Originality is defined in terms of uncommonness of response to 8 tests. Two groups of S's selected from 100 U.S.A.F. captains, the regularly original and the regularly unoriginal, are used to test a set of 5 major hypotheses which generate 15 predictions concerning originality. 12 of the predictions are confirmed. Originality is found to be related to independence of judgment, to personal complexity, and to the preference for complexity in phenomena, to self-assertion and dominance, and finally to the rejection of suppression as a mechanism for the control of impulse. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)