorded speeches as in the pilot study and to consecutively interpret them with note-taking within the allocated time. Due to the operational limitation, it was of difficulty to set up pre-interpreting time for the participants, so I designed five sentences interpreting which were chosen from the subsequent speeches for warming up as compensation. When finishing interpreting, students’ recordings were collected and coded in line with that of the questionnaires for rating. For triangulating and supplementing data gathered from the quantitative research, nine students from the different universities participated in an in-depth interview under the instruction of “maximum variation sampling” (Seidman 1998). I obtain permission to conduct the research from each consecutive interpreting teacher in the 10 universities. Students are assured that participation is on a voluntary basis and that all information would be treated with the strictest confidence.

4.3.2 Data Analysis The quantitative data analysis is conducted with Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 19.0. To begin with, to ascertain the extent of the relationship among personality hardiness (including the four dimensions), interpreting performance, interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy, data are analyzed by using Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients.

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In the next step, regarding personality hardiness, with its four dimensions, as an independent (predictor) variable and interpreting performance as a dependent (criterion) variable, multivariate stepwise regression analysis is conducted to develop a model of predicting students’ interpreting performance from personality hardiness at the significance level of 0.05. The same methods and procedures are applied to test the predictive effects of personality hardiness on interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy respectively. In examining the mediating effects of interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy on the relationship between personality hardiness and interpreting performance, three regression equations are computed according to Judd and Kenny (1981). To be specific, taking interpreting anxiety as an example, firstly, I regress the mediator (interpreting anxiety) on the independent variable (personality hardiness); second, regress the dependent variable (interpreting performance) on the independent variable (personality hardiness); and third, regress the dependent variable (interpreting performance) on both the independent variable (personality hardiness) and the mediator (interpreting anxiety). Coefficients for each equation are examined individually. In examining the moderating effects of interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy on the relationship between personality hardiness and interpreting performance, hierarchical regression analysis is carried out to test personality hardiness and interpreting anxiety interaction as well as personality hardiness and self-efficacy interaction (predictor* moderator). In in-depth interview data processing, I transcribe and analyze each interview by adopting the qualitative coding and analysis method by Lincoln and Guba (1985), which involves categorizing, identifying relationship and finding patterns.

4.4 Results of Quantitative Research It starts with a presentation of the demographic characteristics, reliability of the three scales and inter-rater reliability of the consecutive interpreting test in the formal study, which is followed by findings pertaining to each research question. Sub-question 1 to 4 are addressed through quantitative analyses, including (1) correlation analyses of personality hardiness to interpreting anxiety, self-efficacy and interpreting performance; (2) multiple stepwise regression analysis of personality hardiness in predicting interpreting anxiety, self-efficacy as well as interpretation performance; (3) three-stepped regression analysis to test respectively the mediating effects of interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy on the relationship between personality hardiness and interpreting performance; and (4) regression analysis to test separately the moderating effects of interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy on the personality hardiness and interpreting performance linkages.

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63

4.4.1 Correlations Between the Variables The first sub-question concerns the relationships among personality hardiness, interpreting anxiety, self-efficacy as well as interpreting performance. Pearson productmoment correlation analyses are carried out to address this question, results of which are presented according to the hypotheses. Hypothesis 1 Personality hardiness is negatively related to interpreting anxiety, and positively related to interpreting performance; interpreting anxiety is negatively related to interpreting performance. Pearson product-moment correlation analysis is first conducted to examine the relations among personality hardiness, interpreting anxiety and interpreting performance. Table 4.10 presents the correlation matrix of these variables. As displayed in Table 4.10, both personality hardiness total (r = −0.347, p = 0.000) and its four dimensions, namely, Perseverance (r = −0.214, p = 0.009), Commitment (r = −0.283, p = 0.000), Control (r = −0.316, p = 0.000), and Challenge (r = −0.325, p = 0.000) are significantly negatively correlated with interpreting anxiety, indicating students with higher personality hardiness are likely to suffer less from interpreting anxiety. Students’ interpreting performance is significantly positively correlated with both personality hardiness total (r = 0.401, p = 0.000) and its four dimensions, viz. Perseverance (r = 0.311, p = 0.000), Commitment (r = 0.337, p = 0.000), Control (r = 0.315, p = 0.000), and Challenge (r = 0.352, p = 0.000), suggesting that students with higher personality hardiness are more likely to make better achievements in interpreting learning. The correlation coefficient r = −0.357** between interpreting anxiety and performance means these two variables are significantly negatively related to each other Table 4.10 Pearson correlations among PH, IA and IP IA

Perseverance

IA

–

Commitment

Control

Challenge

PH

Total

Perseverance

−0.214**

–

Commitment

−0.283**

0.591**

–

Control

−0.316**

0.611**

532**

–

Challenge

−0.325**

0.558**

0.535**

0.554**

–

PH total

−0.347**

0.843**

0.806**

0.817**

0.815**

–

IP

−0.357**

0.311**

0.337**

0.315**

0.352**

0.401**

IP

–

Note IA = Interpreting anxiety, PH Total = Personality hardiness total, IP = Interpreting performance ** p < 0.01 (two-tailed), n = 149

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4 Research on the Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting …

Interpreting anxiety

Fig. 4.3 Relations among PH, IA and IP

_

_

Personality hardiness

Interpreting performance

+

Table 4.11 Pearson correlations among PH, SE and IP SE SE

Perseverance Commitment Control Challenge PH Total

IP

SL

–

Perseverance 0.521** – Commitment 0.424** 0.591**

–

Control

0.532**

0.563** 0.611**

–

Challenge

0.565** 0.558**

0.535**

0.554** –

PH total

0.633** 0.843**

0.806**

0.817** 0.815**

–

IP

0.283** 0.311**

0.337**

0.315** 0.352**

0.401** –

SL

−0.106 −0.168*

−0.215**

−0.013 −0.004

−0.121 0.004 –

Note SE = Self-efficacy, PH Total = Personality hardiness total, IP = Interpreting performance, SL = School level, ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05 (two-tailed), n = 149

with a moderate effect size,5 suggesting that less anxious students achieve better interpreting performance. In all, Pearson correlations analyses substantiate Hypothesis 1 that personality hardiness (four dimensions included) is negatively related to interpreting anxiety, and positively related to interpreting performance; interpreting anxiety is significantly negatively related to interpreting performance, which means the hardier the student interpreters are, the less interpreting anxiety they may feel, and would be better achieved in interpreting performance. Relations among these three variables could be depicted in Fig. 4.3. Hypothesis 2 Personality hardiness is positively related to self-efficacy and interpreting performance; self-efficacy is positively related to interpreting performance. The Pearson product-moment correlation analyses are also adopted to examine the relations among personality hardiness (including four dimensions), self-efficacy and interpreting performance, results of which are described in Table 4.11. As demonstrated in the above table, both total personality hardiness (r = 0.633, p = 0.000) and four dimensions, viz. Perseverance (r = 0.521, p = 0.009), Commitment (r = 0.424, p = 0.000), Control (r = 0.563, p = 0.000), and Challenge (r = 0.565, p = 0.000) are significantly positively correlated with self-efficacy, suggesting that hardier students tend to have a higher belief of self-efficacy. According to Cohen (1977), r = 0.1 is classified as low effect size, r = 0.3 is classified as moderate effect size and r = 0.5 is as large moderate effect size.

5

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65

Self-efficacy

Fig. 4.4 Relations among PH, SE and IP

+ Personality hardiness

+ +

Interpreting performance

Students’ interpreting performance is significantly positively correlated with both personality hardiness total (r = 0.401, p = 0.000) and its four dimensions, which are Perseverance (r = 0.311, p = 0.000), Commitment (r = 0.337, p = 0.000), Control (r = 0.315, p = 0.000), and Challenge (r = 0.352, p = 0.000), meaning students with higher personality hardiness perform better in interpreting tests. The correlation coefficient r = 0.283** between self-efficacy and interpreting performance means that these two variables are significantly positively related to each other, suggesting that higher self-efficacious students achieve better interpreting performance. It is worth noting that there exists no significant relationship between students’ interpreting performance and school level, which means, for example, students coming from the first ratified universities are not necessarily better achieved in interpreting performance than those who come from the second or third ratified universities. To conclude, Pearson correlation analyses substantiate Hypothesis 2 that personality hardiness (including four dimensions) is significantly positively related to self-efficacy and interpreting performance; self-efficacy is significantly positively related to interpreting performance, demonstrating the hardier the student interpreters are, the more self-efficacious they feel and the better they achieve in interpreting performance. The relationship among these three variables could be illustrated in Fig. 4.4.

4.4.2 Predictive Validity of Personality Hardiness Sub-question 2 is concerned with the predictive validity of personality hardiness on interpreting anxiety, self-efficacy as well as interpreting performance respectively. In addressing sub-question 2, multiple regression analysis which is a statistical technique through which one could analyze the relationship between a dependent (criterion) variable and a set of independent (predictor) variables, is applicable to find the best prediction equation. Stepwise regression methods, more exactly, are adopted, in which the order of entry of predictor variables is based solely on statistical criteria. In other words, variables that correlate most strongly with the dependent variable would be afforded priority of entry, with no reference to theoretical considerations. Operationally speaking, in stepwise regression, variables enter one at a time if they meet the statistical criteria, but they may also be deleted at any step where they no longer contribute significantly to the regression model. Findings of sub-question 2 are presented according to the hypotheses.

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4 Research on the Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting …

Hypothesis 1 Personality hardiness is negatively predictive of interpreting anxiety. To examine whether personality hardiness exerts predictive power on interpreting anxiety is of necessity to take the four dimensions of PH into account. Thus in this hypothesis, interpreting anxiety is a dependent variable or criterion variable, and Perseverance, Commitment, Control and Challenge enter the equation as independent or predictive variables. Table 4.12 summarizes the results: As shown in the table, only independent variables of Challenge and Control have entered the regression model. Model 1 represents entry of variable of Challenge, and Model 2 represents entry of variables of Challenge and Control. The results show that Model 1 accounts for 10.6% of the variance in the subjects’ interpreting anxiety. Entry of variable of Control (Model 2) resulted in an R Square Change of 0.026, which means that entry of Control variable increases the explained variance in the subjects’ interpreting anxiety by 2.6% to a total of 13.2%. This increase is significant by F (1,147) = 17.380, p < 0.001 and F (2, 146) = 11.122, p < 0.001. In examining B weights (unstandardized regression coefficients), both Challenge and Control variables are significant predictors of interpreting anxiety, and the more the subjects possess characteristics of Challenge (B = −0.203, t = −2.339, p < 0.05) and Control (B = −0.202, t = −2.111, p < 0.05), the less interpreting anxiety they may feel. Whereas neither variable of Perseverance nor Commitment enters the regression model, signifying that these two components exert no significant predictive power on interpreting anxiety. In a word, both Challenge and Control show significant predictive power on interpreting anxiety and account for 12% of the variance, among which variable of Challenge is the best predictor, explaining 10.6% of the variance in interpreting anxiety. Thus, Hypothesis 1 is proved to be partially true that dimensions of Challenge and Control are significantly negatively predictive of interpreting anxiety, as shown in the following Fig. 4.5. Table 4.12 Model summary of multiple regression analyses for IA R

Adjusted R

R Square

Model

Square

Square

Change

F

B

t

1

0.106

0.100

0.106

17.380***

−0.203

−2.339*

2

0.132

0.120

0.026

11.122***

−0.202

−2.111*

1. Predictors: (constant), Challenge 2. Predictors: (constant), Challenge, Control P*** < 0.001, p** < 0.01, p* < 0.05 Fig. 4.5 Predictive power of PH on IA

Commitment Personality

Control

2.6% (-)

Interpreting

Hardiness

Challenge

10.6% (-)

Anxiety

Perseverance

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67

Hypothesis 2 Personality hardiness is positively predictive of self-efficacy. With the same analytic methods in hypothesis 1, self-efficacy in this study is a dependent variable or criterion variable, and the four dimensions of personality hardiness enter the equation as independent or predictive variables. Results are depicted in Table 4.13: As displayed in the above table, Model 1 represents entry of variable of Challenge, Model 2 represents entry of variables of Challenge and Control, and Model 3 represents entry of variables of Challenge, Control and Perseverance. Model 1 accounts for 32% of the variance in the subjects’ self-efficacy. Entry of Control (Model 2) results in an R Square Change of 0.090, which means entry of the Control variable brings 9% to the explained variance in the subjects’ interpreting anxiety to a total of 41%. Entry of Perseverance (Model 3) results in an R Square Change of 0.017, indicating that entry of the Perseverance variable increases the explained variance in the subjects’ self-efficacy to a total of 42.6%. The adjusted R square for the regression model with Challenge, Control and Perseverance as predictors is 0.414, suggesting these three variables account for 41.4% of the variance in self-efficacy after adjusting for shrinkage in predictive power. These increases are significant by the F (1, 147) = 69.078, p < 0.001, F (2, 146) = 50.640, p < 0.001and F (3, 145) = 35.923, p < 0.001. In examining the B weights (unstandardized regression coefficients), it could be seen that Challenge, Control and Perseverance variables are significant predictors of self-efficacy, indicating that the more the subjects are equipped with qualities of Challenge (B = −0.292, t = 3.876, p < 0.001), Control (B = 0.296, t = 3.389, p < 0.01), and Perseverance (B = 0.168, t = 2.059, p < 0.05), the more self-efficacious they feel. However, variable of Commitment does not enter the regression model, signifying that it exerts no significant predictive power on self-efficacy. In all, variables of Challenge, Control and Perseverance show significant and positive predictive power on self-efficacy, accounting for 41.4% of the variance in self-efficacy, among which variable of Challenge is the best predictor, explaining 32% of the variance in self-efficacy. Hence, Hypothesis 2 is proved to be partially true that variables of Challenge, Control and Perseverance exert significantly positively predictive power on self-efficacy, as illustrated in Fig. 4.6: Hypothesis 3 Personality hardiness is positively predictive of interpreting performance. Table 4.13 Model summary of multiple regression analyses for SE Model

Square

Square

Change

F

B

t

1

0.320

0.315

0.320

69.078***

0.292

3.876 ***

2

0.410

0.401

0.090

50.640***

0.296

3.389**

3

0.426

0.414

0.017

35.923***

0.168

2.059*

1. Predictors: (constant), Challenge 2. Predictors: (constant), Challenge, Control 3. Predictors: (constant), Challenge, Control, Perseverance P*** < 0.001, p** < 0.01, p* < 0.05

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4 Research on the Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting …

Fig. 4.6 Predictive power of PH on SE

Commitment Personality

Control

9% (+)

Hardiness

Challenge

32%(+)

Perseverance

1.7% (+)

Selfefficacy

Whether personality hardiness could predict interpreting performance is examined. Interpreting performance is a dependent variable or criterion variable, and the four dimensions of personality hardiness enter the equation as independent or predictive variables. Results are illustrated in Table 4.14. As displayed, only components of Challenge and Commitment enter the regression models. Model 1 represents entry of Challenge, and Model 2 represents entry of Challenge and Commitment. Model 1 accounts for 12.4% of the variance in the subjects’ interpreting performance. Entry of variable of Commitment (Model 2) results in an R Square Change of 0.031, which means that entry of the Commitment variable increases the explained variance in the subjects’ interpreting performance by 3.1% to a total of 15.5%. The adjusted R square for the regression model with Challenge and Commitment as predictors is 0.143, suggesting these two variables account for 14.3% of the variance in interpreting performance after adjusting for shrinkage in predictive power. This increase is significant by the F (1, 147) = 20.818, p < 0.001 and F (2, 146) = 13.384, p < 0.001. In examining the B weights (unstandardized regression coefficients), it could be seen that Challenge and Commitment are significant predictors of interpreting performance, demonstrating the more the subjects possess characteristics of Challenge (B = 2.852, t = 2.674, p < 0.01) and Commitment (B = 2.686, t = 2.310, p < 0.05), the better they achieve in interpreting performance. However, this analysis finds no significant predictive power of Control and Perseverance on interpreting performance. In short, dimensions of Challenge and Commitment exert significant and positive predictive power on interpreting performance, accounting for 14.3% of the interpreting performance variance, among which variable of Challenge is the best predictor, explaining 12.4% of the variance. The predictive power of interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy on interpreting performance are also examined here by employing linear regression analysis, results of which are listed in Tables 4.15 and 4.16: Table 4.14 Model summary of multiple regression analyses for IP Model

R

Adjusted R

R square

Square

Square

Change

F

B

t

1

0.124

0.118

0.124

20.818***

2.852

2.674**

2

0.155

0.143

0.031

13.384***

2.686

2.310*

1. Predictors: (constant), Challenge 2. Predictors: (constant), Challenge, Commitment P*** < 0.001, p** < 0.01, p* < 0.05

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69

Table 4.15 Model summary of linear regression analysis for IP of IA R

Adjusted R

Model

Square

Square

F

B

t

1

0.128

0.122

21.499***

−4.517

−4.637***

Predictors: (constant), interpreting anxiety Dependent variable: interpreting performance P*** < 0.001

Table 4.16 Model summary of linear regression analysis for IP of SE R

Adjusted R

Model

Square

Square

F

B

t

1

0.080

0.074

12.772***

3.564

3.574***

Predictors: (constant), self-efficacy Dependent variable: interpreting performance P*** < 0.001

From Table 4.15, it can be detected that students’ interpreting anxiety enters the regression model and accounts for a statistically significant amount of the variance (12.2%) in interpreting performance with F (1, 147) = 21.499, p < 0.001. When self-efficacy enters the linear regression model (Table 4.16), it is found to explain 7.4% of the variance in interpreting performance in a statistically significant way with F (1, 147) = 12.772, p < 0.001. In summary, Challenge and Commitment of personality hardiness are proved to predict 14.3% of the variance in interpreting performance, while Control and Perseverance exert no predictive power on interpreting performance. In addition, both interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy are predictive of interpreting performance significantly, accounting for the variance of 12.2% and 7.4% respectively. The overall predictive power of personality hardiness, interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy on interpreting performance could thus be depicted in Fig. 4.7. Fig. 4.7 Predictive power of PH, IA and SE on IP

Personality hardiness

Challenge

14.3% (+)

Commitment Interpreting anxiety Self-efficacy

12.2% (-)

Interpreting

7.4% (+)

performance

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4 Research on the Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting …

4.4.3 Mediating/Moderating Effect of Interpreting Anxiety Sub-question 3 is mainly about the effects of interpreting anxiety on the relationship between personality hardiness and interpreting performance, moderating or mediating? According to Milin and Hadži´c (2011), moderating and mediating variables, or simply moderators and mediators, are related but distinct concepts in both general statistics and application in psychology. A moderating variable is one that affects the relationship between two other variables, which is usually referred to as an interaction, while mediating variables typically emerge in multiple regression analysis, where the influence of some independent variable (predictor) on the dependent variable (criterion) is not direct, but mediated through the third variable. In addressing this research question, mediating and moderating roles of interpreting anxiety on personality hardiness and interpreting anxiety are examined respectively. Hypothesis 1 Interpreting anxiety acts as a mediator in hardiness-performance relationship. A mediating variable is a variable (M) that accounts for the relationship between a predictor or independent variable (X) and an outcome or dependent variable (Y). Mediator variables explain why or how an effect or relationship between variables occurs, the relations of which could be explained in the following Fig. 4.8. Here, c represents the total effect of variable X on Y, ab is the mediating effect of mediator M, and c’ is the direct effect of variable X on Y. Relations of the effects could be calculated in c = c’ + ab. According to Baron and Kenny (1986), in testing for mediation, relationships amongst the variables must satisfy all of the following conditions: (1) the independent variable must influence the dependent variable, (2) the independent variable must influence the mediator, and (3) the mediator must influence the dependent variable. If all of these conditions are satisfied and the influence of the independent variable becomes non-significant in the presence of the mediator, the effects of the independent variable are said to be “completely” or “fully” mediated by the mediator. However, if all the three conditions are satisfied, but the influence of the independent variable remains significant in the presence of the mediator, the effects of the independent variable are said to be “partially” mediated. If any of these conditions are c

Fig. 4.8 Mediator model X

Y M

a X

e1

Y= cX+e1

e2

M= aX+e2

e3

Y=c’X+bM+e3

b c’

Y

4.4 Results of Quantitative Research

71

test coefficient c significant successively test coefficient a\b both significant test coefficient c’ significant significant mediating effect

insignificant significant fullymediating effect

one insignificant Sobel testing significant significant mediating effect

insignificant insignificant mediating effect

TERMINATE

Fig. 4.9 Three-stepped regression analysis model (Wen et al. 2004: 617)

not satisfied, there is no mediation. In accordance, four steps to establish mediation are proposed by Baron and Kenny (1986)6 as follows: Firstly, show that the initial variable is correlated with the outcome, using Y as the criterion variable in a regression equation and X as a predictor (estimate and test path c). This step is to establish whether there is an effect that may be mediated. Secondly, show that the initial variable is correlated with the mediator, using M as the criterion variable in the regression equation and X as a predictor (estimate and test path a). This step essentially involves treating the mediator as if it were an outcome variable. Thirdly, show that the mediator affects the outcome variable, using Y as the criterion variable in a regression equation and X and M as predictors (estimate and test path b) respectively. It is worthwhile to note that it is insufficient to correlate the mediator with the outcome, since the mediator and the outcome may be correlated because they are both caused by the initial variable X. Thus, the initial variable must be controlled in establishing the effect of the mediator on the outcome. Finally, to establish that mediator M completely mediates the X–Y relationship, and the effect of X on Y controlling for M (path c’) should be zero. The effects in both Steps 3 and 4 are estimated in the same equation. Only when all these four steps are established, could it be concluded that the findings are consistent with the hypothesis that variable M completely mediates the X–Y relationship. If the first three steps are met but the last step is not, partial mediation is indicated. Based on theories and procedures suggested by Baron and Kenny (1986), Wen et al. (2004: 617) propose a three-stepped regression analysis method to test mediation as depicted in Fig. 4.9. I firstly test hypothesis 1 by referring to this regression analysis model. In this hypothesis, predictor or independent variable (X) is personality hardiness, outcome variable or dependent variable (Y) is interpreting performance, mediating variable (M) is interpreting anxiety, hypothetical relations of which are demonstrated in Fig. 4.10. Under the direction of the three-stepped regression analysis model, I test path c, a, b and c’ step by step, findings of each step are summarized in the following table: 6

Also refer to Kenny’s website: https://davidakenny.net/cm/mediate.htm.

