An examination of personality correlates among engineers, teachers, engineers' wives, and teachers' wives

Abstract

Forty-two male engineers, 43 male teachers, 37 engineers' wives, and 31 teachers' wives filled out a Personal Data Sheet (PDS) containing questions in the areas of demographic variables, perception of life experiences, satisfaction with family and professional life, self-concept, and psychosomatic and relational problems. In addition, the engineers and teachers took the California Psychological Inventory (CPI). T-tests were completed to test for the significance of differences between means of all groups. Variables which did not lend themselves to statistical procedures designed for originally-scaled data were analyzed by use of percentages. In addition, product moment correlations of self-concept scores of engineers and engineers' wives, teachers and teachers' wives were calculated. The finding that engineers indicated incidences of emotional illness within childhood and present families more often than did teachers is interpreted as being both a predisposing and a currently activating variable, and personality differences between the two professional groups tended to support the often-described picture of the engineer as superficially sociable, thing-oriented, anti-intraceptive, rigid, inhibited, and non-nurturant..