The relationship of listening behaviors and psychological traits of selected community college students

The purpose of this study was to ascertain the relationship between the Jungian psychological traits of selected community college students and their listening behavior. Listening is the most frequently used communication system by college students to acquire information presented by an instructor. College students utilize listening three times more than any other communication skill. Psychological traits have been linked to student learning styles which are essentially differing ways students prefer to perceive and process information. Justification for the study was based upon the premise that psychological traits are related to information acquisition preference.

In this study an assessment of psychological traits was made using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) which is derived from Carl Jung's theory of psychological type. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator classifies the respondent's preferences for psychological traits on four dichotomous scales: Extraversion/Introversion, Sensing/Intuition, Thinking/Feeling and Judging/Perceiving. Sixteen different personality types result from the combinations of psychological traits which are indicative of differing preferences in information acquisition.

Listening behavior was assessed in this study by use of the Kentucky Comprehensive Listening Test (KCLT) which scores the respondent's listening skills in short-term listening, short-term listening with rehearsal, interpretative listening, distraction listening, and long-term listening. An overall total score is also produced on the respondent's listening behavior.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Kentucky Comprehensive Listening Test were administered to 208 community college students attending Midland College and Amarillo College. The Pearson product-moment technique was used to correlate the continuous numerical scores generated from the four scales of the MBTI with the overall total score of the KCLT and the five subscale scores.

Results revealed statistically significant relationships between the strength of preferences in the four functioning modes on the MBTI and the overall total score and the five subscales of the KCLT. Additionally, t-test for Independent samples revealed statistically significant differences between the demographic variable of respondent sex and MBTI psychological trait preferences and the listening scales of the KCLT.