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4 Research on the Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting … Interpreting anxiety (M) a

b

Personality hardiness (X)

(Y) interpreting performance c (c’)

Fig. 4.10 Hypothetical relations between PH, IA and IP

As shown in Table 4.17, in the three steps, coefficients of c, a, b and c’ are significant with p < 0.01 which indicate that the relationship between personality hardiness and interpreting performance is mediated by interpreting anxiety, and the mediating effect takes up ab/c = 0.347*0.248/0.401 = 21.46% of the total effect. The mediation diagram could thus be demonstrated in Fig. 4.11. In addition to interpreting anxiety’s mediating effect on the relationship between personality hardiness and interpreting performance, its effects on four dimensions and interpreting performance are also tested with the same methods, results of which are presented in Table 4.18. Three-stepped regression analysis reveals that coefficient of c, a, b and c’ of variables of Perseverance, Commitment, Challenge and Control are significant with p < 0.001 or p < 0.01, indicating that relationships between four dimensions and interpreting performance are mediated by interpreting anxiety respectively. The mediating effect is ab/c = 0.214 * 0.305/ 0.311 = 20.99% for Perseverance, ab/c = 0.283 * 0.285/ 0.337 = 23.93% for Commitment, ab/c = 0.325 * 0.271/0.352 = 25.02% for Challenge, and ab/c = 0.316 * 0.286/ 0.315 = 28.69% for Control of the total effects. Table 4.17 Mediating effect test of IA on PH and IP Standardized Regression equation

Std. Error

t

Sig

Step one

Y = 0.401X (c)

1.150

5.308

0.000

Step two

M = −0.347X (a)

0.093

−4.479

0.000

Step three

Y = −0.248 M (b)

0.989

−3.172

0.002

Y = 0.315X (c’)

1.190

4.031

0.000

Fig. 4.11 Mediation diagram of IA on PH and IP

Interpreting anxiety

Personality hardiness

-0.347***

-0.248**

0.315***

Interpreting performance

0.352

0.315

Challenge

Control

P*** < 0.001, p** < 0.01

0.337

Commitment

SE

1.025

0.914

1.003

0.957

t

4.024***

4.563***

4.339***

3.962***

SE 0.078 0.081 0.073 0.081

Beta −0.214 −0.283 −0.325 −0.316

Beta

0.311

Perseverance

Step two

Step one

Table 4.18 Mediating effect tests of IA on four dimensions and IP t

−4.034***

−4.169***

−3.573***

−2.663**

0.996 1.003 1.039

0.225

933 −0.286

0.264

−0.271

1.004

0.257

0.933 0.983

0.245 −0.285

0.967

SE

−0.305

Beta

Step three t

2.832**

−3.609***

3.351**

−3.445**

3.299**

−3.662***

3.206**

−3.982***

4.4 Results of Quantitative Research 73

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4 Research on the Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting …

Fig. 4.12 Mediation diagram of IA on perseverance and IP

Interpreting anxiety

-0.214** Perseverance

-0.305***

0.245**

Interpreting performance

Referring to the value of Beta in step two and three, I conclude the mediation diagram of interpreting anxiety on relations between dimensions of Perseverance, Commitment, Control as well as Challenge and interpreting performance respectively, which are displayed in the figures below (from Figs. 4.12, 4.13, 4.14 and 4.15). Fig. 4.13 Mediation diagram of IA on commitment and IP

Interpreting anxiety

-0.283*** Commitment

Fig. 4.14 Mediation diagram of IA on challenge and IP

-0.285***

0.257**

Interpreting performance

Interpreting anxiety

-0.325*** Challenge

Fig. 4.15 Mediation diagram of IA on control and IP

-0.271**

0.264**

Interpreting performance

Interpreting anxiety

-0.316*** Control

-0.286***

0.225**

Interpreting performance

4.4 Results of Quantitative Research

75

In a word, stepwise regression analyses find out interpreting anxiety not only exerts a mediating effect on personality hardiness (total) and interpreting performance relationship, but also on the relations between the four dimensions of personality hardiness and interpreting performance, with mediating effects of 21.46%, 20.99%, 23.93%, 25.02% and 28.69% for personality hardiness (total), Perseverance, Commitment, Challenge and Control separately of the total effects. Thus, hypothesis 1 is proved to be true that interpreting anxiety mediates the personality hardiness and interpreting performance linkages, which suggests personality hardiness, via the third variable of interpreting anxiety, affects interpreting performance. In other words, students with hardy personality achieve better interpreting performance because they suffer less from interpreting anxiety. Hypothesis 2 Interpreting anxiety acts as a moderator in hardiness-performance relationship. A moderator is generally a qualitative or quantitative variable that affects the direction and/or strength of the relation between an independent or predictor variable and a dependent or criterion variable. A common framework for capturing both the correlational and experimental views of a moderator variable is possible by using a path diagram as both a descriptive and an analytic procedure (Baron & Kenny, 1986). The model diagrammed in Fig. 4.16 has three causal paths that feed into the outcome variable: the impact of a predictor (Path a), the impact of a moderator (Path b), and the interaction of these two (Path c). The moderator hypothesis is supported when the interaction (Path c) is significant. In examining whether interpreting anxiety moderates personality hardiness and interpreting performance in hierarchical regression analysis, interpreting performance is regarded as a dependent variable, personality hardiness, interpreting anxiety and their interaction are regarded as independent variables. Table 4.19 summarizes the results of this hierarchical regression analysis. Seen from Table 4.19, standardized regression coefficient of personality hardiness and interpreting anxiety interaction (PH*IA) in Step 2 is insignificant (t = −0.988, p > 0.05), indicating interpreting anxiety fails to moderate the relationship between personality hardiness and interpreting performance. In the similar way, hierarchical regression analysis has then been adopted to test the moderating effect of interpreting anxiety on the relationships between the four Fig. 4.16 Path diagram of moderating effect

Predictor Moderator

a b

Outcome Variable

Predictor Moderator

c

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4 Research on the Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting …

Table 4.19 Moderating effect test of IA on PH and IP

Step 1

Dependent

Independent

Changed

Variable

Variables

R2

R2

Changed F

IP

PH

0.215

0.215

19.988***

IP

PH

t 4.798

−3.136

IA Step 2

B

0.220

0.005

0.977

5.014

4.031*** −3.172** 4.143***

IA

−3.187

−3.219**

PH*IA

−1.620

−0.988

IP = interpreting performance, PH = personality hardiness, IA = interpreting anxiety PH*IA = personality hardiness and interpreting anxiety interaction P*** < 0.001, p** < 0.01

dimensions of personality hardiness and interpreting performance. Values of each procedure are demonstrated in Table 4.20. It can be seen that all standardized regression coefficients of Perseverance*IA, Commitment*IA, Challenge*IA and Control*IA interactions are insignificant with p > 0.05 (highlighted in Table 4.20), indicating that neither of the dimensions of personality hardiness and interpreting performance linkages could be moderated by interpreting anxiety. Thus hypothesis 2 that Interpreting anxiety exerts a moderating role on the relationship between personality hardiness (four dimensions included) and interpreting performance is not supported, suggesting that the effects of personality hardiness on interpreting performance will not be changed with levels of interpreting anxiety from which students have suffered.

4.4.4 Mediating/Moderating Effect of Self-efficacy The fourth sub-question, resembling the third one, aims to address whether selfefficacy could mediate or moderate the relationship between personality hardiness and interpreting performance, hypotheses and research methods are, therefore, of similarity to those of sub-question 3. Hypothesis 1 Self-efficacy acts as a mediator in hardiness-performance relationship. Referring to the same theory and testing procedures of hypothesis 1 of subquestion 3, I conduct a three-stepped regression analysis to examine the mediating effect of self-efficacy on personality hardiness-interpreting performance relationship. In this hypothesis, predictor or independent variable (X) is personality hardiness, outcome variable or dependent variable (Y) is interpreting performance, mediate variable (M) is self-efficacy, hypothetical relations of which could be depicted in Fig. 4.17. I test path c, a, b and c’ step by step in regression analysis, and find out the following results (Table 4.21):

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Table 4.20 Moderating effect test of IA on four dimensions of PH and IP

Step 1

Dependent

Independent

Changed

Changed

Variable

Variables

R2

R2

F

IP

Perseverance

0.185

0.185

16.569***

B 2.993 −3.852

IA Step 2

IP

Perseverance

0.169

0.001

0.102

3.035

IA Perseverance *IA Step 1

IP

Commitment

0.188

0.188

16.916***

IP

Commitment

0.191

0.003

IA

Step 1

IP

Challenge

0.190

0.190

17.112***

IA Step 2

IP

Challenge

0.192

0.002

0.288

IA Challenge *IA Step 1

IP

Control

0.173

0.173

15.273***

IP

Control

−0.320

0.178

0.005

3.327** −3.663***

−0.995

−0.674

3.126

3.351**

−3.432

−3.445**

3.219

3.386**

−3.509

−3.478**

−0.716

−0.537

2.941

0.899

3.299** −3.662***

−3.608

−3.620

IA Step 2

−3.981***

3.351

Commitment *IA

3.210**

−0.521 3.312

0.454

3.206** −3.982***

−3.868

−3.600

IA Step 2

t

3.070

2.832** −3.609*** 2.930**

IA

−3.683

−3.663**

Control *IA

−1.592

−0.948

IP = interpreting performance, IA = interpreting anxiety P*** < 0.001, p** < 0.01, p* < 0.05

Self-efficacy

Fig. 4.17 Hypothetical relations of SE, PH and IP

(M) a Personality (X) hardiness

b c (c’)

(Y) Interpreting performance

As displayed in Table 4.21, coefficients of c, a and c’ are significant (p < 0.001), however, coefficient of b is insignificant (p = 0.623, p > 0.05). According to the threestepped regression analysis model proposed by Wen (2004) that when coefficient of a or b is insignificant, Sobel testing is further required. Sobel test statistic7 is 0.492 7

Sobel testing could be conducted in this website: http://www.danielsoper.com/statcalc/calculator. aspx?id=31.

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4 Research on the Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting …

Table 4.21 Mediating effect test of SE on PH and IP Standardized Regression equation

Std. Error

T

Sig

Step one

Y = 0.401X (c)

Step two

M = 0.633X (a)

1.150

5.308

0.000

0.077

9.913

Step three

0.000

Y = 0.607 M (b)

1.233

0.492

0.623

Y = 0.371X (c’)

1.490

3.787

0.000

with p (two-tailed) = 0.623, p > 0.05. Results indicate that self-efficacy could not mediate the linkages between personality hardiness and interpreting performance. Self-efficacy’s mediating effects on the relations between four dimensions of personality hardiness and interpreting performance are also tested subsequently with the same methods and procedures. Values of each dimension are summarized in Table 4.22. As shown in Table 4.22, in the dimension of Perseverance, coefficient of c, a and c’ are significant, while coefficient of b is insignificant, hence Sobel testing is conducted subsequently. The Sobel test statistic = 1.768 with p (two-tailed) = 0.077 (>0.05) indicates the failure of mediating effect of self-efficacy on Perseverance and interpreting performance. In the dimension of Commitment, coefficient of c, a, b and c’ are all significant, which means that self-efficacy could mediate the relations between Commitment and interpreting performance, and the mediating effect is ab/c = 0.424*0.170/0.337 = 21.39% of the total effect, with mediation diagrammed in Fig. 4.18. In both dimensions of Challenge and Control, coefficients of c, a and c’ are significant, while coefficient of b is insignificant. Sobel testing results show that the Sobel test statistic for Challenge = 1.299 with p (two-tailed) = 0.194 (>0.05), and Sobel test statistic for Control = 1.607 with p (two-tailed) = 0.108 (>0.05), Table 4.22 Mediating effect test of SE on four dimensions of PH and IP Step one Beta

SE

Step two t

Perseverance 0.311 0.957 3.962***

Beta

Step three SE

t

0.521 0.068 7.398**

Beta

SE

t

0.166 1.149 1.821 0.224 1.112 2.460*

Commitment 0.337 1.003 4.339***

0.424 0.077 5.679*** 0.170 1.070 2.008* 0.265 1.096 3.118**

Challenge

0.352 0.914 4.563***

0.565 0.064 8.311*** 0.123 1.177 1.316

Control

0.315 1.025 4.024*** -0.563 0.071 8.260*** 0.154 1.187 1.638

0.283 1.106 3.028** 0.228 1.233 2.423** P*** < 0.001, p** < 0.01, p* < 0.05

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Fig. 4.18 Mediation diagram of SE on commitment and IP

Selfefficacy

0.424** Commitment

0.170* Interpreting performance

0.265**

which suggest the failure of mediating effects of self-efficacy on Challenge and interpreting performance relationship as well as on Control and interpreting performance relationship. To conclude, self-efficacy could only mediate the relationship between Commitment and interpreting performance. Neither the personality hardiness total nor the other three dimensions’ relations to interpreting performance could be mediated by self-efficacy. Thus, hypothesis 1 is proved to be partially true. Hypothesis 2 Self-efficacy acts as a moderator in hardiness-performance relationship. To examine whether self-efficacy moderates the effects of personality hardiness on interpreting performance, hierarchical regression analysis is conducted. I firstly test the moderating effect of self-efficacy on personality hardiness total and interpreting performance, in which interpreting performance is a dependent variable, and personality hardiness, interpreting anxiety as well as their interaction are independent variables. Results of hierarchical regression analysis are illustrated in Table 4.23. It could be seen that standardized regression coefficients of personality hardiness and self-efficacy interaction (PH*SE) are insignificant (p > 0.05), indicating that self-efficacy fails to moderate the relationship between personality hardiness and interpreting performance. Table 4.23 Moderating effect test of SE on PH and IP

Step 1

Dependent

Independent

Changed

Variable

Variables

R2

R2

Changed F

IP

PH

0.162

0.162

14.136***

SE Step 2

IP

PH SE PH*SE

0.163

0.000

0.086

B

t 5.642

3.787***

0.607

0.492

5.642

3.775***

0.606

0.489

−0.517

−0.293

IP = interpreting performance, PH = personality hardiness, SE = self-efficacy PH*SE = personality hardiness and self-efficacy interaction P*** < 0.001, p** < 0.01

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4 Research on the Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting …

A hierarchical regression analysis is subsequently adopted to examine the moderating effects of self-efficacy on the relations between the four dimensions of personality hardiness and interpreting performance. Values of each procedure are demonstrated in Table 4.24: As shown in the above table, neither standardized regression coefficients of Perseverance*SE, Commitment*SE, Challenge*SE nor Control*SE is significant with p < 0.05 (see highlighted figures in Table 4.24), indicating that none of the four dimensions of personality hardiness and interpreting performance relationship could be moderated by interpreting anxiety. To conclude, hypothesis 2 is falsified that self-efficacy could not moderate the relationship between personality hardiness (four dimensions included) and interpreting performance, which suggests that the effects of participants’ personality hardiness on interpreting performance would not change with their sense of self-efficacy. Table 4.24 Moderating effect test of SE on four dimensions of PH and IP Dependent

Independent

Changed R2

Changed

Variable

Variables

R2

Step 1

IP

Perseverance

0.117

0.117

9.631***

2.735 2.092

1.821

Step 2

IP

Perseverance

0.117

0.000

0.044

2.733

2.449*

SE

2.096

1.819

Perseverance *SE

0.315

0.209

3.417

3.118**

F

SE

Step 1

IP

Commitment

0.137

0.137

11.626***

SE Step 2

IP

Commitment

0.128

0.001

0.177

SE Commitment *SE Step 1

IP

Challenge

0.134

0.134

11.327***

SE Step 2

IP

Challenge

0.135

0.001

0.109

SE Challenge *SE Step 1

IP

Control

0.115

0.115

9.532***

SE Step 2

IP

Control

0.117

SE Control *SE IP = interpreting performance, SE = self-efficacy P*** < 0.001, p** < 0.01, p* < 0.05

0.001

0.168

B

t 2.460**

2.149

2.008*

3.471

3.137**

2.114

1.964

−0.693

−0.421

3.348

3.028**

1.549

1.316

3.347

3.018**

1.555

1.318

−0.509

−0.330

2.987

2.423*

1.945

1.638

2.863

2.248*

2.013

1.674

−0.762

−0.409

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81

4.5 Results of Qualitative Research A qualitative research is carried out to address the fifth sub-question concerning the roles of personality hardiness in interpreting learning and performance. Although research combining quantitative and qualitative methods has become unexceptional and unremarkable in recent years, rationales for using mixed methods have yet always been thought to be sufficient (Bryman, 2006), and “unless there is some rationale for the use of multi-strategy research, there is the possibility of data redundancy” (ibid.: 111). According to Bryman, five rationales for combining quantitative and qualitative research are coded, which are: 1. Triangulation: convergence, corroboration, correspondence or results from different methods. In coding triangulation, the emphasis was placed on seeking corroboration between quantitative and qualitative data; 2. Complementarity: seeks elaboration, enhancement, illustration, clarification of the results from one method with the results from another; 3. Development: seeks to use the results from one method to help develop or inform the other method, where development is broadly construed to include sampling and implementation, as well as measurement decisions; 4. Initiation: seeks the discovery of paradox and contradiction, new perspectives of [sic] frameworks, the recasting of questions or results from one method with questions or results from the other method; 5. Expansion: seeks to extend the breadth and range of enquiry by using different methods for different inquiry components. (Bryman 2006: 105)

In the present investigation, findings of the first four sub-questions have presented, in a statistic way, whether and how personality hardiness influences interpreting performance through intermediate variables of interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy. In order to generate a richer and more comprehensive picture of their relationship, as well as produce consistent and convergent results, I choose to administer an in-depth interview, bearing the first two rationales of “triangulation” and “complementarity” in mind, so as to find more about the effects of personality hardiness on interpreting learners. “Maximum variation sampling” (Seidman, 1998) is employed to determine the interview sample in order to ensure that the richest information could be acquired. A total of nine students, featuring high, medium and low hardy personality8 respectively from five universities have expressed their willingness to be interviewed. Thus, a well-prepared face-to-face in-depth interview has been arranged. As agreed in confidentiality, pseudonyms are used for all informants. Table 4.25 summarizes the background information of the nine interviewees.

