The influence of gender and age characteristics on the specificity of the expression of early deadaptive schemes of future psychologists

Abstract

The article deals with the personal characteristics of students of psychological specialties. Attention is focused on the sex and age factors of the manifestation of early maladaptive schemas (EMSs) as an important complex of personality characteristics, which determines the possibilities and limitations of professional development. Schemas are considered as a risk factor that reduces the adaptive potential of a specialist in the profession and the effectiveness of his activities, and therefore they are an important unit of analysis in the field of labour psychology. The empirical study was carried out with 537 students of psychological directions of training and specialties, of which 83 respondents were male and 454 were female, aged from 16 to 45 years. The questionnaire «Diagnostics of early maladaptive schemas of J. Young» (YSQ S3R) was used in the work. Mathematical processing of the results was carried out using the Levene’s test by the method of analysis of variance. As a result, it was found that the signs of gender and age have a significant impact on the differences not only in the severity of the manifestation of EMS, but also in the complexation of EMS in each group of respondents. Depending on gender and age, the schematic profiles of boys, girls, men and women differ with varying degrees of severity of each scheme. There are EMS, which have a specific sensitivity to the effects of either the gender factor, or the age factor, or their complex. The results demonstrated in the work prove the importance of gender and age characteristics for determining the personal correspondences to the profession of a psychologist, as well as the importance of studying the personal determinants of professional success, both from the side of the desired characteristics and from the side of contradicting its requirements and negative ones. Clarification of the characteristics of EMS of psychologists, the factors influencing them, will complement modern scientific ideas about the phenomenon of EMS with regard to the conditional mental norm, and also reveal the problem of professionally important and professionally negative qualities from a perspective that is new for modern domestic psychology.