Willingness to Accept Limitations and College Achievement: A Replication
This is a replication of an earlier study which hypothesized and found some support for a positive relationship between a variable called "willingness to accept limitations" (W. A. L.), and college achievement. The W. A. L. concept refers to a person's willingness to accept ordinary human limitations such as being imperfect, making mistakes, etc. The replication uses larger N's; more varied groups; and the additional criterion of first year grades. Matched pairs were used. The subjects were all entering university students, men and women. The number of matched pairs ranged from 16 to 63 for various. groups. Support for the hypothesis was considered to be confirmed for some groups entering the "arts" college, but not for men entering the engineering college. A question is raised re the appropriateness of first year grades as a criterion. In a previous study, Berger (1961), some evidence was obtained which supported a hypothesis concerning the relation of willingness to accept limitations (W. A. L.), to college achievement. The hypothesis was: other things being equal, those students who are more willing to accept limitations will achieve at a higher level. The concept; the scale used to measure it; the derivation of the concept from the observed characteristics of high ability, underachieving students; and the integration of the observation with theoretical concepts concerning self-acceptance and the idealized image, are explained more fully in the original article. In the first study, relatively small numbers of matched pairs were used; the criterion of college achievement was first quarter grades; and the subjects were exclusively from the highest levels of college aptitude and high school rank. This paper reports a replication using larger N's with an additional criterion of first year grades