8

According to the general practice in degree computing, the former 27% of the total are in high hardy group, and the latter 27% belong to low hardy group. Thus, after calculating, participants scoring higher than 79 in personality hardiness scale are high hardy ones, and those lower than 69 are low hardy ones. Participants whose scores are between 69 and 79 feature medium hardy personality.

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Table 4.25 Background information about the interviewees No

Interviewee

Level of PH

Gender

University

1

Alice

High

Female

C

2

Ben

High

Male

A

3

Cathy

High

Female

E

4

Doreen

Medium

Female

D

5

Eva

Medium

Female

D

6

Fred

Medium

Male

I

7

Gloria

Low

Female

C

8

Helen

Low

Female

A

9

Irene

Low

Female

I

Since the main aims of this qualitative research are to triangulate the above quantitative analyses with more qualitative information, and to ascertain the role of personality hardiness in learning and performing interpreting, findings are presented from these two perspectives and merely report data serving directly these two purposes.

4.5.1 Information Triangulation I consult and list in Table 4.26 each interviewee’s scores on interpreting anxiety, selfefficacy and interpreting performance with an aim to compare their self-evaluation in the interview with their replies in the questionnaire survey. Firstly, data on those who achieve a high level of personality hardiness in the questionnaire survey are analyzed. Alice who scores the highest on personality hardiness evaluates herself in this way: Table 4.26 Interviewees’ scores in the questionnaire survey No

Interviewee

Level of PH

IA (Mean = 3.18)

SE (Mean = 2.55)

IP (Mean = 74.1)

1

Alice

High

2.65

3.2

88.2

2

Ben

High

2.95

3.5

83.0

3

Cathy

High

3.50

3.6

86.5

4

Doreen

Medium

3.20

3.6

79.8

5

Eva

Medium

3.15

3.5

81.1

6

Fred

Medium

3.05

3.2

83.4

7

Gloria

Low

3.45

2.8

70.5

8

Helen

Low

3.30

2.9

73.7

9

Irene

Low

3.55

2.6

68.4

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83

In my eyes, I am a girl with rather high hardy personality. Once I set a goal I will stick to it and will not give up easily no matter how hard it is. Fortunately, I can always achieve my goals, at least till now. Interpreting is a challenge rather than a threat to me, even though I sometimes feel certain levels of nervous in interpreting. I feel more nervous in class than in the field, because teachers and classmates could tell the quality of my interpretation, while the audience in the field could not. I have belief in myself that I could fulfill interpreting tasks to the best of my ability.

Alice, albeit having expressed interpreting anxiety, has strong faith in her personality characteristics of Commitment, Perseverance, and regards interpreting learning as a challenge rather than a threat. Sense of self-efficacy in interpreting as well as in herself has also been unveiled from her self-evaluation. Comparing her selfevaluation with the scores she got in the questionnaire survey that interpreting anxiety = 2.65, (mean value = 3.18) and self- efficacy = 3.2, (mean value = 2.55), I tend to conclude that her scores in the questionnaire survey are in accordance with the selfevaluation in the interview. That is, Alice is a student with high hardy personality and strong sense of self-efficacy, and she feels a certain level of anxiety in class and in field interpreting. In addition, the effects of interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy could be confirmed from Alice’s self-evaluation with her score of interpreting performance (=88.2, mean value = 74.1). It is somewhat interesting to find that among the three high hardy respondents, Cathy scores the highest in interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy concurrently. Her self-evaluation can be transcribed as follows: I am a determined person and voluntarily devoted to my choice. For example, I like interpreting and choose it as my major and even as a career. If possible, I may 100% commit myself to it, although I am fully aware of the difficulties ahead and efforts have to be invested to become an interpreting professional. I believe I can succeed only if I persevere and work very hard. Frankly speaking, I feel stressful and sometimes anxious especially when I interpret for a conference, but I don’t think it brings any negative influence to my performance. On the contrary, I can concentrate myself on the task and perform better under stress. When I interpret in class, I don’t feel nervous because I know it is a simulation, but the interpreting quality turns out to be less desirable than that in the field interpreting.

Cathy’s interview data reveal that she is a goal-oriented, committed and persistent student with strong self-confidence, which are consistent with her scores in the questionnaire survey that personality hardiness = high, and self-efficacy = 3.6. The scores are much higher than the mean value. Although she scores higher in interpreting anxiety = 3.5 (mean value = 3.18), she performs the best in the interpreting test, probably due to the fact that interpreting anxiety at a certain level may contribute to the quality of interpreting performance rather than impair it (Kang, 2011), just as Cathy herself puts “I can concentrate myself on the task and perform better under the stress”. However, in the current research, levels of interpreting anxiety have yet been distinguished. Interpreting anxiety degrees and their effects on interpreting performance call for future study. Secondly, for those three students, Doreen, Eva and Fred who feature a medium level of personality hardiness, their self-evaluations are largely identical but with minor differences. Due to the space limitation, only Doreen’s interview is transcribed here for a further analysis.

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4 Research on the Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting … Generally speaking, I am a person with goals, but sometimes I could not persist. It is also the case in interpreting learning which requires a lot of time and energy. It’s kind of difficult for me to persevere in long-term learning, although I am aware that it is the Achille’s heel and hinders my progress in interpreting learning. I tend to view the difficulties lie in interpreting learning as challenges rather than threats, trying my best to resolve them. Giving up learning interpreting has never occurred to me and I think I could achieve better if I could commit more to and persist in my goals. I sometimes feel anxious in interpreting, especially when the topics are unfamiliar or not well prepared, which will definitely influence my performance.

Doreen’s remarks represent, by and large, the voice of the other two respondents with medium hardy personality, Eva and Fred, who express their aspiration and commitment to interpreting learning. In the meanwhile, they acknowledge the deficiencies in some aspects, such as lacking in perseverance. All of them convey their sufferings more or less from interpreting anxiety. Thirdly, interviews with Gloria, Helen and Irene, who are representatives of the low hardy personality group, share similarities in that they are uncertain about or have a lack of confidence in learning interpreting. Irene’s words serve as a good illustration: I don’t think I am a person with strong willpower, especially when I find my classmates interpret better than me. Sometimes I doubt whether I am suitable for learning interpreting. I have no idea whether I could stick to it or not. I always feel anxious especially when I think about going to do interpreting. Interpreting always poses a threat to me because I don’t think I can handle it, let alone control it.

Irene’s self-comments that she lacks confidence in interpreting learning and suffers severely from interpreting anxiety undoubtedly match her marks in the questionnaire survey that she scores the highest in interpreting anxiety (=3.55) and lowest in self-efficacy (=2.6) among the nine interviewees. Meanwhile, the influences of interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy on interpreting performance (=68.4, mean value = 74.1) could also be confirmed From Irene’s remarks. Keeping in mind the rationale that “in coding triangulation, the emphasis was placed on seeking corroboration between quantitative and qualitative data” (Bryman, 2006: 105), I relate the interview data which are mainly concerned with the participants’ self-comment on their personality hardiness, self-efficacy as well as levels of anxiety they suffered in interpreting learning and performance, to the scores they got in the questionnaire survey. The consistency between the quantitative and qualitative data is generated which represents data collected in the quantitative research are triangulated to be reliable for this research. Moreover, a clearer pattern of how personality hardiness, self-efficacy, interpreting anxiety and interpreting performance are intertwined and affect one another is also sketched from interview data analysis.

4.5.2 Roles of Personality Hardiness In the quantitative research, personality hardiness has been statistically substantiated not only to be closely correlated with interpreting performance, but also to be of

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85

predictability on interpreting performance. In the qualitative research, I would like to bring together a more comprehensive account of how this mechanism works, that is, in what ways personality hardiness affects participants’ interpreting learning as well as interpreting performance. Consequently, an open question about the roles of personality hardiness (four dimensions included) in interpreting learning has been raised to the interviewees, aiming to “seek elaboration, enhancement, illustration and clarification of the results” (rationale 2) (Bryman 2006: 105) concluded from the questionnaire survey. Several roles of personality hardiness are reported by the interviewees in the process of interpreting learning as well as during performing interpreting tasks, which will be summarized, in this section, according to the categorization of the four dispositions. Disposition of Commitment As far as Commitment is concerned, three interviewees report that they regard themselves as committed persons, with which quality their interpreting learning is facilitated. Remarks are excerpted as follows: Alice: I like interpreting. I enjoy myself in learning new things every day and in practicing with my partners in the booth. It makes me feel so Fulfilling. Cathy: I like interpreting and choose it as my major and even as a career. If possible, I will 100% commit myself to it. Although I am fully aware of the difficulties ahead and efforts should be invested to become an interpreting professional, I don’t think I would give up. Eva: Once I commit myself to doing something, I would stick to it. Although I am not the best among my classmates and I sometimes feel pressure, I am trying to be better than yesterday. This is also a sense of achievement, isn’t it?

Alice, Cathy and Eva express the commitment characteristic in their personality, as well as their willingness and determination to involve themselves in interpreting learning. “Interest”, “meaningfulness” and “sense of accomplishment” in learning interpreting could be detected from their words, in addition to their cognitive appraisal, compliance and action to invest themselves in this time- and energyconsuming task. Thus, it could be inferred that disposition of Commitment enables the student interpreters to have a generalized sense of purpose that allows them to discover and identify the significance of the tasks they are undertaking. Meanwhile, with characteristic of Commitment, interpretation students are ready and willing to invest enough in themselves and the tasks with activeness rather than passivity, avoidance and even surrender. Just as Cathy insists that even if she is aware of the difficulty ahead, she won’t yield to it easily. Disposition of Challenge The disposition of Challenge is described as the belief that change rather than stability is normal in life and that anticipation of changes are incentives to growth rather than threats to security (Kobasa et al. 1982). Ben is exactly a person who is fond of challenges in life, according to his interview:

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4 Research on the Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting … Ben: Living a life routinely would drive me crazy. I prefer a life with changes and challenges, and that serves a reason why I choose interpreting as my major. I like encountering and overcoming difficulties in interpreting every day. I especially like interpreting for conferences where I could meet with different people and sometimes with unprepared occasions, which are quite challengeable to me. Meanwhile, they are also fostering my ability to cope with contingencies.

Alice also expresses herself, as a girl, with a disposition of Challenge. Her remarks somewhat resemble that of Ben. Alice: Unchangeable life or life with challenges, I undoubtedly prefer the latter. I view every challenge in my life as an opportunity for growth rather than a threat. In the face of challenges, I would not avoid them but manage to conquer them. I think this personality brings a lot of benefits to my study, since interpreting is an activity full of challenges and one cannot anticipate what may occur in interpreting events.

Roles of Challenge in interpreting learning could be inferred from Ben and Alice’s remarks. For one thing, disposition of Challenge helps them to effectively appraise the unexpected events occurred, fostering sense of openness and flexibility; for the other, in managing to cope with unanticipated situations or even incongruent events, disposition of Challenge capacitates them to transform and adjust to the new environment, enhancing adaptability and mitigating the stressfulness brought by changes and challenges in life. The process to meet and rise to the challenges in life share great similarities with that in interpreting learning, since “interpreting is an activity full of challenges and you cannot anticipate what may occur in interpreting events”, as Alice puts. Positively appraise and adapt to the challenges in life provide them with capabilities to take challenges in interpreting all in stride. Disposition of Control In terms of Control, Cathy and Gloria convey how their interpreting learning is influenced by this disposition, which is expressed as a tendency to feel and act as if one is influential rather than helpless in the face of varied contingencies of life (Seligman 1975). Cathy: As is known, self-confidence is very important for an interpreting practitioner as well as an interpreting learner. Self-confidence is a sense of Control to me, to some extent. With this characteristic, I feel the power to control and resolve the emergencies in life. This disposition endows me courage and capabilities to cope with difficulties and contingencies in interpreting learning sedately. However, self-confidence is not blind or groundless, and the sense of Control is not bluffing or naïve expectation. On the contrary, they are supposed to be built on the accumulation of capability, knowledge, skill and through constant practice.

Gloria who features low hardy personality also expresses her understanding on disposition of Control. Gloria: I admire my classmates who behave so calmly and confidently in interpreting. They seem to be so ready for every unexpected occasion, which is a fatal drawback to me. When I meet with unexpected or overwhelming experiences in life beyond my abilities, I often feel bewildered and even panic, because I don’t know whether I can handle it or not. In interpreting classroom, when I hear unfamiliar words, or miss some information in the speech, I feel very nervous which greatly hinder my performance. In fact, on a second thought, these unfamiliar

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87

words or missing information are not always indispensable in interpreting the speech, but I am at a loss and feel so stressful under that circumstances that don’t know how to cope with it.

Gloria’s words, although diction of “control” does not appear, reveal her absence of Control in personality, due to which she is diffident and tends to experience stress when faced with unexpected occasions not only in life but also in interpreting learning. On the contrary, Cathy who is very confident, telling from her remarks, is more likely to resist stress perceptually by increasing the likelihood that life events are experienced as a natural outgrowth of individuals’ actions rather than as unexpected or overwhelming experiences. A sense of Control enables her to take more coping actions like “the accumulation of capability, knowledge, skill and through constant practice” to transform unexpectedness into something consistent with a life plan and is, thus, less out of anticipation. Disposition of Perseverance Most interestingly, almost every interviewee, regardless of their personality traits, reports the deficiencies in Perseverance, which they view as an advantageous characteristic in the success of life as well as in interpreting learning. What Fred has said serves as a good example: Fred: For an interpreting learner, I think many characteristics count, such as intelligence, diligence, self-confidence and so on. To me, perseverance is the most important. Interpreting competence could not be developed overnight, instead it is an accumulation of knowledge and skills through months and years. Without mind of perseverance and passion for longterm goals, one can hardly survive in the long time and under great pressure of interpreting practicing. Several times, I felt I can hardly persist, but fortunately I turn out not to give up halfway.

Different from Fred who scores medium on personality hardiness, Irene, featuring low hardy personality, describes her opinions as follows: Irene: I know perseverance matters on the road to success. But I am also aware that I am not a person with strong willpower, especially when I find my classmates perform much better than me in interpreting class. Interpreting, to me, is a task with so many obstacles, and I don’t know how long I will persist.

It is of no difficulty to infer from Irene’s words that she is concerned about her interpreting learning because she lacks a sense of self-confidence and perseverance, or perhaps because of the vicious circle of the two. Likewise, the other interviewees present their views on roles of Perseverance in learning interpreting, like “I believe that perseverance is the most important quality for interpretation learners” by Alice, and “without spirit of perseverance, success in interpreting is nothing but empty talk” by Eva. Meanwhile, they themselves comment that “it’s hard for me to persevere in the long-term learning, although I am aware that it is the Achille’s heel and hinders my progress in interpreting learning. I cannot overcome it so far” by Doreen, and “sometimes I cannot persevere, especially when I don’t see improvements in my interpreting performance” by Alice, among others. No matter what levels of personality hardiness the interviewees have, all of them value

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greatly the importance and effectiveness of Perseverance in interpreting learning. After all, perseverance relates to people’s perception, beliefs, thoughts and ultimately actions change in the light of new information (Markman et al. 2005). To sum up, in order to triangulate data generated from the quantitative research (rationale 1) and supplement more information about the roles of personality hardiness in interpreting learning (rationale 2), a semi-structured in-depth interview has been administered to nine interviewees. Conclusions have been generalized after transcribing and analyzing the interview data. Firstly, by cross-checking each informant’s responses to the questions proposed in the interview with their scores on personality hardiness, interpreting anxiety, self-efficacy and interpreting performance, I find satisfactorily that the former is in agreement with the latter, demonstrating incremental credibility and validity of the results generated from the questionnaire survey. In addition, the effects of interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy on interpreting performance could also be confirmed from the interviewees’ self-evaluation. Secondly, expressions by the interviewees on the roles of the four dimensions of personality hardiness in interpreting learning contribute to mapping out a more detailed and accurate picture of how hardy personality total as well as dispositions of Commitment, Challenge, Control and Perseverance influence interpreting performance which have been investigated in the quantitative research. The interview data suggest that committed interpretation learners tend to involve themselves in interpreting environment more actively rather than avoid or even surrender; positively appraise and adapt to the challenges in life provide them with capabilities to confront challenges in interpreting all in stride; a sense of control appears to be responsible for the development of a broad and varied repertory of responses to stress produced from the most threatening circumstances of interpreting, both in perception and action; and perseverance influences the levels of effort and commitment which interpreting learners evidence in the pursuit of their goals, enabling them to find ways to go around major impediments and keep resilience to change path even when pressed with setbacks and repeated failures in the process of interpreting learning. On the contrary, less perseverant people are easily discouraged by unexpected challenges and thus easily give up. It could be concluded, from the quantitative and qualitative research in this chapter, that personality hardiness, with dispositions of Commitment, Challenge, Control and Perseverance, affects students’ perception, beliefs and behaviors in interpreting learning in a direct manner or via mediating variables of interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy which eventually hinder or promote their performance in interpreting activities.

Chapter 5

Implications of Research on the Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting Performance

In this chapter, I firstly summarize the findings generated in Chap. 4 and then discuss the results in light of related literature, with expectation to provide foundations and sources for the initiation of hardy personality measurement model in the next chapter. As an interdisciplinary research, this study empirically examines the effects of personality hardiness on interpreting performance with a mixed-method of both quantitative and qualitative approaches. In view of the fact that personality hardiness, anxiety, self-efficacy and performance are theoretically and empirically intertwined with one another in the domains of interpreting studies, psychology and SLA, this study also takes interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy as intermediates into accounts. Thus, a group of 149 first year interpretation students at postgraduate level from 10 universities is surveyed to test the hypotheses, among others, that personality hardiness predicts interpreting performance, and interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy exert mediating effects on the relations between personality hardiness and performance respectively. Among them, nine students are interviewed to triangulate quantitative findings and supplement more information regarding the roles of personality hardiness in interpreting learning. Below is a summary of major findings presented in accordance with the research questions posed. Firstly, the hypotheses about the interrelations among personality hardiness, interpreting anxiety, self-efficacy and interpreting performance are substantiated. Coincident with major findings in the psychological field that personality hardiness is negatively correlated with anxiety, and positively related to performance or achievement, correlation analyses in this study yield the same results that personality hardiness is negatively correlated with interpreting anxiety and positively related to interpreting performance, which suggest that students with higher hardiness suffer less from interpreting anxiety, and achieve better in interpreting performance. Likewise, students with higher hardiness are portrayed with a stronger sense of self-efficacy, and thus perform better in interpreting tests. Secondly, hypotheses that personality hardiness is of predictability on interpreting performance, interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy are partially substantiated with multiple stepwise regression analysis. Only dimensions of personality hardiness, © Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press 2023 X. Xing, The Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting Performance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6335-5_5

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instead of the total hardiness are proved to predict interpreting anxiety, self-efficacy and interpreting performance. To be specific, dimensions of Challenge and Commitment are of positive predictability on interpreting performance, and explain a total of 14.3% of variance in interpreting performance, demonstrating that student interpreters’ Commitment to the interpreting learning and their Challenge to this highlydemanding activity account for one seventh amongst variables contributing to excellence in interpreting performance. This is unaffordable to be neglected in comparison with their language ability and cognitive skills. In terms of interpreting anxiety, dispositions of Challenge and Control exert inversed predictive power, and accounting for 12% of the total variance in interpreting anxiety, revealing that student interpreters equipped with qualities of Challenge and Control would suffer less from interpreting anxiety. To some extent, this is probably due to the fact that disposition of Challenge in personality provide them with capabilities to confront changes and contingencies in interpreting learning; and disposition of Control helps to develop abilities to resist stress brought about by the challenging tasks. Moreover, dimensions of Challenge, Control and Perseverance, except for Commitment, are proved to positively predict self-efficacy, and take up approximately 42% of variance in self-efficacy, suggesting that those interpretation students’ who are more empowered, perseverant and ambitious tend to feel more self-efficacious in interpreting performance. Thirdly, as hypothesized, interpreting anxiety plays a mediating role in the linkages between personality hardiness (four dimensions included) and interpreting performance, with mediating effect of 21.46%, 23.93%, 25.02%, 28.69% and 20.99% for personality hardiness Total, Commitment, Challenge, Control and Perseverance respectively. It means in addition to the direct correlation with interpreting performance, personality hardiness influences students’ interpreting performance via the variable of interpreting anxiety. In other words, the reason why student interpreters with hardier personality perform better in interpreting activities is that they suffer less from interpreting anxiety. However, the hypothesis that interpreting anxiety moderates the relationship between personality hardiness and interpreting performance is unsubstantiated, which illustrates that the change of interpreting anxiety would not influence the effects of personality hardiness on interpreting performance. Fourthly, the hypothesis that self-efficacy mediates the relation of personality hardiness to interpreting performance is partially substantiated, while the hypothesis that self-efficacy moderates this relationship is fully unsubstantiated. More specifically, only the relation of Commitment to interpreting performance is mediated by self-efficacy with a mediating effect of 21.4% of the total. It reveals that the more the interpretation students commit themselves into interpreting learning, the more self-efficacious they feel, thus achieving better in interpreting performance accordingly. Nevertheless, change in their self-efficacy would not influence the effect of personality hardiness on interpreting performance. Lastly, qualitative analysis of in-depth interview data sketches a picture of the roles of personality hardiness Total as well as dispositions of Commitment, Challenge, Control and Perseverance in interpreting learning. It is concluded from the interviewees’ remarks that disposition of Commitment enables them to be more actively involved in interpreting learning compared with their less committed counterparts;

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positively appraise and adapt to the challenges in life provide them with capabilities to confront the challenges in interpreting with calmness; a sense of Control conduces to the development of broad responses, both in perception and action, to the stress resulted from the most threatening circumstances of interpreting; and dimension of Perseverance empowers them to adhere to the goals and keep resilient when pressed with setbacks and even suffering repeated failures in the process of interpreting learning.

