Individual Psychological Specificity of Self-Realization of IT Specialists

Abstract

The research of the structure of the phenomenon of self-realization among specialists in the digital sphere in the context of information and computer activities is presented. The authors analyzed the hierarchy and components of self-realization among IT workers with different sets of individual psychological characteristics, which, through clustering, were divided into three subtypes: (1) introverted-confident; (2) extroverted-active; and (3) extroverted-prosocial. The study involved 154 people, including 42 women and 112 men aged 22-44 (mean age = 32.09 ± 5.71); all of them were employees of leading Russian IT companies in Moscow. Following psychodiagnostic techniques were applied: Individual-Typological Questionnaire (ITQ) by L.N. Sobchik, Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI) - introversion - extroversion scale, Strategic Approach to Coping Scale (SACS) questionnaire by S. Hobfoll, and Multidimensional Personality Self-Realization Inventory (MPSI) by S.I. Kudinov. The results showed that the structure of self-realization had its own specific features depending on the personality type of the IT employees. For the respondents of cluster I (introverted-confident personality type), the main variables of the self-realization process were optimism, internality and constructiveness, which led to success and a positive assessment of the self-realization process. For the respondents with extroverted-active characteristics in the hierarchy of personal self-realization, the key components of self-realization were social and corporate attitudes, egocentric motivation, internality, conservatism, and destructiveness. The respondents with extroverted-prosocial traits had pronounced subjective personal attitudes, internality, creativity, destructiveness, and social barriers, with predominant limiting factors of self-realization. The results of the study can be considered in the context of psychological support for the IT specialists based on their individual psychological traits.

Keywords

• it-specialists
• individual typological features
• extraversion
• introversion
• coping behavior
• coping strategies
• self-realization
• self-expression