Personality Traits of Students of Helping and Non-Helping Professions: Case-Based Reasoning Approach

Related Work

As we mentioned, the purpose of this study is to determine difference in personality traits between helping and non-helping professions. Previous studies (Hussain, Abbas, Shahzad, & Bukhari, 2012; Záškodná, 2010; Zvenko, 2013) have shown that those who work in helping professions show characteristics that are desirable in social communication, such as kindness and generosity in negotiations, but also altruism, empathy, trustworthiness and care for other peoples’ needs. In addition to these characteristics, also important but to a lesser extent are characteristics related to attitude towards work, such as organization, persistence, goal-oriented behavior, inclination towards risk avoidance, and control of undesirable behaviours. In dominant personality trait models such as Five Factor Model and Big Five, these and other similar characteristics capture the agreeableness and consciousness traits. For the remaining three traits of the model (neuroticism, extraversion and openness), there is no agreement whether they contribute to a distinction between helping and non-helping professions. The characteristics that are part of these personality traits pertain to the tendency towards negative or positive emotions and affects, emotional stability, activity and intellectual curiosity (Goldberg, 1990, 1993).

From the standpoint of other personality model, such is Holland Personality Theory of Career Choice, results showed that there is significant relationship between personality types and career choice of students (Kimongo Kemboi, Kindiki, & Misigo, 2016). Moreover, there is congruency between investigative personality type and investigative career choice (which could be related to non-helping professions), as between social personality type and social career choice (which could be related to helping professions).