5.1 Correlations Between Personality Hardiness and Interpreting Performance Personality hardiness, known as a personality style characterized with increased levels of Commitment, Control and Challenge (Kobasa 1979; Maddi and Kobasa 1984), has been thoroughly studied in the field of psychology since the late 1970s. Individuals with hardy personality are believed not only to be strongly committed to activities and to self since they recognize their own distinctive values, goals and priorities in life, but also to control or influence events, interpreting stressful events in positive and constructive manners, and construing such events as challenges and valuable learning opportunities. In China, people with personality hardiness have been detected to have another characteristic—Perseverance, which represents the persistent determination of activities and life. Personality hardiness has long been said, both in theory and with empirical findings, to enhance performance in a variety of stressful situations and occupational settings. However, there is, to date, a paucity of research on the effectiveness of personality hardiness on interpreting which is known as a highly stress-provoking activity not only because the interpreters have to perform a series of complex cognitive and psychomotor operations in public or at least for the public (Jimenez and Pinazo 2001: 105), but also because interpretation could be derailed by numerous elements throughout the process that out of doubt place great demands on interpreting professionals or student interpreters. The present research finds that personality hardiness, both in total and in the four dimensions, significantly positively correlates with interpreting performance, suggesting that students with hardier personality are more likely to do better in terms of their interpreting performance. Our study is the first to reveal a direct relationship between personality hardiness and interpreting performance in a student interpreter sample. This major finding is in line with the previous research on personality hardiness in different samples like college students with hardy personality are more likely to complete their academic courses (Lifton et al. 2000); university undergraduates with hardy attitude achieve superior final degree classifications (Lifton et al. 2004; Sheard 2009); sports players with hardier personality exceed in the increasingly businesslike environment of professional sports (Golby and Sheard 2004), etc. The current

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result supports Maddi et al.’ claim (2012) that selecting for hardiness traits would be beneficial for stressful tasks. This finding is also in line with research from Sheard and Golby (2007), who found total hardiness was significantly and positively correlated with 134 university students’ academic success as well as research from Samadzadeha et al. (2011), who reported a significant correlation between hardiness and the academic performance progress of 210 high school students. More recently, Kuo et al. (2021) found that online academic hardiness significantly contributes to learning engagement in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), which have been hampered by low completion rates. It is already known that hardy attitudes are beneficial for students as they help transform stresses into advantages and lead to enhanced performance criteria such as creativity, wisdom, and fulfillment (Maddi and Harvey 2006). These attitudes are particularly valuable for interpreting candidates who not only receive repetitive and long-term training to become interpreters but may also experience constant anxiety as a result of interpretation activities, in which they must “perform a series of complex cognitive and psychomotor operations in public” (Jimenez and Pinazo 2001, p. 105). Thankfully, the students who are high in personality hardiness tend to involve themselves in the study, pursue their goals with sustained interest and persistent efforts in face of stresses and setbacks. Most importantly, they appraise the stressful situations as stimulating and tackle them with active strategies rather than alienation or self-denial, which align with the responses of the participants with hardier attitudes in the interview. Strong hardy attitudes are desirable characteristics for students since they contribute to turning stresses to advantages, growing in such enhanced performance criteria as creativity, wisdom, and fulfilment (Maddi and Harvey 2006). These characteristics are especially vital for interpreting students who always worry about poor performance or not being selected, and constantly work under great pressure. Without these qualities they can hardly survive in the long term of training and eventually suffer academic burnout. Thankfully, hardy personality provides them with the necessary bases for successful achievements through Commitment which emerges as the most relevant to stress resistance from a variety of existential personality variables, and enables them to dedicate to the setting goals (Kobasa 1979), finding and choosing appropriate ways to reach the aim. Commitment, defined as the capability to believe in the truth and interest value of what one is doing, as well as the willingness to pose influence or control in the personal and social situations in which one is involved (Maddi 1967), is an extremely useful stress-resistant disposition. For example, Antonovsky (1979) identifies Commitment as the overarching interpersonal stress-resistance resource. Johnson and Sarason (1978) discover that only subjects lacking quality of Commitment which indicates personal control, operationalized in their work as an internal locus of control orientation, display depression and anxiety in face of stressful life events. The current research also finds student interpreters with disposition of Commitment are less likely to feel stressful in interpreting activities, providing further support for previous findings. Disposition of Commitment entitles student interpreters to persist in their work even when stresses mount to precarious levels since they aware the reason why they

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are facing the stressful events that characterize their profession and also know how to face them successfully. Through commitment to work and the society it affects, they have come to know various social, interpersonal, and material resources that enhance stress management. Once they commit to themselves and the environment, student interpreters with Perseverance may passionately pursue their specific goals with sustained interest and persistent efforts over years, despite failure or adversity. They approach achievements as a marathon requiring stamina, although disappointment or burnout is reacted to by others as a message that it is time to change their direction or give up. The perseverant interpretation learners, however, simply stay the course and devote themselves to the process of language enhancement, interpreting skills proficiency as well as subjects’ familiarity, and eventually promote their professional competence. Another factor of personality hardiness—Control, leads to greater adaptability and enables the student interpreters to feel that they are of dominance to the novel situation, believing in themselves that their efforts would have an influence on the outcomes no matter how difficult it becomes and manage events effectively, and thus, ultimately increases the success probability. The disposition of Control is of great value for both interpreting professionals as well as interpretation students. In an interpreting arena, interpreters now and then encounter unpredictability, such as strong accent, unfamiliar ancient poetry, technical faults, and so forth. Only those who strongly believe that the situation could be dominated would manage to turn to all measures, personal and interpersonal, to cope with difficulties, changing peril into safety. The same circumstance holds true for student interpreters, especially for those who show less talent for interpreting. Albeit not so desirable in terms of such cognitive abilities like working memory or language transferring, students with disposition of Control may appraise and recognize their insufficiency, endeavoring to choose among various courses of actions and coping strategies to handle the stress encountered in acquiring interpreting skills, turning their disadvantages into advantages through cognitive and decisional controlling the stressful situations instead of slipping into powerlessness and passivity. Indeed, characteristic of Control alone is by far not enough for interpreting professionals and interpretation students. Challenge, involving an abiding acceptance of change in life and a proclivity for variety, is another quality needed to possess. As the interviewees said, interpreting is an activity full of challenges to them, both in language and cognitive aspects. A person with a heart of easy comfort and security would be difficult to adapt to various challenging situations of interpreting. Only those who anticipate changes in interpreting as exciting challenges and an impetus to further development rather than threats would become active and constructive even if faced with disadvantages or great challenges, so that probability of success could be promoted, and physical and mental health could be maintained as well. It is well worth noting that inconsistent with some previous findings that only some dimensions of personality hardiness rather than all components relate to performance, for example, merely Commitment has been reported to positively correlate with university undergraduate students’ academic achievement (Sheard 2009), the current investigation demonstrates that both hardiness total and its four dimensions

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significantly positively relate to interpreting performance with r = 0.35 in general. It indicates that every dimension of personality hardiness counts for interpreting students and plays an equally important role in facilitating optimal functioning and promoting interpreting performance. To be more specific, hardier student interpreters are prone to feel deeply involved and persistent in interpreting activities, and are less likely to give up in face of difficulties or in stress. They believe, through unremitting efforts, they could dispose a definite influence on the course of events they meet, and learn from every interpreting experience, whether it is positive or negative. With those qualities, they are more likely to achieve better compared with those non-hardy counterparts who are easily to give up when in distress or have faith in fate rather than their own power.

5.2 Predicative Validity of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting Performance In addition to the positive correlation between personality hardiness, including the four components, and student interpreters’ interpreting performance, results of this study also demonstrate that Challenge and Commitment dimensions of personality hardiness serve as predictors of interpretation students’ performance at the end of the first academic year. The results are in agreement with previous findings that personality hardiness is effective in predicting sports and exercise students’ scholastic achievement over a 2-year period (Sheard 2009; Sheard and Golby 2007); in forecasting subsequent success among candidates for Israeli security forces after a highly stressful and demanding nine-week training course (Zach et al. 2007); in foreseeing success in highly demanding military selection courses, both in the United States (Bartone et al. 2008) and in Norway (Eid et al. 2008; Hystad et al. 2011; Johnsen et al. 2009). Most identically, dispositions of Challenge and Commitment have been reported to predict military enlistment behavior among Indian soldiers (Subramanian et al. 2013). In the current research, dispositions of Challenge and Commitment exert significant and positive predictive power on interpreting performance, accounting for 14.3% of the interpreting performance variance, among which variable of Challenge is the best predictor, explaining 12.4% of the variance. It suggests that Challenge and Commitment could be used to prospectively predict student interpreters’ performance and successful completion of strenuous tasks. Disposition of Challenge may provide student interpreters with courage to face any kind of adverse situations in interpreting learning, with confidence to make the assigned plans to work no matter how many difficulties they have to overcome, and with determination to prefer challenging tasks to stay comfortable, assisting them to pursue their goal of being a professional interpreter valorously. A strong sense of Commitment, such as devoting to hard practice and work, trying their level best at what they pay off, and looking forward to fulfilling interpreting tasks with high

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qualities, among others, may facilitate the interpreting training scenario due to its difficult and complex environment in which every student interpreter is required to work. In consequence, it is without doubt that students with these two dispositions would achieve better in interpreting performance. The present study thus supports Maddi et al.’ (2012) suggestion that selecting personality traits would be beneficial and predictive for career success. As a matter of fact, predictive validity, the extent to which a score on a scale or test predicts scores on some criterion measure (Cronbach and Meehl 1955), is of great value in aptitude tests which measure present performance to infer future accomplishment. It would appear appropriate to avoid the term ‘aptitude’ in reference to a specific diagnostic test unless evidence of predictive validity can be provided through scientific methods (Sawyer 2004: 111). Predictive validity of interpreting aptitude testing on language, cognitive or interpreting-related skills have been reported (Gerver et al. 1984; Moser-Mercer 1985; Pöchhacker 2011; Russo and Pippa 2004), but scant research has ever discovered predictability of personality traits on interpreting performance except López Gómez et al. (2007) who disclose personality traits measured by the Dominance scale are relevant to success in acquiring sign language interpreting skills. Personality traits in their study include a conglomeration of desirable qualities in both spoken- and sign language interpreters, such as flexibility, stress resistance and self-confidence, which are too comprehensive to be accurately measured by a single scale. By a sharp contrast, in the current study, personality hardiness is measured by a pertinent and scientifically designed scale. The confirmed predictive validity of personality hardiness on interpreting performance would provide an empirical support for the effectiveness of personality traits in the realm of interpreting. Although it is undeniable that personality tests have historically suffered in comparison with cognitive tests, accumulating evidences demonstrate that personality measures could be of utility in personnel selection (Ones and Viswesvaran 1996). Just as Hystad et al. (2011) once detect that personality hardiness predicts, despite of modest effects, admission into Norwegian Military Officer Schools and propose that personality hardiness be a valuable, inexpensive and easy-to-use personality factor to predict success in military assessment and selection programs, the present research does support the evidence that personality hardiness, especially dispositions of Challenge and Commitment matter in predicting interpreting success. Being an activity demanding a capacity for fast response speed, imposing a heavy cognitive load, and involving a sustained high-stakes performance, interpreting requires declarative and procedural knowledge and skills, as well as professionals’ awareness and control of a complex affective dimension (Zannirato 2013). Accordingly, a promising interpretation student is supposed to possess not only desirable hard skills, but also suitable personal traits, such as emotional stability (Bontempo and Napier 2011). It is acknowledged that hard skills, such as language skills, cognitive skills and interpreting skills, play a vital role in high-quality interpreting performance, and have thus been attached great importance not only by interpreting professionals, but also by interpreting trainers. The present study detects that components of Challenge and Commitment together explain 14.3% of interpreting performance variance. Although by no means an overwhelming figure, being a small part of the

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bigger picture, personality hardiness could not be neglected. Instead, measurement of personality hardiness is suggested to be adopted as a measure to select interpreting candidates so as to improve the success rate in an interpreter training program and in an interpreting career, owing to its substantiated predictive power on interpreting performance.

5.3 Mediating Effect of Interpreting Anxiety Interpreting anxiety has been revealed in the current study to play a mediating effect on the relationship between personality hardiness (including four dimensions) and interpreting performance, accounting for 21.46% of the total effect. It indicates that personality hardiness, in addition to its direct effect on interpreting performance, has also been found to improve interpreting performance via alleviating interpreting anxiety. In other words, student interpreters who report higher personality hardiness suffer less from interpreting anxiety, and thus eventually have a success in interpreting performance. Being an mediator, interpreting anxiety’s effects would be discussed from two perspectives: the relations between personality hardiness and interpreting anxiety, as well as the relations between interpreting anxiety and interpreting performance. Personality Hardiness and Interpreting Anxiety Stress, in psychology, is what occurs when a person feels that external environmental requirements far exceed the resources available for him to cope with (Lazarus 1968). It is a different experience varying from person to person since it depends on the complex relations between the individual and the environment as well as on the subjective evaluation of the event. Normally, personality traits of a person determine what is and what is not stressful for him. Some individuals may still feel anxious, which is a negative effect of stress, even when the stressor has vanished. Interpreting has long been viewed as a highly stressful event and acknowledged that complex linguistic, cognitive, and psychomotor operations would easily produce an enormous amount of stress on professional interpreters or student interpreters once they feel a gap between demands and their perceived levels of ability. Some even feel anxious when they perceive the situation as uncontrollable or unavoidable. Although interpreting studies have begun to pay some attention to the causes and seriousness of stress (e.g., Cooper et al. 1982), a shortage of research adopts a psychometrically reliable instrument to quantify the severity of stress or anxiety experienced by interpreters except for trait or state anxiety. The present study finds the student interpreters’ average score on interpreting anxiety is 3.18, which is somewhat higher than the mean value of 3. This finding is supported by Dong (2013) who reports an average score of 3.27 on interpreting anxiety among Chinese undergraduates, and Chiang (2006) who finds around 79% of the Taiwanese interpretation students suffer from interpreting anxiety when using the same neutral mean of 3 as a cut-off point. Scores on interpreting anxiety statistically support the assumption that interpreting

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might be associated with higher levels of stress, and consequently anxiety, than most other language activities. Fortunately, personality hardiness is conducive to alleviating interpreting anxiety. In line with previous findings concerning negative relationship between personality hardiness and stress (Banks and Gannon 1988; Funk and Huston 1987; Manning et al. 1988), the present study demonstrates that personality hardiness is negatively related to interpreting anxiety in a significant way as well. This indicates student interpreters who are higher in personality hardiness tend to experience less frequent stressors, and thus suffer less from interpreting anxiety. As claimed, personality hardiness may be associated with a tendency to perceive events as less stressful and thus, to reduce the impact of those events (Kobasa et al. 1981). Hardy student interpreters are more likely to perceive stressful interpreting events as controllable, evaluating them more optimistically and being stronger in their belief to succeed compared with the less hardy individuals who experience the same events. For example, facing huge amounts of interpreting practices, hardier students may be more optimistic in their appraisal and perceive them as natural, meaningful and interesting despite their stressfulness, with which they would persevere in interpreting training and practicing, and gradually improve their interpreting-related skills and competence. Once their abilities meet or closely meet the demands imposed by interpreting activities, they would no longer view interpreting as a highly stressful event or perceive severe interpreting anxiety. In this sense, personality hardiness is indeed a desirable trait for student interpreters. In addition to the significantly negative relations between personality hardiness and interpreting anxiety, the present research also finds dispositions of Challenge and Control are of predictability on interpreting anxiety, explaining 12% of interpreting anxiety variance. This finding is not only consistent with the existential theory that people with hardy personality are thought to perceive and experience less stress because they view events and situations as less threatening (primary appraisal), and they believe in themselves to effectively control and cope with stressors (secondary appraisal), but also supported by a number of studies (Kobasa et al. 1985; Maddi and Kobasa 1984; Rhodewalt and Zone 1989; Westman 1990; Wiebe 1991), which discover the predictive power of personality hardiness on stress in various settings. As noted, personality hardiness facilitates a form of transformational coping which includes keeping specific stressors in perspective, knowing one has the resources with which to respond to stressors, and seeing even undesirable events as challenges and possibilities for change rather than as threats (Kobasa and Puccetti 1983). Specifically, individuals with dispositions Challenge and Control, faced with stressful events, prefer to solve problems with transformational coping strategies instead of avoiding them. In a similar way, hardy student interpreters, by adopting transformational coping, approach stressful events and difficulties in interpreting in an active, optimistic, and self-determined way. They perceive the stressful encounters in interpreting classes to be controllable and changeable, and thus diminish the unhealthy effects of coping with negative and demanding events. In other words, hardy student interpreters might react more effectively to the stressful interpreting situation, because they are apt to adopt more task-focused and less emotion-focused

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coping strategies, confronting the stressful situation rather than ignoring it, and then turning it into a more benign one. This is supported by Kao and Craigie’s (2013) finding that problem-solving coping strategy is the most frequently used one among Taiwanese students who enroll in an interpreting training course, and helps to lower student interpreters’ stress. Comparatively, the avoidance coping strategy makes the largest unique significant contribution to the explanation of student interpreters’ stress. It is of necessity to point out that although relationships and functional mechanisms of personality hardiness, coping strategies and anxiety have been substantially researched in the contexts of military (Westman 1990; Delahaij et al. 2010), nursing (Fornés-Vives 2016; Judkins 2001; Simoni et al. 1997) and teaching (Chan 2003), to name but a few, they have hardly been researched in the domain of interpreting, which deserve a future investigation. In view of the fact that interpreting is a highly stress-provoking activity and the evidence that personality hardiness negatively relates to and predicts (Challenge and Control dimensions) interpreting anxiety, hardy personality is regarded as a valuable stress-coping trait for interpreting learners. It functions in changing the stressful events into less stressful ones through pathways involving cognitive appraisal and decisive actions by using transformational coping strategies. Interpreting Anxiety and Interpreting Performance Interpreting anxiety, caused by stressful events, has been revealed to be significantly negatively related to, and predict 12.2% variance of interpreting performance. It means that students with higher interpreting anxiety tend to score lower in interpreting performance, while those who suffer less from interpreting anxiety are likely to score higher in performance. This result is supported by Dong’s (2013) research who reports a significantly negative relationship between interpreting anxiety and interpreting performance among Chinese undergraduates majoring in Translation. In her study, students’ interpreting anxiety is measured by Interpreting Anxiety Scale, and interpreting performance is examined by consecutive interpreting. Findings of her study indicate that interpreting anxiety is negatively related to total scores of interpreting performance and English-Chinese interpreting performance with r = −0.417** and r = −0.434** respectively, and negatively correlated ChineseEnglish interpreting performance with r = −0.269*, which are approximately close to the correlation coefficient r = −0.357** between interpreting anxiety and interpreting performance generated in the present study, demonstrating that interpreting anxiety influences interpreting performance among interpreting learners at different academic levels. What is noteworthy is that in the in-depth interview, interpreting anxiety at a certain degree is reported to improve the quality of interpreting performance rather than impair it. But regrettably, in the current quantitative research, levels of interpreting anxiety have yet been distinguished. Future study may examine interpreting anxiety degrees and their effects on interpreting performance, replicating Kang’ s research (2012), who for the first time proposes Interpreting Anxiety Degree and discovers that High Anxiety (HA) poses serious negative influence on the whole

