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What sort of people are these Everest climbers? Canadian researchers have been sizing them up on their way to the top. GEOFF LOWE
IN the spring of 2000 Scan Egan was one of 167 climbers from 17 different countries at the Everest Base Camp (at 18,000 feet). All were raring to head for the summit, but had to spend several idle weeks adapting to the high altitude and waiting for their scheduled slots. This presented a great opportunity for Egan - a researcher in human kinetics at the University of Ottawa -to measure the personality characteristics of the climbers.
Egan's colleague, psychologist Robert Stelmack, had provided him with copies of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised (EPQ-R). Armed with these, Egan visited each climbing team and persuaded 39 climbers (including one female) to participate. Their average age was 40 years, with a range from 26 to 69 years. The EPQ-R provides personality scores for extraversion (sociability), psychoticism...