Kontakt 2010, 12(2):193-198 | DOI: 10.32725/kont.2010.026

Occurrence of the D-type personality in students of helping professionsHealth and Social Sciences

Ľubica Bánovčinová^*, Zuzana Škodová, Milina Bubeníková

Univerzita Komenského v Bratislave, Jesseniova lekárska fakulta v Martine, Ústav nelekárskych študijných programov

The specific nature of helping professions presents high requirements not only for the professional capacity but also for the personality. The concept of the D-type personality including high negative affectivity and simultaneously high social inhibition plays an important role as a risk factor in the etiology and prognosis of certain diseases, particularly in coronary artery disease.
The target of the present research was mapping of the occurrence of the D-type personality in a selected sample of students of helping professions. In this way, we considered a comparison of the occurrence of this feature in different study branches. In a sample of 221 students aged in average 20.39 years, the DS 14 questionnaire by J. Denollet (2005) was employed for the consideration of the negative affectivity, social inhibition and D-type personality.
In the subscale Negative affectivity, characterizing the tendency to experience negative emotions over times and situations, the respondent achieved an average score of 9.8, whereas in the subscale Social inhibition, concerning the tendency to suppress the expression of emotions and behaviour in social interactions, the average value was of 10.6. Total of 54 students were specified as distressed or D-type personalities, which means almost one fourth (24.43%) the total number of respondents (n = 221). In comparison of particular groups (or sections), we observed no considerable differences between groups of students of Nursing, Social work and Psychology. In the subscale Negative affectivity, in the group of Nursing, the average score of 11.54 was achieved and in the subscale Social inhibition, the value was of 9.98. Thus, both values are very close to the limit value of 10 (SI) or they exceed this value (NA). These results also indicated a higher number of students identified as D-type personalities (17, i.e. 28.33%). Respondents in the group of Social work achieved the average score in the subscale Negative affectivity of 9.14 and in the subscale Social inhibition of 11.7, and 16 students were specified as D-type personalities (29.09%). Similar results were also achieved in the group of students of Psychology, where the average values for the Negative affectivity and Social inhibition were of 9.7 and 11.7, respectively, and 13 respondents (26%) were specified as the D-type. The best result of our evaluation was achieved by students of Public health, whose average values in both subscales did not achieve the limit of 10 (NA = 8.86; SI = 9.25) which was also shown in the lowest number of students identified as D-type personalities. There were 8 (14.29%) individuals in this group.
In our research, we found a relatively high occurrence of risk personality factors comprised in the concept of the D-type personality. The fact that this was a population of students commonly considered as "healthy" clearly demonstrates the need of the prevention focused on lowering the occurrence and possible consequences of these risk factors in a wider population.

Keywords: D-type personalities; negative affectivity; social inhibition; helping professions

Received: October 25, 2009; Accepted: March 15, 2010; Prepublished online: June 14, 2010; Published: June 14, 2012  Show citation