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process of complicated interpreting; Low Anxiety (LA) delays student interpreters’ response in consecutive interpreting; while Medium Anxiety (MA) has the function of “catalyst” to facilitate consecutive interpreting. Notwithstanding interpreting anxiety has been sterilely studied due to the limitation of psychometrical measurement, a large body of research on the relations between anxiety and performance has been carried out in other domains. For example, mathematics anxiety has been found a significantly negative correlation with mathematics performance among high school students from Karnataka state (Venkatesan 2009); academic stress has been reported to be negatively related to academic performance among college students (Struthers et al. 2000). What’s more, plethora of studies have proved negative effects of foreign language anxiety on language achievements or performances in Spanish (Horwitz et al. 1986), French (Gardner et al. 1997; MayIntyre and Gardner 1991), Turkish (Batumlu and Erden 2007), Japanese (Aida 1994) and Chinese (Chan and Wu 2004). All the aforementioned research provides empirical supports for the findings of the current investigation. Anxiety, experienced by almost everyone at some time or in some situation, has affective, cognitive and behavioral components (Spielberger 1966), the arousal of which would bring about three consequences (Clevenger 1984). Affectively, experience of anxiety leads to feelings of apprehension, uneasiness and fear; cognitively, increasing self-related cognition distraction has been aroused and behaviorally, sympathetic nervous system has been stimulated to inhibit actions, thus inducing an attempt to escape. “Worry” or “emotionality” caused by cognitive and affective components of anxiety always influence cognitive performance, and consequently task performance, which is argued by Eysenck (1979): Worry and other task-irrelevant cognitive activities associated with anxiety always impair the quality of performance. The major reason for this is that the task-irrelevant information involved in worry and cognitive self-concern competes with task-relevant information for space in the processing system. As a result, highly anxious subjects are effectively in a dualtask or divided attention situation, in contrast to the non-anxious subjects who primarily process task-relevant information. (Eysenck 1979: 364, cited in MacIntyre 1995: 91–92)

Eysenck’s theory is of great meaningfulness to account for the interaction between interpreting anxiety and interpreting performance. Once interpreting professionals or student interpreters feel the demand exceeds their ability, interpreting anxiety would thus be caused, resulting in worry and rumination. Meanwhile, cognitive performance is attenuated because of the divided attention and split-effort that consequently impair the quality of interpreting performance, leading to negative self-evaluation and self-deprecation which would further hinder interpreting performance. Comparatively, those who perceive less or no interpreting anxiety would concentrate on the information and process it more effectively which may ultimately improve the interpreting performance. The extent to which anxiety either facilitates or impairs performance is determined by the extent to which high-anxiety subjects compensate for reduced processing effectiveness by enhanced effort (ibid.: 92). To be specific, if an interpreting task is considerably simple, interpreting anxiety would exert little negative influence and probably enhance interpreting performance via increased efforts.

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Whereas, with an increase in demand, the extra efforts may hardly compensate for the cognitive interference, and anxiety would therefore begin to produce a negative effect. Once the demand surpasses the capability, the impairment caused by interpreting anxiety arousal worsens. Generated from the above-illustrated mechanism of how personality hardiness helps to relieve interpreting anxiety and the manner of how interpreting anxiety, irrespective of anxiety degrees in the present research, hinders interpreting performance, admitting a candidate with hardy personality, in addition to desirable cognitive aptitudes, will undoubtedly enhance the success probability given the same training time and guidance. To conclude, personality hardiness is negatively related to, and affects interpreting anxiety, through which it promotes interpreting performance. In this study, student interpreters reported high personality hardiness suffer less from interpreting anxiety, and performance better in interpreting tests compared to those who reported less personality hardiness. In other words, interpreting anxiety exerts a mediating effect on personality hardiness and interpreting performance. This finding, in agreement with results of enormous research in other domains, enlightens the necessity of admitting interpreting candidates with hardy personality into interpreting education programs. Since interpreters with such a personality trait are substantiated to be less influenced by interpreting anxiety which affects interpreting performance negatively in this study, according to the mechanism depicted in personality hardiness model proposed by Maddi and Kobasa (1984) as well as Eysenck’s theory illustrated above, and may eventually promote their interpreting performance or achievements.

5.4 Mediating Effect of Self-efficacy As hypothesized, self-efficacy is found in the current research to exert a mediating effect on the relation between personality hardiness, to be specific, component of Commitment and interpreting performance. That is, student interpreters who reported higher disposition of Commitment are prone to hold a stronger sense of self-efficacy, and thus tend to achieve better in interpreting performance compared with the less committed counterparts. Highly committed students are more motivated to get involved in interpreting activities and utilize flexible coping strategies in face of difficulties. In consequence, they are likely to obtain more desired or successful outcomes, which may bring about mastery experience to complete interpreting tasks. On the other hand, student interpreters’ commitments to interpreting learning cause their mastery experience regarding interpreting-related tasks which may, in turn, strengthen their sense of self-efficacy. Contrarily, if they hold fewer commitments, they would obtain undesired or less successful outcomes in interpreting, which may diminish their self-efficacy. Moreover, student interpreters who perceive themselves as having higher levels of self-efficacy tend to allocate resources to academic goals, and consequently, more time and efforts would be invested in completing interpreting tasks. Comparatively, those who generally experience lower levels of self-efficacy

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will probably invest less of their time and efforts in their studies, which will negatively influence the overall interpreting achievement. The similar case may be applied to interpreting professionals as well. For one thing, disposition of Commitment positively affects interpreting practitioners’ motivation and occupational participation, preventing job switches, occupational absenteeism or burnout. For the other, depending on self-efficacy perceptions, the interpreters’ efforts, enthusiasm and objectives vary from one another, and their ways of thinking, problems-solving as well as emotional reactions are affected accordingly. Normally, self-efficacious interpreters are more confident, determined and demonstrate excellent problem solving skills when coming across difficult tasks, and therefore their occupational burnouts are decreased while achievements in the fields are enhanced. However, for less self-efficacious interpreters who view things as if they were more difficult than they actually are, and whose problem-solving skills are rather limited, their interpreting performance will be constantly impaired, and may eventually lead to professional burnout. In this sense, self-efficacy perception, which is associated with two variables, namely, Commitment and interpreting performance, plays an important mediating role between them. As a mediator, the effects of self-efficacy would be discussed, in the following section, from the hardiness and self-efficacy linkage and the self-efficacy and interpreting performance linkage. Personality Hardiness and Self-efficacy Personality hardiness and self-efficacy, two very closely related notions regarded as an individual’s positive characteristics, have been investigated and proved useful in affecting mental health and predicting success in education, profession and life. Bandura (1986) claims that self-efficacious people are more likely to view challenges as tasks to be mastered, develop a stronger belief of commitment to the activities in which they participate, and revive in a short time from a sense of frustration. Comparatively, less self-efficacious ones are prone to avoid challenging tasks, focus on personal failings and are easier to lose confidence when they are faced with negative outcomes. As such, self-efficacy conceptually resembles the four components of personality hardiness that a hardy person holds the belief that he can control or influence the events of his experience; have an ability to deeply commit to and persevere in activities of their lives; and anticipate changes as a thrilling challenge to further development. The current study substantiates that self-efficacy is positively correlated in a significant way with both personality hardiness total (r = 0.663, p < 0.001), and the four components of Commitment (r = 0.424, p < 0.001), Challenge (r = 0.565, p < 0.001), Control (r = 0.563, p < 0.001) and Perseverance (r = 0.521, p < 0.001). In addition to the tight correlation, multiple regression analysis also reveals components of Challenge, Control and Perseverance have predictive power on self-efficacy, accounting for 41% variance of self-efficacy, suggesting that student interpreters who scored high on personality hardiness hold a stronger belief of self-efficacy. The results not only provide statistical support for the previous factor analytic research conducted by Bernard et al. (1996) who claim a pattern of positive interrelation between selfefficacy and personality hardiness, but also are in line with the empirical findings

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concerning the relationship between these two factors (Liea et al. 2012; Shekarey et al. 2010; Shriatnia et al. 2013). Additionally, self-efficacy is found in the current research to mediate Commitment and interpreting performance linkage, accounting for 21.39% of the total effect. This indicates that it is more possible for those committed student interpreters to achieve better in interpreting performance via their stronger sense of self-efficacy. From a variety of existential personality variables, Commitment, with its characteristic to believe in the importance and value of what one is doing, and with the willingness to exercise influence or control in the personal and social situations in which one is involved (Maddi 1967), is identified as the overarching interpersonal resistance resource (Antonovsky 1979). A committed person is able to persist in his work even when stress mounts to precarious levels, because he knows, through commitment to work and the society it affects, various social, interpersonal, and material resources will enhance stress management. A strong sense of commitment is especially important for student interpreters to minimize the perceived anxiety, enabling them to confront highly stressful events and suffering less from their somatic and emotional states. In this way, their self-efficacy beliefs are strengthened. By contrast, alienation, opposite to the commitment, leads student interpreters to feel apathetic and powerless in the face of difficulties emerged in interpreting learning, which is accompanied by the vanishing of self-efficacious attitudes. Self-efficacy and Interpreting Performance Self-efficacy, being a personal judgment of “how well one can execute courses of action required to deal with prospective situations” (Bandura 1982: 122), determines whether an individual’ s coping strategies will be initiated, how much efforts an individual will expend on a particular domain of activity, and how much resilience he will display in the face of challenges. It has therefore been linked to performance in many areas of human endeavor (Bandura 1997; Barling and Beattie 1983; Cervone and Peake 1986; Gist et al. 1991; Schunk 1995; Stajkovic and Luthans 1998; Yeo and Neal 2006). Results of the present study are in line with the previous findings with respect to the correlation between self-efficacy and students’ performance (Chemers et al. 2001; Gore 2006; Lane and Lane 2001) and achievement for undergraduate students (Brown et al. 1989; Lent et al. 1984; Sue-Chan and Ong 2002) in other academic domains. Virtually, self-efficacy is a belief influencing every sphere of individuals’ lives and playing a vital role in human functioning since one’s motivation, feelings and actions are affected more by what one believes could be achieved with one’s capabilities than by the skills and knowledge that one possesses (Bandura 1997). One’s strong sense of self-efficacy is especially needed to stick to the job when he encounters with difficulties or failures. So people with stronger self-efficacy will choose challenging and important jobs and are strongly committed to their duties, while people with lower self-efficacy are despaired and disappointed with the problems and obstacles. In other words, the mechanism between self-efficacy and performance lies in that selfefficacy facilitates one’s perceptions and attitudes of how much effort goes into every

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activity (Bandura 1982/1990); how well he motivates himself and sticks to it; how thinking and behaviors are self-regulated; and how to deal with stress and depression (Bandura 1982). In a similar manner, an interpreting learner, who is self-efficacious in handling a task, will execute it with all his available resources without resistance, and his ability will thus be improved due to the high motivation and absence of mental distractors. As a consequence, his belief in task efficacy influences the choice of behavior, the investment of efforts as well as the ways in which he applies the resources to fulfill an interpreting task. Notwithstanding self-efficacy mechanism on interpreting performance has yet drawn much attention in interpreting studies, the aforementioned analysis of how self-efficacy affects behaviors suggests that it should be a useful concept for human functioning of interpreting, especially in the situation of interpreting training, in which student interpreters’ beliefs of self-efficacy is assumed to predict not only their present behaviors but also their future expectations. In the current investigation, self-efficacy has also been found to exert predictive power on interpreting performance, accounting for 7.4% of students’ interpreting performance. It is supported by Shaw (2011) who starts to show interest in determining what personality traits play roles in interpreting learning and finds self-efficacy to be the strongest predictor of interpreting skills among such variables as self-control, persistence, flexibility, etc., for both spoken language and signed language interpreting students, demonstrating the importance of self-efficacy in the context of interpreting training. In a nutshell, student interpreters with hardy personality dedicate themselves to the desired goals, view the disadvantages as challenges and chances to growth and improvement, and hold the belief in themselves that their efforts could change the circumstances and dominate the result, consequently improving the performance and increasing the success probability. Concisely, the hardier a student interpreter is, the better he performs in interpreting activities. Generally speaking, for those who perform better in interpreting tasks may feel more self-efficacious due to the theory that self-efficacy is basically fostered from categories of (a) previous performance of the behavior, (b) observations of others modeling the behavior, (c) encouragement from others, and (d) visceral or autonomic arousal when performing the behavior (Bandura 1977/1986). In an interpreting classroom, a well-performed student may accumulate experience from their past performances by constantly evaluating and comparing, may receive more positive judgments from their instructors and peers, and may suffer less from their somatic and emotional states, such as anxiety, fatigue, and stress, establishing his belief on self-efficacy in interpreting learning. Similarly, for a hardier interpreting practitioner whose performance has frequently been recognized and modelled, his sense of self-efficacy is normally built on this virtuous cycle. That is, the hardier personality he possesses, the more self-efficacious he feels and thus the better he performs, which may lead to his even stronger sense of self-efficacy.

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5.5 Personality Hardiness in Aptitude Testing for Interpreting An aptitude test is not designed to examine what has been learned, but to measure what can be learned given the right education and instruction, predicting future learning, behavioral or performance outcomes. As is known to all, a person’s general performance is normally viewed as a multiplicative function of intelligence (what a person can do) and personality (how a person will do it). Among which, intelligence improves understanding and learning through specific abilities, while personality, manifested by certain traits, enhances or hinders the use of these abilities. Taken in this sense, the position of personality in an aptitude test is supposed to be given due considerations. The mission of aptitude testing for interpreting is to select candidates with the potential for interpreting training as well as for interpreting career. It is beyond any doubt that prerequisites for interpreting like linguistic and cultural knowledge, as well as cognitive aptitudes are crucial. However, the necessity of “soft skills” in aptitude testing for interpreting has been advocated (Timarová and Ungoed-Thomas 2008), and many training schools are seeking new ways of taking into account a range of personal characteristics, in addition to cognitive aptitudes, in their selection procedures. The major limits of current aptitude testing practices as well as the interpreting schools’ role as gatekeepers for the profession urge a richer set of tools that not only reliably predict academic performance but also identify competencies of professional effectiveness. Consistent with the previous findings that personality hardiness boosts health and outcomes, hardy student interpreters in the present research have manifested physical and mental endurance as well. They stay optimistic and committed in spite of heavy and tedious workload; they survive and even become stronger in the face of constant frustrations and adversities in interpreting practicing since, according to the interviewees’ retrospection, personality hardiness equips them with qualities to view difficult and stressful interpreting situations as personal challenges instead of roadblocks. Although the participants of this research are already admitted students, it is not difficult to imagine that selecting entrants with hardy personality in aptitude testing would certainly improve the retention and contribute to fostering more qualified interpreting professionals with psychological health. After all, interpreting is by no means an easy job, involving tremendous practices and frustrations. Without stress-resistant personality qualities, students or even professionals would suffer a lot in the long period of training, feeling academic or job burnout, and some may even drop out. Hardy personality would direct the interpreters’ choices and levels of persistence to engage in stimulating settings and activities. Moreover, interpreting is such an intrinsically stressful event that student interpreters feel high degrees of anxiety within the tasks, impairing interpreting qualities in consequence. The current study finds that interpreting anxiety that students suffered could be alleviated by personality hardiness since they are prone to perceive the

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events as controllable and would flexibly adopt different strategies to cope with difficulties, as one of the interviewees claimed that “this disposition endows me courage and capabilities to cope with difficulties and contingencies in interpreting learning sedately”. Besides, the present investigation also discovers that hardier student interpreters have a stronger sense of self-efficacy which enables them to evaluate stress in a more optimistic manner and believe they have capabilities to manage the risks and stresses encountered in interpreting tasks and learning. This may eventually improve the interpreting performance. In this sense, selecting candidates with personality hardiness in aptitude testing is a wise action not only for students themselves who may enjoy rather than suffer from the challenges of interpreting activities, but also for the institutions whose original intention is to pick out candidates with the best performance and the least training. The proposal of incorporating more than just cognitive skills into the aptitude testing for interpreting has led to a growing interest in noncognitive predictors of academic performance, such as motivation (Rosier et al. 2011; Timarová and Salaets 2011), self-efficacy (Shaw 2011), emotional stability (Bontempo and Napier 2011) and the like. Nonetheless, these studies find no significant correlations or only moderate correlations between the noncognitive variables and interpreters’ performance. Selecting candidates on the basis of personal characteristics remains unproven. In the present investigation, the value of personality hardiness has been described and its strong predictive power on interpreting performance among student interpreters has been confirmed, indicating that personality hardiness is certainly worth trying in aptitude testing for interpreting. A longitudinal study from the students’ entry to graduation are suggested in future endeavors so as to find out how well this personality trait influences interpreting learning and performance in a longer run. Measurement on personality hardiness in aptitude testing, as a compensatory measure to cognitive aptitude tests, will be conducive to screening the most suitable applicants, and organizations will eventually be better off selecting candidates who are hardier in personality. Traditionally, aptitude testing for interpreter training programs mainly focuses on language and cognitive skills, such as language transferring, comprehension, analysis, working memory and the like. However, those non-cognitive aptitudes, including personality traits, albeit recognized as important and suggested to be considered for screening purposes (Bontempo and Napier 2011), are seldom systematically tested. The key findings of this study open an avenue for adopting personality hardiness measure as a viable selection tool to screen prospective candidates for interpretation training, since it has been substantiated to not only significantly correlate with, but also predict success of student interpreters’ performance. To be specific, by staying committed to themselves and the environment, and with an internal locus of control as well as an adventurous approach to life, the hardy student interpreters will optimally utilize the resources and make more efforts in a confident and determined way to reduce the stress generated from interpreting learning by a correct appraisal and appropriate coping, thus ultimately improve their performance as well as achievement in interpreting activities. In addition, the current research also finds individuals with hardy personality demonstrate a high level of performance at the end of the

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first academic year by mitigating interpreting anxiety and achieving a strong sense of self-efficacy, which may facilitate the high success rate in interpreting training. Hence, it is suggested that personality hardiness be incorporated in selecting potential candidates for such a demanding and stress-provoking interpretation training. In a word, the substantiated effectiveness of personality hardiness on interpreting performance may lead to two considerations in interpreting education. First, efforts are suggested to foster student interpreters’ hardy attitudes along with their interpreting skills, as they will improve students’ effective coping and interpreting performance. Indeed, personality hardiness training has been successfully implemented among IBT managers (Kobasa 1979), college students (Maddi 2013; Maddi et al. 2002; Rowe 1997) and nurses (Judkins and Ingram 2006; Tierney and Lavelle 1997) under the guidance of specialized trainers following strict procedures. For example, Rowe (1997) reported sustained increased hardiness in a sample of 118 healthcare providers over 24 months following periodic training sessions. Hasel et al. (2011) reported that a semester-long hardiness training program had increased hardiness levels and decreased the perceived stress levels of 27 college student volunteers. Second, more research on affective aptitudes for interpreters is needed, in addition to the “can do” factors such as linguistic proficiency and cognitive aptitudes, given their contribution to the skill acquisition process and influence on successful completion of a training program (Timarová and Salaets 2011). Traditionally, aptitude testing for interpreter training programs mainly focuses on language and cognitive skills, such as language transferring, comprehension, analysis, working memory and the like. However, those non-cognitive aptitudes, including personality traits, albeit recognized as important and suggested to be considered for screening purposes (Bontempo and Napier 2011), are seldom systematically tested. The key findings of this study open an avenue for adopting personality hardiness measure as a viable selection tool to screen prospective candidates for interpretation training, since it has been substantiated to not only significantly correlate with, but also predict success of student interpreters’ performance. To be specific, by staying committed to themselves and the environment, and with an internal locus of control as well as an adventurous approach to life, the hardy student interpreters will optimally utilize the resources and make more efforts in a confident and determined way to reduce the stress generated from interpreting learning by a correct appraisal and appropriate coping, thus ultimately improve their performance as well as achievement in interpreting activities. In addition, the current research also finds individuals with hardy personality demonstrate a high level of performance at the end of the first academic year by mitigating interpreting anxiety and achieving a strong sense of self-efficacy, which may facilitate the high success rate in interpreting training. Hence, it is suggested that personality hardiness be incorporated in selecting potential candidates for such a demanding and stress-provoking interpretation training.

