What is Emotional Stability

It is necessary to find an effective way of testing interpreters' aptitude so as to enhance the efficiency in deciding his or her potential interpretation talents. This chapter proposes that variance in interpreter performance is dependent on factors of both general cognitive ability and personality. It reports on a study of 110 Chinese MTI students in the hope of finding out what traits play the most important role and to what extent these variables impact on learning and achievement. Psychological constructs of self-efficacy, goal orientation, and negative affectivity were measured, as were interpreter ratings of self-perceived competence as practitioners. The most significant finding revealed the dimension of emotional stability (represented on the negative end of the continuum by traits of anxiety and neuroticism, and measured in this study by the negative affectivity scale) as a predictor of interpreters' self-perceived competence. Based on these findings, recommendations for admission testing and interpreter education curricula are discussed.