Chapter 6

A Tentative Framework for Personality Hardiness Measurement in Aptitude Testing for Interpreting

Since personality hardiness has been proved to lend itself to the mitigation of interpreting anxiety, improvement of self-efficacy, and enhancement of interpreting performance, our next consideration is how to incorporate this valuable personality trait into interpreting aptitude testing which is widely acknowledged as the first and foremost part of the whole educational system, and attempt to propose a tentative framework for personality hardiness measurement within the existing interpreting aptitude testing model. Research question 4 will be addressed in this chapter. I will firstly analyze and compare personality hardiness with some other advocated personality traits in interpreting aptitude, such as stress-resistance, resilience and extraversion, with the expectation to point out the reason why personality hardiness rather than other similar personality traits should be incorporated in interpreting aptitude testing. Then I will analyze the significance of proposing a tentative framework for personality hardiness measurement in the existing interpreting aptitude testing model, which is followed by the presentation of such tentative framework. A detailed illustration on measurement of hardy personality in aptitude testing will be finally given.

6.1 Personality Hardiness and Related Personality Traits in Interpreting Aptitude As for what constitutes a good interpreter, interpreting practitioners and interpreter educators have discussed about it for years. As early as 1962, Paneth suggested that certain “right personality traits” should be possessed by those candidates who have the greatest chance of success in an interpreter training program, although he did not elaborate on what these “personality traits” should be. Agreed upon the stressful nature of the interpreting profession (Gerver et al. 1984; Jimenez and Pinazo 2001; Riccardi et al. 1998), many claim that it is particularly important for interpreters to be “stress-tolerant” (AIIC Training Committee 2006; Longley 1989; Moser-Mercer © Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press 2023 X. Xing, The Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting Performance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6335-5_6

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1984), “stress resistant” (Chabasse 2009; López Gómez et al. 2007), “resilient” (Napier et al. 2006/2010), to have “physical and psychological stamina” (Keiser 1978), a strong sense of “self-control”, “nerves of steel” (Henderson 1984; Keiser 1978), and a high level of “self-confidence” (Henderson 1984). Personality hardiness, described as “a constellation of personality characteristics that function as a resistance resource in the encounter with stressful life events” (Kobasa et al. 1982), not only appears conceptually similar enough to the aforementioned personality traits, but also is empirically proved to correlate with them in one way or another.

6.1.1 Personality Hardiness and Stress-Resistance Since its initial formulation, personality hardiness has been demonstrated by a large body of research in a variety of populations and occupational groups to be a useful stress-resistant agent to protect against stress and predict healthy functioning. As reviewed in Chap. 2, personality hardiness emerges as a stress-resistance resource is firstly supported by a study of business executives at Illinois Bell Telephone due to a phenomenon that “although stressful changes may be debilitating for some people, they are developmentally provocative for others” (Maddi 2002: 173). As predicted, the study found that the high-stress but low-illness executives show significantly greater personality hardiness than the high-stress and high-illness executives, since the courage contained in the hardy attitudes provides them with strength and motivation to do the hard work of transformation coping, supportive social interactions, and facilitative self-care under stresses (Maddi and Kobasa 1984). In perceiving and evaluating specific stressful events, people with hardy personality are more likely to seek opportunities for the exercise of decision making, the setting of new goals, and other complex activities that they appreciate as important human capabilities. Moreover, they can evaluate any given event in the context of an overall life plan and adopting environmental and human resources to turn stressful events into possibilities and personal development, and thus are effective in decreasing the subsequent risk of illness and improving performance. Personality hardiness has additionally been developed in to “stress-coping personality” (黄希庭 2002; Chen and Wang 2008) with a broader construct, because it more than “resists” stress; it “copes” with stress with transformational strategies and social support, to name a few. Thus, personality hardiness comes forth as a valuable trait to resist and cope with stress, buffering the stress-illness relationship with stress-management effectiveness.

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6.1.2 Personality Hardiness and Resilience Resilience, defined as “the human ability to adapt in the face of tragedy, trauma, adversity, hardship and ongoing significant life stressors” (Newman 2005: 227), has been variously used to describe the character of personality hardiness and invulnerability (Kobasa 1979; Ramanaiah et al. 1999) and the capacity for successful adaptation to a changing environment (Cicchetti and Cohen 1995). Personality hardiness and resilience are two closely related concepts in relieving negative effects of stress, improving adaptation, and developing effective strategies to cope with changes and challenges. The initiation of these two qualities share great similarities as well. The former is discovered by the phenomenon that “although stressful changes may be debilitating for some people, they are developmentally provocative for others” (Maddi 2002: 173), while the latter stems from the finding that some individuals have a relatively good psychological outcome despite suffering risk experiences (Rutter 2007). However, personality hardiness and resilience, taking a close look, are more or less distinguished from each other. For one thing, personality hardiness is a trait to resist stress with its subcomponents, while resilience does not so much imply an invulnerability to stress, but rather an ability to recover from negative events (Garmezy 1991). Personality hardiness has been conceptualized as a combination of Commitment, Control and Challenge, with which higher hardy individuals are committed to their social environment and to the activities they perform, no matter how stressful things become; they view stresses as normal, as an opportunity to learn, develop, and grow instead of threat; and they feel that they have a definite control on what happens in their lives. These characteristics are helpful for individuals in transforming stressful circumstances from potential disasters into growth opportunities instead (Maddi 2002). But as far as resilience is concerned, it is not a fixed individual characteristic (Rutter 2000) resistant to adversity but rather the ability to recover, grow and develop under difficult conditions with emotional, cognitive and social competence. For the other, personality hardiness is a pathway to resilience. Resilience is an important factor to prevent the development of psychopathology and maintain optimal functioning, physical health and psychological health in stressful life events (Ryff and Singer 2003). Among a constellation of both socio-contextual and personal determinants capacitating human beings to respond adaptively to environmental demands, personality hardiness has been unveiled as an important personal resource to protect health and enhance performance in times of hardship. It means only those who possess personality hardiness would survive, recover and even thrive despite stressful circumstances. Moreover, resilience could be promoted by personality hardiness from psychological, social as well as biological aspects respectively (Lo Bue 2015).

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6.1.3 Personality Hardiness and Other Stress-Resistance Qualities Owing to the different theoretical backgrounds and research purposes, it emerges various “names” for characteristics concerning stress resistance. Based on Robbins’ Stress Model, Zhang and his team (2006) listed a paralleled series of stress-resistance qualities, including self-efficacy, optimism, flexibility, hardiness and Type A, as depicted in Fig. 6.1. Among these qualities, personality hardiness is not only found to be positively related to, but also a stronger predictor of performance than self-efficacy and optimism. For example, in comparatively analyzing the empirical value of personality hardiness with other concepts, Maddi (1996) discovers that apart from correlation, personality hardiness emerges as a strong predictor of effective coping than optimism and that the latter concept may include not only as basis for trying harder but also for naïve complacency. Besides, personality hardiness is considerably more correlated in a positive way with expressions of transformational coping with everyday stresses on students’ life, and negatively correlated with regressive coping compared with that of optimism (Maddi and Hightower 1999). A factor analytic research by Bernard et al. (1996) suggests a pattern of positive inter-correlation between personality hardiness, self-efficacy, optimism and flexibility among a sample of college students and adult volunteers, however, personality hardiness is not merely the same as self-confidence which is composed of self-esteem, self-efficacy and optimism. As far as Type A is concerned, it is “a characteristic action-emotion complex exhibited by those individuals who are engaged in a chronic struggle to obtain an unlimited number of poorly defined things from their environment in the shortest period, and, if necessary, against the opposing efforts of other things or persons in this same environment” (Friedman 1969, cited in Kobasa et al. 1982: 42). Type A has emerged as influential in illness onset with personality hardiness in 1970s. At first sight, Type A and personality hardiness are similar with each other since both concepts emphasize drive, involvement as well as goal-striving. In fact, people with Fig. 6.1 Stress-resistance qualities structure (Zhang et al. 2006: 49)

Self-efficacy optimism Stress-resistance qualities

flexibility hardiness Type A

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Type A behavior patterns are not motivated, but driven, impatient, and competitive in the pursuit of external demands. Comparatively, the dispositions of Commitment, Control, and Challenge framing hardiness lead to a greater appreciation of, and an interaction with the events of one’s experience, increasing the likelihood of transforming contingencies to be less stressful. To sum up, personality hardiness, with which a person views potentially stressful situations as meaningful and interesting (Commitment), regards stressors as changeable (Control), and sees change as a normal aspect of life and as an opportunity for growth (Challenge), shares similarities with such positive psychology concepts in interpreting aptitude as resilience, self-efficacy and optimism, among others. Available findings also indicate that it is far more clear-cut and comprehensive conceptually, as well as more measurable instrumentally. Personality hardiness is “a better predictor of effective coping with stressful circumstances” (Maddi and Harvey 2006: 415). Hence, I have sound reasons to suggest that personality hardiness, with its four subcomponents, should be the foremost and most inclusive quality on the personality lists of interpreting aptitude.

6.2 Incorporating Personality Hardiness in Aptitude Testing for Interpreting The issue of aptitude for interpreting has been under discussion for more than half a century and achieved almost consistent views that an “ideal” interpreter candidate is supposed to have cognitive abilities (hard skills) as well as non-cognitive attributes (soft skills). However, how to test these abilities at an entrance level is agreed upon, especially for non-cognitive far from being characteristics due to the nature of “difficult to quantify” (Timarová and Salaets 2008: 42). In view of the proposal that interpreter personality is useful for the development of mentoring programs for working interpreters (Bontempo and Napia 2011), as well as the interplay between personality hardiness and interpreting performance substantiated in the present study, I attempt to suggest that candidates’ personality hardiness be measured in aptitude testing for interpreting. In this section, the significance of (why), a tentative framework for (what) and measurement on (how) personality hardiness in an interpreting aptitude testing model will be presented in sequence.

6.2.1 Significance of Incorporating Personality Hardiness into Aptitude Testing for Interpreting Aptitude testing, being an integral part of the educational system (Bowen and Bowen 1989), has been recognized as a must by leading authorities on interpreter training.

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Although it is agreed upon that aptitude testing for interpreting educational programs should not only include linguistic and cognitive abilities, but also take a candidate’s overall personality into consideration, the fact is that only a handful of selection committees put personality traits on the examining lists. In the literature, personality enjoys a checkered reputation as a predictor of work outcomes in a wide range of contexts from education to occupation. Specifically, personality traits have been reported to facilitate job performance (Hogan and Holland 2003; Judge et al. 1999; Mount et al. 1994), career success (Bozionelos 2004; Seibert et al. 2001), academic performance (Phillips et al. 2003), skill acquisition (Mumford et al. 1993; Oakes et al. 2001) and so forth. Personality hardiness, being related to and sharing similarities with the relevant stress-resistant personality traits in interpreting aptitude, is a vital “will do”1 quality to both interpreting professionals and learners. Given the evidence in the current investigation that personality hardiness conduces to alleviating interpreting anxiety, promoting self-efficacy and ultimately enhancing interpreting performance, incorporating this valuable personality trait into interpreting aptitude testing would be helpful in selecting more promising candidates and ensuring the success probability in training qualified interpreting professionals. The significance is illustrated from the following perspectives: First of all, to our knowledge, interpreting itself is extremely complex as well as intrinsically stressful. Interpreters short of certain abilities to resist and cope with stress are less likely to perform desirably or win public trust since it is an occupation with high stakes. Personality hardiness has successfully been proved in this research to be negatively related to and predict interpreting anxiety, indicating that interpreters with hardier personality suffer less from interpreting anxiety and have abilities to better manage it, which is eventually helpful to improve their interpreting performance. Secondly, it is well acknowledged that to learn interpreting well is by no means an easy task which needs to invest efforts and time from language enhancement to interpreting-related skills acquisition. Interpreting candidates who lack stressresistant personality qualities, would suffer a lot or may even be impossible to retain in the long period of training, resulting in academic burnout or dropout. Thankfully, student interpreters with personality hardiness are possible to withstand physical and psychological stress, viewing difficulties and stressful situations as personal challenges rather than as frustrations, persisting in what they have committed, and surviving and even growing in the face of adversities. Personality hardiness facilitates the interpreting skills acquisition process and functions in successfully completing a training program, although it is far from being a determinant compared to those “hard skills” in interpreting aptitude. 1

Bontempo and Napia (2011), based on Barrick and Mount (2005), described the cognitive factors affecting job performance as the “can do” factors—an individual needs a requisite level of general cognitive ability, to perform the tasks inherent in the job. They described personality as the “will do” factor—will the person be dependable, motivated, confident and goal-oriented enough to apply their individual capabilities towards effectively performing the tasks of the job?

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Thirdly, aptitude is “whatever makes a person ready to learn in a particular situation” and “any characteristic of a person that forecasts his probability of success under a given treatment” (Cronbach and Snow 1977: 6). The substantiated predictive validity of personality hardiness on interpreting learning and performance in this research reveals it to be a meaningful contributor to a candidates’ selection decision. The selection of interpreting applicants with hardy personality could maximize the possibilities of achieving the pre-set goals of interpreting learning with characteristics of Commitment, Perseverance, Challenge and Control. It not only relieves the pressure of a growing demand for highly qualified interpreters that institutions are facing, but also serves as a practical measure for training schools to cope with dearth of manpower and financial resources. Fourthly, personality hardiness could hardly be developed within a short period of time. Although it has been successfully implemented in training sessions designed to improve effective coping and performance among the IBT managers (Kobasa 1979), and in colleges in the United States (Maddi et al. 2002), hardiness training does not work until one to two years later. This is a fairly long time for interpreting learners who normally take a two-year professional training. Apart from that, training on personality hardiness needs to be carried out under the guidance of a specialized trainer with such proper and strict procedures as narratives on hardiness, inspirational examples, periodic checkpoints and so forth (ibid.), which is fairly demanding for interpreting institutions as well. Most importantly, the prime aim of aptitude testing is to select the most promising candidates with the least training, especially when applications for interpreting training programs from appropriately qualified candidates have increased year on year. Under these circumstances, admitting applicants with adequate cognitive skills and favorable personality traits at the entrance stage would ensure more time and efforts are invested in the acquisition of interpreting-related skills rather than being derailed by other aspects. Last but not least, measurement has become another concern when considering incorporating personality traits into aptitude testing for interpreting. Owing to the fact that personality hardiness is closely correlated with, but more encompassing than other analogous personality traits in interpreting aptitude, measuring personality hardiness instead of another two or three personality traits in the entrance examination would be far more feasibly administrative, economizing manpower and financial resources to be specific. As far as instrument is concerned, the measurement tools of personality hardiness have been developed over the years and withstood test of practice, including a variety of reliable and validated questionnaires or scales specifically designed for different contexts and samples, an illustration of which would be presented in the next part. In a word, personality hardiness, although by no means a decisive factor, plays a significant role in facilitating practitioners and student interpreters’ learning and performance, and deserves a due consideration in aptitude testing for interpreting. Applying rigorous and scientific steps to select interpreting candidates with hardy personality at an entrance stage would ultimately make it possible for training institutions, by making the most judicious and efficient use of the limited resources, to

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breed more stress-resistant and competent student interpreters completing training courses with more chances and less skill gaps.

6.2.2 A Tentative Framework for Personality Hardiness Measurement As reviewed, albeit with different categorization and terminology, aptitudes for interpreting are not very much varied, cognitive aptitudes in particular which mainly include knowledge of languages and of the world, as well as cognitive skills relating to analysis, comprehension and working memory. Since these skills lend themselves to determining the success or failure of interpreter training in a direct manner, they are primarily examined in aptitude testing for interpreting. As far as non-cognitive attributes are concerned, what should they encompass seems to be varied according to different researchers, probably due to three main reasons. Firstly, although noncognitive qualities have been emphasized by researchers and practitioners in various domains, they are actually no more than a holistic concept. Secondly, unlike academic or technical knowledge which is subject-based and content-specific, non-cognitive attributes are abstract comprising a wide range of non-technical factors, from interpersonal to intrapersonal characteristics. Thirdly, measurement of these attributes is basically experience-based, lacking scientific tools and process. Therefore, these non-cognitive skills, although recognized as important, are seldom measured in interpreting aptitude testing. It is confirmed in the present research that personality hardiness, measured by a reliable and validated scale, exerts strong predictive power on interpreting performance, and helps to promote student interpreters’ self-efficacy as well as alleviate their interpreting anxiety, revealing that it is a valuable personality trait to the student interpreters. As a result, I suggest to measure applicants’ hardy personality at the entrance examination, integrating it as an important constituent of non-cognitive attributes in aptitude testing for interpreting. Based on the existing aptitude testing model for interpreting, a tentative framework for personality hardiness measurement is proposed as follows: In the framework (Fig. 6.2), constituents of “cognitive aptitudes” on the left side are left out intentionally since our focus is merely on the position of personality hardiness in the testing model. On the right side, personality hardiness, being a personality trait, serves as one of the “non-cognitive attributes” with its four subcomponents of Persistence, Commitment, Challenge and Control. The behavior manifestations of these four hardiness characteristics in interpreting training context would be in this way: Perseverant student interpreters have determination to interpreting and decide to reach the goal even if the process is full of challenges; Committed interpreting students are more deeply involved in their studies. They prefer to view whatever they have experienced as something interesting and worthwhile which would stimulate them to spend more time and efforts on interpreting learning so as to meet the

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academic goals they have set at the outset of interpreting training; students high in Control prioritize the work deemed most contributory to academic success. Most importantly, when facing with difficulties in interpreting learning, they would do their utmost to control and solve the problems by seeking different coping strategies instead of feeling powerless; students with Challenge attitude appraise difficulties or stressful situations in interpreting learning as stimulating rather than threatening, which ought to increase the likelihood of accepting the stress with fulfilling academic goals. As noted, personality hardiness is widely acknowledged to be better understood as a hierarchical multidimensional construct, rather than a unitary personality structure, in which the subcomponents are under a global domain of hardiness. Thus, interpreting students with hardy personality are expected to be high in the hardiness total, but are allowed to be different in dispositions of Perseverance, Commitment, Control and Challenge respectively. For example, some hardy interpreting students are slightly higher in Commitment and Control, but lower in Challenge or Perseverance, only if they are above the cutoffs. After all, we could not imagine, for instance, that interpreting students high in Control but simultaneously low in Perseverance, Commitment and Challenge could achieve satisfactory results in learning, since such individuals would expect to determine learning outcomes but are unwilling to invest time or efforts on learning or feeling involved with difficulties around them. In this case, they would probably be riddled with impatience, irritability and even isolation Aptitude testing for interpreting

Cognitive aptitudes

Non-cognitive attributes

Personality hardiness

Persistence: persistent determination to interpreting; Commitment: involvement in interpreting practicing;

Interpreting anxiety management

Interpreting performance

Self-efficacy

Others

Challenge: appraise stressful interpreting situations as stimulating; Control: self-control instead of feeling powerless in interpreting activities.

Fig. 6.2 A tentative framework for PH measurement in interpreting aptitude testing

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whenever control efforts fail. Only those who possess all four hardy attitudes could provide themselves with the existential courage, motivation as well as determination to do the interpreting work well, sticking to the goals with great efforts and actions, and turning every stressful experience into advantage and growth. In the framework, apart from personality hardiness, interpreting anxiety management and self-efficacy are another two factors under the categorization of “noncognitive attributes”. As indicated by the dotted lines, both interpreting anxiety management and self-efficacy play mediating roles in the hardiness-performance linkage, indicating that these three variables are conducive to the improvement of interpreting performance both individually and interactively. Based on this consideration, interpreting anxiety management and self-efficacy are also suggested to be put a high value in aptitude testing for interpreting. It is necessary to note, integrating personality hardiness, interpreting anxiety management as well as self-efficacy into the “non-cognitive attributes” of aptitude testing by no means suggests that non-cognitive attributes in interpreting testing should be confined to these three factors. After all, non-cognition is known as a notion with ample embedded indicators. Future research may devote to discovering other considerable factors.

6.3 Measurement of Personality Hardiness in Aptitude Testing for Interpreting As a general practice, interpreting training schools and programs hold such exams as short consecutives, sight translation, written summary and the like to test applicants’ cognitive skills, alongside with a face-to-face interview to examine their “soft skills” (Timarová and Ungoed-Thomas 2008) since an interview contributes to distinguishing suitable applicants from those less suitable ones (Kulatungamoruzi and Norman 2002), and provides information about non-cognitive attributes deemed important for academic success (ibid.). However, due to the nature that personal attributes are rather difficult to quantify, the evaluation is normally derived from jury members’ intuition, which would ultimately affect the reliability and predictive validity of interpreting aptitude testing. Incorporating personality hardiness measurement would undoubtedly improve this situation.

6.3.1 Measurement Procedures At the first step, candidates could be administered a specifically-designed questionnaire about or scale on personality hardiness to fill out. The 27-item Hardiness Scale (Lu et al. 2008/2012) adopted in the present investigation is a recommendation since it yielded a high Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the total scale α

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= 0.908 (0.773 for Perseverance, 0.748 for Commitment, 0.794 for Control, and 0.787 for Challenge respectively), which demonstrates that it is a reliable instrument to measure Chinese student interpreters’ hardy personality. It is worthwhile to supplement, Hardiness Scale by Lu, with subjects from different circles in China including university students, civil servants, salesmen, self-employed people, peasants and so forth, generated four facets. Among which disposition of Perseverance embodies Chinese perceptions on the notion of personality hardiness that Perseverance empowers them to stick to the goals and remain resilient in encountering setbacks or contingencies. It is of no contradiction to the construct of personality hardiness initiated by Maddi and Kobasa. For the sake of convenient administration, other existing hardiness scales have not been experimented to measure Chinese student interpreters’ hardy personality in the present study. Neither have we attempted to develop a new scale applicable to the interpreting context. As a matter of fact, there exist different personality scales specially designed for different subjects. For example, the 71-item scale on personality hardiness produced by Kobasa et al. in 1982 has been adapted to healthrelated (Pollock 1986), sports-related (Sheard et al. 2009), school-related (Benishek and Lopez 2001), family-related (McCubbin and Thompson 1987), military-related (Bartone et al. 1989; Sinclair and Oliver 2003) as well as occupation-related (MorenoJiménez et al. 2014) instruments. As a consequence, writing or adapting a personality hardiness scale for selecting hardy interpreting candidates manifests its necessity and feasibility to researchers, calling for future endeavors. Adopting a self-report questionnaire or scale to measure candidates’ personality hardiness alone will inevitably bring about certain shortfalls. Respondents are asked to tick from many of the prescribed choices which are indeed convenient in terms of collecting information. However, there could be a distinction between the validity of a personality construct and the validity measured by self-report methods. Mount et al. (1994) once demonstrated that the average validities of Conscientiousness and Emotional Stability in predicting supervisors’ sales performance assessed by their coworkers and customers were 50% higher vis-à-vis their self-reports, which suggests that the use of self-reports may inevitably understate or overstate the true validity of personality constructs. It is therefore suggested that apart from self-reports, peer ratings or supervisor ratings should be taken into account concurrently. Owing to the administrative difficulty in admission tests, peer ratings or supervisor ratings are so far not recommended. An interview is then proposed to compensate for the ratings from peers or supervisors in selecting interpreting candidates. After the questionnaire survey, the applicants would take an elaborately designed and well-structured interview on their hardy personality, which is the oldest method for studying personality and the most favored for psychodynamic assessment, following the basic principle that “multiple viewpoints allow for greater accuracy” and the assumption that “weakness in one single method could be compensated by the counter-balancing strengths of another” (Jick 1979: 604).

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Although it is less efficient and more time-consuming than standardized objective tests, selecting candidates with hardy personality by means of a scientific questionnaire survey and a face-to-face interview, would be rewarding in the long run since hardier interpreting candidates are more likely to yield satisfactory results in interpreting training. Measurement on interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy are suggested to be carried out in aptitude testing for interpreting as well. The procedure could refer to that of personality hardiness measurement but with specifically-targeted scales and interview questions, details of which would not be elaborated here since personality hardiness measurement is the focus of this chapter. Based on the above-described procedures and methods, a testing scenario could be imagined: two days prior to the test, all assessors participate in a 2-h training session in which interview questions are provided and scoring system is explained; each interviewer has a list of non-cognitive attributes that applicants are supposed to possess: personality hardiness, self-efficacy and interpreting anxiety management, among others; after entering the room, applicants firstly finish filling out the scales on PH, SE and IA contained in a comprehensive questionnaire (this step could be done by students while waiting for the interview outside the room so as to save time); applicants are given prepared scenarios concerning PH, SE and IA to comment; and the interview assessors ask more questions if they deem it necessary. Scores on the questionnaire and face-to-face interview, alongside with that on applicants’ cognitive skills, like language transfer, comprehension, analysis, communication, etc., are adopted to admit the most teachable and promising candidates from an increasing number of applicants.

6.3.2 Sub-components of Personality Hardiness As known, personality hardiness is better understood as a hierarchical construct, in which four components of Perseverance, Commitment, Control and Challenge are under a broader domain of personality hardiness. This view acknowledges the multidimensional nature of personality hardiness and the existence of four interrelated but distinct characteristics necessary to be hardy. In accordance with the view, personality hardiness should be measured by global hardiness and its four facets. In evaluating the scores on the personality hardiness questionnaire filled out by interpreting candidates, it is necessary to take into account five different scores, namely, scores on the subcomponents of Perseverance, Commitment, Control and Challenge, as well as their sum as a total hardiness score. Those whose aforementioned five scores are above the cutoffs would be considered high in personality hardiness. It is common among hardy candidates that their scores on the respective subcomponent are not necessarily equally high. Some would be higher in Commitment, while others are higher in Challenge. Which subcomponent is more valued depends on varied contexts and for different purposes. For example, Commitment of personality hardiness is the most significant predictor of demanding military task

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performance (Johnsen et al. 2013) and of university students’ academic achievement (Sheard 2009) vis-à-vis dispositions of Perseverance, Control and Challenge. For interpreting candidates, dispositions of Challenge and Commitment are apparently more important compared with Perseverance and Control, since Challenge and Commitment are discovered, in the current investigation, to exert predictive validity of 14.3% on interpreting performance. Taken in this sense, Challenge and Commitment are two more valuable dispositions in personality hardiness for student interpreters, and thus are supposed to be prioritized in selecting interpreting candidates with hardy personality. In an increasingly globalized era, the demand for professional interpreters is constantly rising. To meet this end, interpreter training programs at different levels are provided at home and abroad. Being the first and foremost step in an integral educational system, rigorous aptitude testing ultimately helps to admit the most suitable candidates. Although it is acknowledged that aptitude alone cannot predict how an interpreter trainee will progress and whether he or she could become a interpreting professional, aptitude testing for interpreting could undoubtedly provide valuable information. Most interpreting schools wish to select future interpreters using non-cognitive attributes align with cognitive skills, among which personality is put on the agenda since it predicts and explains behavior at work. Empirical evidences regarding the psychological make up of interpreters also point to the potential role of personality in successful occupational performance. Hence, interpreters’ dispositions are suggested to “be considered for screening purposes” and we may “eventually benefit from considering the notion of personality traits upon admission into training programs” (Bontempo and Napier 2011: 99). Drawing on the substantiated evidence that personality hardiness predicts student interpreters’ learning as well as performance in an interpreting training program, and that interpreting anxiety as well as self-efficacy mediate hardiness-performance relationship, a tentative framework for incorporating personality hardiness, together with interpreting anxiety management and self-efficacy, in aptitude testing for interpreting has been proposed. Personality hardiness measurement characterized by reliability, validity, comprehensiveness as well as administrative feasibility has also been thoroughly illustrated in this chapter, which may further hardy personality research in interpreting context to high gear. It is worthwhile to mention, since the research focus of this research is personality hardiness, I only address the importance and position of interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy in the framework, measurements on which, however, have not been stated in detail. The current validation of affective learner factors on interpreting begs the question: should they be included in admission tests? Some may view it as a fatalistic approach defeating the purpose of education; for example, a preference for admitting people with hardy personalities instead of those who do not share this favorable trait. Some purport that it is not the right time to implement formal personality testing in pre-admission screening given its unclear predictive potential (Bontempo and Napier 2011). As a matter of fact, aptitude tests for interpreting, with the purpose to select the most suitable candidates, has been a popular yet debated issue among interpreting researchers and practitioners over the years, especially in regard to “what

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to test” and “how to test” (Russo 2011). With an increasing number of researchers in recent years showing interest in soft skills in interpreting, one can reasonably conclude that personality-related factors do matter in facilitating interpreting training or predicting interpreting competence. Admittedly, research findings vary, as is the case with research on motivation. Conceptual constructs and psychometric assessments are the reasons often presumed for the discrepant results, which ushers in the second question—“how to test”. In the survey by Timarová and Ungoed-Thomas (2008), 12 out of 18 schools explicitly stressed that they look for motivated candidates, yet only two schools include “motivation” in the set of the aptitudes they test for, because they were “sceptical about the feasibility of testing the trait within the limited time frame of an admission procedure” (ibid, 42). Therefore, with the development of more valid aptitude tests for language and cognitive skills, such as oral paraphrasing tests (Russo 2014), SynCloze tests (Pöchhacker 2011), recall across languages (Shang and Xie 2020), and others, scientific psychometric measurements that can accurately capture “soft skills” of interpreting candidates is an urgent item in the research agenda. When I claim the significance and importance of personality hardiness in interpreting aptitude testing, under no circumstances do I advocate the abandonment of cognitive skills in the selection of interpreting students. On the contrary, measurement on personality hardiness aims to have added value or be used as a compensatory measure to cognitive aptitude tests, screening desirable non-cognitive characteristics in potential interpreting students. It is high time that we develop and evaluate selection methods which may be useful adjuncts in a holistic selection process that is scientific, reliable and accountable not only to the applicants themselves but also to their future employers. In conclusion, if research on the aspects of interpreter aptitude and objective interpreter testing were strongly required (Dodds 1990; Gerver et al. 1989) nearly 20 years ago, and “further investigation of the predictive power of personality factors in relation to interpreter performance” (Bontempo and Napier 2011) was called for ten years ago, it is high time we called for multi-method measurement models, in which subjective and objective indices converge on common latent traits for interpreters.

Chapter 7

Conclusion

This chapter is intended as a summing-up of the previous chapters which have examined the effects of personality hardiness on interpreting performance among student interpreters from an interdisciplinary perspective. Within the theoretical framework of psychology, foreign (second) language acquisition as well as interpreting studies, and inspired by previous studies, the present research proposes a tentative framework for personality hardiness measurement in aptitude testing for interpreting. As a conclusion of the book, this chapter will put forward a brief overview of the overall project, including its major findings, contributions and limitations with the expectation to provide implications for future research endeavors.

7.1 Overview of the Research Personality hardiness is an important and useful concept in the discipline of psychology, individuals with which are considered to possess three general characteristics: (a) the belief that they can control or influence the events of their experiences, (b) an ability to feel deeply involved in or committed to the activities of their lives, and (c) the anticipation of change as an exciting challenge to further development. A considerable body of empirical studies had manifested that personality hardiness provides individuals with courage and motivation to cope with stressful circumstances through hardy actions (transformational coping) which may turn them from potential strain to opportunities and advantages, thereby maintaining or improving performance and health in various contexts. A survey of the literature shows that many personality traits sharing similarities with personality hardiness have been proposed as “aptitudes” for interpreting. However, no concrete or validated measures have been adopted to examine them, to date, in aptitude testing for interpreting. Bearing this phenomenon in mind, the research endeavors to, setting foot on domains of psychology and interpreting studies, examine whether personality hardiness helps to enhance student interpreters’ interpreting performance so as to provide evidence © Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press 2023 X. Xing, The Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting Performance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6335-5_7

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for incorporating this valuable trait into aptitude testing for interpreting. Enlightened from the research findings in the realm of SLA, interpreting anxiety and selfefficacy are considered as two important intermediates in the current study, examining whether or how they play roles in hardiness-performance linkages. In conducting the main part of research, a stratified sampling of 149 student interpreters from 10 different universities are investigated, with forms of questionnaire survey and in-depth interview in terms of personality hardiness, interpreting anxiety, self-efficacy as well as interpreting performance, main findings of which will be reviewed in the next section. Methods such as Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients, multivariate stepwise regression and hierarchical regression, using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 19.0, have been adopted to analyze the relations of correlation, prediction, mediation as well as moderation among the variables. This book then provides a tentative framework for personality hardiness measurement in aptitude testing for interpreting, combined with the existing aptitude testing models. Methods of hardy personality measurement in interpreting context have also been illustrated. The bulk of the current project focuses on the quantitative analysis and qualitative interpretation of the mechanism how personality hardiness affects student interpreters’ interpreting performance.

7.2 Major Findings of the Research The prime findings of the present study are summarized in accordance with the objectives proposed in the introductory chapter.

7.2.1 Personality Hardiness and Interpreting Anxiety In the research, personality hardiness is measured by Hardiness Scale (Lu et al. 2008/ 2012), Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of which is high for the total scale (0.908), and reasonably high for the four subscale of Perseverance (0.773), Commitment (0.748), Control (0.794) and Challenge (0.787) respectively, revealing Hardiness Scale is a highly reliable measurement for hardy personality in student interpreters. Interpreting anxiety is assessed by Interpreting Anxiety Scale (Dong 2013), which is a 20-item scale on a 5-point Likert scale, specially designed to measure interpretation students’ levels of interpreting anxiety in training. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient α = 0.858 indicates that it is a highly reliable measurement for the current study. Pearson product-moment correlation analyses demonstrate that both personality hardiness total (r = −0.347, p = 0.000) and four dimensions, namely, Perseverance (r = −0.214, p = 0.009), Commitment (r = −0.283, p = 0.000), Control (r = − 0.316, p = 0.000), and Challenge (r = −0.325, p = 0.000) are significantly negatively

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correlated with interpreting anxiety, suggesting that students with higher personality hardiness are less likely to suffer from interpreting anxiety. Apart from correlation, multiple regression analysis which is a statistical technique for the relationship between a dependent (criterion) variable and a set of independent (predictor) variables is performed to find whether personality hardiness predicts interpreting anxiety. The findings reveal that both dispositions of Challenge and Control exert significant predictive power on interpreting anxiety, accounting for 12% of the variance, among which variable of Challenge is the best predictor, explaining 10.6% of interpreting anxiety variance. Whereas, neither Perseverance nor Commitment shows any significant predictive power on interpreting anxiety. Hence, hardier students in dispositions of Challenge and Control appear to better cope with or manage interpreting anxiety.

7.2.2 Personality Hardiness and Self-efficacy A 10-item General Self-efficacy scale by Zhang and Schwarzer (1995) is used to assess interpretation students’ sense of self-efficacy. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient α = 0.872 reveals high internal consistency of this scale among the respondents. Both Total personality hardiness (r = 0.633, p = 0.000) and the four dimensions, viz. Perseverance (r = 0.521, p = 0.009), Commitment (r = 0.424, p = 0.000), Control (r = 0.563, p = 0.000), and Challenge (r = 0.565, p = 0.000) are found to be significantly positively correlated with self-efficacy, suggesting that students with higher personality hardiness are more likely to feel self-efficacious. In addition to the tight correlation, multiple regression analysis reveals that components of Challenge, Control and Perseverance have predictive power upon selfefficacy, explaining 41.4% of the variance, among which variable of Challenge is the best predictor, explaining 32% of the variance in self-efficacy. However, variable of Commitment doesn’t show significant predictability on self-efficacy. In this sense, personality hardiness and self-efficacy are once again proved to be two precisely close notions regarded as an individual’s positive characteristics.

7.2.3 Personality Hardiness and Interpreting Performance For purpose of collecting the most authentic data, the current study examines all participants with the same interpreting materials in the same manner, albeit timeand effort-consuming, instead of collecting their mid-term scores or final grades in interpreting courses. The scores, after being rated by three experienced examiners with interrater reliability by Cronbach’s Alpha α = 0.792, are demonstrated to relate to the variables as follows. Students’ interpreting performance is significantly and positively correlated with both personality hardiness total (r = 0.401, p = 0.000) and its four dimensions, viz.

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Perseverance (r = 0.311, p = 0.000), Commitment (r = 0.337, p = 0.000), Control (r = 0.315, p = 0.000), and Challenge (r = 0.352, p = 0.000), suggesting that students with higher personality hardiness tend to make better achievements in interpreting learning. Multiple regression analyses find out that subcomponents of Challenge and Commitment exert significant and positive predictive power on interpreting performance, accounting for 14.3% of the variance, among which Challenge serves as the best predictor, explaining 12.4% of the variance in interpreting performance. However, variable of Control and Perseverance have not detected any significant predictive power on interpreting performance. In this sense, students with Challenge and Commitment dispositions are probably going to yield better achievements in interpreting training. Apart from correlation and prediction, three-stepped regression analyses further discover that both the relationship between personality hardiness (total) and interpreting performance, and the relationship between the four dimensions of personality hardiness and interpreting performance are mediated by variable of interpreting anxiety, with the mediating effects of 21.46%, 20.99%, 23.93%, 25.02% and 28.69% for personality hardiness (Total), Perseverance, Commitment, Challenge and Control respectively of the total effects. These findings suggest that personality hardiness not only exerts direct influence on interpreting performance, but also affects interpreting performance via mitigating interpreting anxiety. Thus, interpreting anxiety is substantiated to play a mediating role in the hardy personality and interpreting performance linkages. Likewise, self-efficacy is also found to mediate the effect of Commitment on interpreting performance. But neither the personality hardiness total nor the other three dimensions’ relations to interpreting performance could be mediated by self-efficacy. In this study, the hypotheses of the moderating effects of interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy on the hardiness-performance relationship haven’t been substantiated. In-depth interview with nine respondents triangulates the results generated from the quantitative research that personality hardiness is indeed a valuable personality trait for candidates in facilitating interpreting training process and outcomes.

7.2.4 Personality Hardiness in Interpreting Aptitude A scan of literature discovers that many stress-resistant personality traits proposed by interpreting researchers and practitioners as “interpreting aptitude” over the years share great similarities with personality hardiness, which is described as “a constellation of personality characteristics that function as a resistance resource in the encounter with stressful life events” (Kobasa et al. 1982). As a matter of fact, empirical studies detect personality hardiness to be more inclusive than those related stress-resistant personality traits. Given the findings concluded from the current investigation, it is suggested that personality hardiness be the foremost trait on the psychological list of interpreting aptitude.

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From analyzing the existing three models of aptitude testing for interpreting, we realize that what “hard skills” should be examined in aptitude testing have largely reached consensus, however, that of “soft skills”, personality traits in particular, are far from being agreed upon. Considering the widely acknowledged personalityperformance theory (Mount et al. 1994) and proved effects of hardy personality on interpreting performance in the current investigation, together with the appeal for stress-resistance personality in interpreting aptitude, I propose a tentative framework for personality hardiness measurement in aptitude testing for interpreting. In the framework, interpretation students with hardy personality are expected to be high in the hardiness total, but can be different in Persistence, Commitment, Control and Challenge, only if all scores are above the cutoffs. Among the four dispositions, Challenge and Commitment are probably more important compared with Persistence and Control, since only Challenge and Commitment are discovered to exert predictive validity of 14.3% on interpreting performance. In this sense, Challenge and Commitment appear to be two more valuable facets in personality hardiness for interpreting learners, and thus are supposed to be prioritized in selecting interpreting candidates with hardy personality. It is true that hardy personality could be trained and developed in a long run, while admitting candidates with favorable personality traits at entrance exams would ensure more time and efforts are put on the training of interpreting-related skills themselves rather than being distracted by other aspects. Therefore, selecting applicants in aptitude testing with the characteristics which displayed by personality hardiness, on the premise of possessing prominent “hard skills” of interpreting, would facilitate interpreting training with greater success.

7.2.5 Personality Hardiness Measurement in Aptitude Testing for Interpreting In the pilot study, I firstly choose the widely-used PVS III-R (Maddi and Khoshaba 2001). However, the statistical analysis finds the scale less satisfactory among Chinese student interpreters with Cronbach’s alpha α = 0.73 (0.54 for Commitment, 0.48 for Control, 0.35 for Challenge), which is coincident with Lu’s (2008) supposition that there exists inconsistent comprehension on personality hardiness between easterners and westerners. The 27-item Hardiness Scale (Lu et al. 2008/ 2012), adopted in the formal study, turns out to yield a high Cronbach’s alpha coefficient, demonstrating that Hardiness Scale could be used as a reliable instrument to measure Chinese student interpreters’ hardy personality. As a matter of fact, there exist different personality scales suitable for different subjects and research purposes, and writing or adapting a scale specifically for selecting hardy interpreting candidates is suggested for future research. In ensuring more accurate data, face-toface interviews or peer-ratings are also advocated in measuring student interpreters’ personality hardiness so as to yield reliable and validated results.

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7.3 Contributions of the Research The current study takes an interdisciplinary viewpoint and draws a heavy load of scholarship from research on interpreting studies, psychology, as well as foreign (second) language acquisition, and will in return contribute to the three domains in one way or another. First, the current investigation into personality hardiness of student interpreters is a worthy attempt in the realm of interpreting studies. Aptitude for interpreting, personality in particular, has been a popular yet pending issue among interpreting researchers and practitioners over the years. Findings generated from this dissertation that personality hardiness is closely correlated with, but more inclusive than the proposed personality traits in interpreting aptitude, and that personality hardiness conduces to enhancing interpreting performance, will undoubtedly deepen the understandings on personality traits in interpreting aptitude. The tentative framework for incorporating personality hardiness into aptitude testing for interpreting contributes to providing the stake-holders with insights or blueprints in selecting the most teachable candidates for interpreting training programs. Second, the present study is believed to shed light on the personality dispositions research on interpreter performance. Although the relationship between personality and occupational performance does figure in the scholarly literature, the evidence that personality hardiness serves as a predictor of interpreting performance for student interpreters, would offer empirical grounds for optimism in working towards defining this trait may influence interpreter performance, and thus provide the impetus for researchers to embark on a new research agenda designed to further understanding of personality hardiness-performance linkages in interpreting professionals. Third, results from this study undoubtedly offer enlightenment for interpreting training. Specifically, due to its “trainable” characteristic (Maddi 1987), hardiness attitudes could be enhanced through effective hardiness training, which will decrease the vulnerability variables of stress, strain and regressive coping. On the contrary, it may increase resistance variables of hardiness attitudes and transformational coping. In this sense, coordinators and lecturers of interpreting training programs would certainly benefit from integrating traits awareness into their curricula, developing qualities such as hardy attitudes, self-efficacy, resilience, and positive coping skills. Although personality hardiness can hardly be improved in a short time, both student interpreters and stake-holders would be benefit from hardiness training in a long run. Fourth, borrowing a psychological concept—personality hardiness, to the field of interpreting studies sets an important precedent for researching this personality trait. Positive effects of hardy personality on interpreting performance demonstrate once again that hardiness is a useful stress-resistant and stress-coping personality trait not only in such diverse samples as lawyers, nurses, military school cadets and sports undergraduates, but also in a sample of student interpreters, which surely widen the applicable scope of personality hardiness. Last but not least, in viewing of individual difference studies in second language acquisition, this research chooses anxiety and self-efficacy as intermediates between

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personality hardiness and interpreting performance linkages. The investigation finds, as subsidiary products, that both interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy are of predictability on interpreting performance, which will enlarge, to some extent, the research of individual differences on the four basic skills, namely, listening, speaking, reading and writing, towards the fifth—translation (interpreting).

7.4 Limitations and Future Directions The current project, inspired with the idea that personality hardiness explains a person’s resilience against stress, explores the relationship between personality hardiness and interpreting performance. This research discovers some positive effects of hardy personality on interpreting achievements directly or via such variables as interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy among Chinese student interpreters at postgraduate level by drawing theoretical insights or methodologies from psychology, SLA as well as interpreting studies. It is acknowledged that it is an initial exploration into two never linked variables and thus would beyond any doubt be valuable in informing future research. However, findings generated from the current study are by no means conclusive and continue to be subject to further investigations. One of the general limitations of the study lies in the small size of samples, which is not unusual in interpreting studies. The findings do seem to provide preliminary evidence that personality hardiness is indeed an important contributing factor of interpreting aptitude since it influences interpreting anxiety, self-efficacy and most importantly, interpreting performance. However, due to the small samples, they should be viewed as tendencies rather than facts, and findings of this research would be premature to be generalized to all interpretation students unless these tendencies are confirmed in further research among larger samples with different educational levels of BTI and MTI. Another noteworthy limitation concerns the instruments. Scales adopted in this study have demonstrated satisfactory reliability and validity for assessing students’ hardy personality, interpreting anxiety and self-efficacy. It has to be admitted that selfreport questionnaires have some inherent disadvantages, such as the possibility of unreliable and unmotivated respondents, social desirability bias, acquiescence bias, self-deception, fatigue effects, and little opportunity to double-check the validity of respondents’ answers (Dornyei and Taguchi 2003). Although semi-structured interviews have been adopted as a supplement in the current study, due to administrative constraints, only nine respondents participate in the interview, which ultimately reveals once again the limitation on small-sized samples. Further research should be conducted employing other qualitative research methods, such as observations or journals, to triangulate data collected by quantitative methods. Furthermore, student interpreters’ interpreting performance is merely drawn from consecutive interpreting tasks. It would be more helpful to examine whether other types of interpreting, such as simultaneous interpreting or sight translation tasks, would yield similar findings.

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Last but most importantly, the present research is an exploratory one and the results are obviously subject to the limitation of a cross-sectional study, gathering information on a population at a single point in time. A follow-up longitudinal research, collecting data from the population over the course of time, is urgently needed in a future study to identify whether the same findings would be generated. In particular, ethnographic data collection utilizing a longitudinal approach, preferably from entrance to graduation, is welcomed to take a closer look at student interpreters’ hardy personality and interpreting learning linkages so as to determine how well this personality trait will influence performance in a longer term. Given the limitations of the present project, it is hoped and suggested that future researchers proceed to conduct studies that expand upon the methodology, sample, and instruments utilized currently in order to continue illuminating the effects of personality hardiness on interpreting skills acquisition and performance, with an ultimate expectation to provide additional insights into the profiles of ideal interpreting candidates as well as lead to more reliable aptitude tests for interpreting.

Appendix A

Questionnaire for Student Interpreters

Thank you very much for filling in the questionnaire! To ensure the authenticity of the data, please answer based on the actual situation. I solemnly promise that all data collected in the questionnaire will be used for research purposes only, and the name of the respondents will not appear in the research report. Part I Personal information Your name: _____________________ Your gender: ◯ Male ◯ Female Your age: ◯ Under 18 ◯ 18–25 ◯ 26–30 ◯ 31–40 Your current university: ________________________ Your email: __________________________________ Part II Please answer the questions in this part according to your true feelings. There is no right or wrong answer. After reading each narrative, please follow your intuition and decide the agreement degree Generally speaking… I can always achieve my goals through my own efforts. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree I am often heartened by the changes in my life and work. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree I like to try new and exciting things. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree I would rather do work that is challenging. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree I can stick with the hard stuff as long as it makes sense. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree © Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press 2023 X. Xing, The Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting Performance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6335-5

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Work and study bring me pleasure. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree I look forward to putting in work/study almost every day. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree When I encounter difficulties, I always try my best to find a solution. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree It really excites me to be able to do things in a positive way. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree I prefer to take on important work. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree The hectic pace of life makes me feel fulfilled. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree I’m not afraid of any difficulty for what I decide to do. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree I will not give up my ideal and pursuit easily. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree Facing an unfavorable situation, I will try to turn it around. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree I can still keep my spirits up even when things are not going well. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree I have always been passionate about my work. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree I get very involved in even the simplest thing. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree Breaking the rules inspires me to learn. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree With hard work, any difficulty can be overcome. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree Whenever there is a problem, I try to find the root cause. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree

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When someone gets angry with me, I try to calm him down. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree No matter how complicated the problem is, I can always clarify my thoughts quickly. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree If the goal is set, I will not give up even if I encounter obstacles. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree I am willing to give up a stable life for the chance to face great challenges. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree It is important to embrace new scenarios in my life. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree I often regard the difficulties in life as a challenge rather than a threat. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree I will keep calm in the face of criticism from others. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat agree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree. Part III This part lists statements of mental state in interpreting situations. Please read each statement and determine to what extent the statement matches your reality (or how you actually feel) I usually do not feel nervous when doing interpreting in interpreting class. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat disagree 3 = Comparatively agree 4 = Somewhat agree 5 = Strongly agree On the way to do interpreting, I will feel relaxed and stress-free. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat disagree 3 = Comparatively agree 4 = Somewhat agree 5 = Strongly agree I find it interesting and challenging to learn interpretation. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat disagree 3 = Comparatively agree 4 = Somewhat agree 5 = Strongly agree I will take it easy on mistakes made in interpreting. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat disagree 3 = Comparatively agree 4 = Somewhat agree 5 = Strongly agree I am quite a lot looking forward to my next interpretation assignment. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat disagree 3 = Comparatively agree 4 = Somewhat agree 5 = Strongly agree

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I like to interpret in public. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat disagree 3 = Comparatively agree 4 = Somewhat agree 5 = Strongly agree I like interpreting training and find it fulfilling. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat disagree 3 = Comparatively agree 4 = Somewhat agree 5 = Strongly agree I can be an excellent interpreter as long as I work hard. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat disagree 3 = Comparatively agree 4 = Somewhat agree 5 = Strongly agree I am afraid of not conveying the speaker’s meaning when doing interpreting. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat disagree 3 = Comparatively agree 4 = Somewhat agree 5 = Strongly agree If the two parties I interpret for know a little about each other’s language, I will be worried about them finding my mistakes. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat disagree 3 = Comparatively agree 4 = Somewhat agree 5 = Strongly agree In interpretation, the quality of my subsequent interpreting will be affected if I realize that I have made mistakes. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat disagree 3 = Comparatively agree 4 = Somewhat agree 5 = Strongly agree I get nervous when interpreting in public. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat disagree 3 = Comparatively agree 4 = Somewhat agree 5 = Strongly agree I still feel nervous during interpreting even if I have prepared well beforehand. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat disagree 3 = Comparatively agree 4 = Somewhat agree 5 = Strongly agree I will feel nervous if I forget what I know when interpreting. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat disagree 3 = Comparatively agree 4 = Somewhat agree 5 = Strongly agree I get nervous when I interpret without preparation. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat disagree 3 = Comparatively agree 4 = Somewhat agree 5 = Strongly agree Interpretation class makes me feel more stressed than other courses.

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1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat disagree 3 = Comparatively agree 4 = Somewhat agree 5 = Strongly agree When interpreting, I am so nervous that my heart is pounding. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat disagree 3 = Comparatively agree 4 = Somewhat agree 5 = Strongly agree I have never been sure about doing interpreting. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat disagree 3 = Comparatively agree 4 = Somewhat agree 5 = Strongly agree I always think that others interpret better than me. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat disagree 3 = Comparatively agree 4 = Somewhat agree 5 = Strongly agree Interpreting requires so many skills that it is more than I can handle. 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Somewhat disagree 3 = Comparatively agree 4 = Somewhat agree 5 = Strongly agree. Part IV The following 10 sentences are about your general views on yourself. Please choose the answers according to your situation (actual feelings) I can always manage to solve difficult problems if I try hard enough. 1 = Not at all True 2 = Barely True 3 = Moderately True 4 = Exactly True If someone oppose me, I can find means and ways to get what I want. 1 = Not at all True 2 = Barely True 3 = Moderately True 4 = Exactly True It is easy for me to stick to my aims and accomplish my goals. 1 = Not at all True 2 = Barely True 3 = Moderately True 4 = Exactly True I am confident that I could deal efficiently with unexpected events. 1 = Not at all True 2 = Barely True 3 = Moderately True 4 = Exactly True Thanks to my resourcefulness, I know how to handle unforeseen situations. 1 = Not at all True 2 = Barely True 3 = Moderately True 4 = Exactly True I can solve most problems if I invest the necessary effort. 1 = Not at all True 2 = Barely True 3 = Moderately True 4 = Exactly True I can remain calm when facing difficulties because I can rely on my coping abilities. 1 = Not at all True 2 = Barely True 3 = Moderately True 4 = Exactly True When I am confronted with a problem, I can usually find several solutions.

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1 = Not at all True 2 = Barely True 3 = Moderately True 4 = Exactly True If I am in a bind, I can usually think of something to do. 1 = Not at all True 2 = Barely True 3 = Moderately True 4 = Exactly True No matter what comes my way, I’m usually able to handle it. 1 = Not at All True 2 = Barely True 3 = Moderately True 4 = Exactly True Thank you for your patience!

Appendix B

Script for English–Chinese Consecutive Interpreting Test

Directions: You are going to hear an English speech, please start to interpret it into Chinese at each long pause. This Speech is about “Protecting hearing at work”. Every day our ears are assaulted by sound—from traffic on the streets to a variety of sources in the workplace. When noise at work is too loud our hearing can be harmed, and it has been shown that even lower levels of sound affect health and wellbeing in the workplace, distracting people from tasks and leading to annoyance and stress. While many manual and industrial jobs that historically caused hearing damage are on the wane, newer sources of disruptive noise have arisen in many sectors. Whether you operate on a construction site, or in the leisure and entertainment industry, workers’ hearing and health are at risk if noise environment is not properly managed. The most obvious noise impacts occur where legal levels put in place to protect hearing are exceeded. While a single episode of exposure to, for example, an explosion or extremely loud music can cause instant damage, it is more often prolonged exposure over time that leads to hearing loss. The Health and Safety Executive estimate 48 in every 100,000 workers suffer noise-induced hearing loss in a year and, according to Action on Hearing Loss, 1 in 6 people in the UK live with some form of hearing impairment. Hearing damage is irreversible but it was 1989 before the first specific noise at work regulations came into force. The main piece of current legislation is the Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005, which came into force in 2006. These states where workers are exposed to 80 decibels, daily or weekly average, information and training must be provided. Where levels reach 85 decibels, daily or weekly average, hearing protection must be provided and worn. Work situations where these levels are reached include where power tools are in use, tractor driving, pubs and clubs and even schools. Even where it does not get this loud, noise at work will impact on the concentration, productivity and wellbeing of staff. A by-no-means comprehensive list of work situations where the health and productivity of staff can be at risk is as follows. © Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press 2023 X. Xing, The Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting Performance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6335-5

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Appendix B: Script for English–Chinese Consecutive Interpreting Test

Construction is inherently noisy, with power tools and equipment reaching up to 120 decibels. Also, such work disturbs anyone living or working nearby so measures must be taken to prevent both the impact on employees and anyone else in range; Airport ground staff are exposed to the highest workplace noise levels as they are working alongside jets engines that can produce a deafening 140 decibels; Club and venue workers including bar staff, stewards and security can be exposed to noise levels over 100 decibels. A survey of bars for Noise Action Week 2015 found noise levels of 85–100 decibels. Schools can reach very high noise levels—especially where acoustic design is poor. Music teachers and those working with young children can be exposed to noise levels up to 85 decibels. For workers in an environment with constant noise, hearing damage can creep up incrementally. The range of hearing may be diminished or tinnitus—a constant ringing in the ears—might develop. As hearing loss usually occurs over time it is often not recognized until it is too late. Early signs include difficulty hearing parts of conversation and in distinguishing conversation where there is background noise. If you cannot hear someone talking to you from two meters away your hearing is at risk—or already damaged. With this constant assault of sound in so many situations, how do you protect the hearing of employees and reduce the risk of noise disruption and stress? Good management of noise and education for all employees are key. There is no current requirement for workers in noisy environments to have their hearing tested regularly. Encouraging workers to have a hearing test is one way to raise awareness of the value and vulnerability of hearing, and the importance of taking care of it. There are many physical measures that can be taken to improve the acoustics of a workspace and minimize noise impacts.

Appendix C

Script for Chinese–English Consecutive Interpreting Test

Directions: You are going to hear a Chinese speech, please start to interpret it into English at each long pause.

第二篇 关于一项 “经 经济萧条是否有益健康”的 的调查 尽管经济危机会给许多国家及其人民造成难以名状的苦难, 但是古巴的一项 新健康研究指出, 经济困难时期的黑暗也有一线光明. 上世纪九十年代的经济 困难虽然让古巴人饱受饥饿之苦, 然而出人意料的是, 当地心血管疾病和糖尿 病的发病率也因此而下降. 研究人员暗示说, 由于摄入食物的减少和体力活动 的增多, 人们在经济萧条时期体重会下降. 这一发表在 《英国医学杂志》 网刊上的引人注目的发现基于古巴的一项研 究. 20 世纪 90 年代早期古巴在苏联解体后陷入经济危机, 古巴民众因此遭受 食品和燃料的短缺, 民众食物摄入量的数据曲线一直保持同身体活动量相反 的趋势. 研究者估算显示, 在危机最为严重的时候, 人均日摄入热量减少到了 只有 500 卡路里. 曾在八十年代不断攀升的肥胖率下降到不到 10%. 在 1991 到 1995 年间, 民众的体重平均下降了 4 到 5 千克, 也就是 8 到 11 磅, 古巴因糖 尿病和冠心病而导致的死亡人数随后也迅速下降. 马德里的阿尔卡拉大学的科学家还发现, 经济危机结束后, 古巴民众肥胖率 再次出现攀升, 在 2010 年已达到 20%. 古巴人体重回升后, 糖尿病的发病率又 再度猛增. 研究人员得出结论说, 英国可以从古巴危机中吸取教训. 他们指出, 英国人口平均体重只需减少 11 磅, 死于心脏病的人数就能减少三分之一, 与肥 胖有关的 II 型糖尿病造成的死亡率也可以减半. 研究人员称, 全体民众食物摄入量的减少以及和体力活动有关的交通政策 可以降低这两大疾病的负担. 这一国际研究团队的成员来自西班牙, 古巴和美 国, 团队的领头人曼纽尔•弗朗科教授说: “在古巴经济危机最严重的时期, 即 1991 年至 1995 年这段时间, 食品和燃气的供给量大幅减少, 实质上降低了机 动车的使用量, 并导致工业和农业部门改用高强度的体力劳动.” “我们发现, 如果一个相对健康的人口体重整体减少4到5千克, 那么糖尿病 导致的死亡率会随之减半, 冠心病死亡率也会降低三分之一. “但到目前为止, © Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press 2023 X. Xing, The Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting Performance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6335-5

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Appendix C: Script for Chinese–English Consecutive Interpreting Test

还没有哪个国家或地区能通过公共健康运动或有针对性的治疗项目成功地降 低人口的身体质量指数或肥胖发生率.”

Appendix D

In-depth Interview Guide

1. Do you often encounter difficulties in interpretation study? If so, what are the main difficulties? Will these difficulties discourage you from learning interpretation? How did you overcome these difficulties? 2. Do you feel pressure or even anxiety when you do on-site interpreting (or simulated interpreting)? Do you think such stress or anxiety will affect your interpretation performance? 3. Do you think you are a person who will work hard once you have a clear goal and will not give up easily no matter how difficult it is? 4. Do you think difficulties in life or study are more challenges or threats to you? 5. Do you consider yourself a confident person? 6. Please make a brief self-evaluation based on the above questions, and briefly talk about the positive or negative impacts of these personality characteristics on interpretation learning.

© Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press 2023 X. Xing, The Effects of Personality Hardiness on Interpreting Performance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6335-5

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