A study of the socionic characteristics of males and females for improving the reliability of aptitude screening of aviation specialists

Aim. This article continues the series of studies aimed at improving the aptitude screening of commercial aviation personnel. The socionic characteristics of a human operator define his/her work with information flows, and their significance is the higher, the greater is the time shortage they have to deal with as part of their professional activities, therefore, in this paper, those characteristics were examined as professionally important qualities of both a pilot, and an air traffic controller. The task consisted in evaluating the socionic characteristics of male and female control room specialists, who have successfully completed aptitude screening in commercial aviation, identifying the presence or absence of differences between the obtained results. Additionally, for the sake of comparison, the research covered the socionic characteristics of males and females, whose professional activities have nothing to do with technology. In total, the study includes data of over 3116 tested persons.

Methods. The 5-th modification of the MM-1 socionic test developed by the Saint Petersburg State University of Civil Aviation was used as the psychodiagnostic method for estimating constituent socionic characteristics. The obtained samples were primarily compared using Pearson’s chi-squared test. The results were also processed using correlation analysis.

Results. The paper presents socionic portraits,i.e. the distribution of the dominating components of the human socionic model among various samples, socionic models of various professional groups (human socionic model for a typical member of a sample), as well as graphical data per individual psychological dichotomies: “extraversion – introversion”, “logic – ethics”, “sensorics – intuition”, “rationality – irrationality”.

Conclusions. The identified differences between the studied samples are primarily professional in their nature, i.e. comparing samples of individuals from the same professional group and approximately the same age, but different gender, in no case reliable differences were identified. Thus, no fundamental gender-specific differences were identified by the socionic psychodiagnostic method used as part of this work. However, the analysis of a number of Russian and foreign sources dedicated to gender differences suggests that improving the reliability of aptitude screening of aviation specialists requires further research involving the evaluation of the differences in the expression of the necessary professionally significant qualities of control room specialists, not by criterion of biological sex, but rather in accordance with the identified gender-related personality type.

1. Aliakrinsky B.S. [Fundamentals of aviation psychology]. Moscow: Vozdushny transport; 1985. (in Russ.)

2. Kępiński A. Melancholy. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie; 2014.

3. Jung C.G. Psychological Types. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press; 1976.

4. Augustinavičiūtė A. [Socionics]. Moscow: Chiornaya belka; 2016. (in Russ.)

5. Arinicheva O.V., Malishevsky A.V., Vlasov E.V. Aircraft crew: resources of interaction. World of Transport and Transportation 2016;14(1):220-231. Available at: https:// elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=25963838. (in Russ.)

6. Malishevsky A.V. Intertype relationship within the crew. World of Transport and Transportation 2017;15(3):222-233. Available at: https://elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=30599301. (in Russ.)

7. Malishevsky A.V. Study of the possibilities of using intertype relations in order to evaluate efficiency of interaction between the crew team of an aircraft. Transport: science, equipment, management 2017;6:37-41. Available at: https://elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=29298899. (in Russ.)

8. Arinicheva O.V., Malishevsky A.V. [Study of the quality of the methods of uncooperative behaviour evaluation for the purpose of improving the aptitude screening of aviation personnel]. Kachestvo i zhizn 2020;2:90-96. DOI: 10.34214/2312-5209-2020-26-2-90-96. (in Russ.)

9. Arinicheva O.V., Ziuba T.V., Malishevsky A.V. The effect of gender differences on the reliability of professional psychological selection of aviation specialists. Dependability 2020;1:39-46. DOI: 10.21683/1729-2646-2020-201-39-46.

10. [Guidelines for psychological support of selection, training and professional activity of fl and control personnel of the commercial aviation of the Russian Federation]. Moscow: Vozdushny transport; 2001. (in Russ.)

11. Riapolov I.V., editor. [Guidelines for professional psychological selection in commercial aviation]. Moscow: Vozdushny transport; 1986. (in Russ.)

12. Arinicheva O.V., Malishevsky A.V. [Disadvantages of the existing professional selection of pilots and matters of its improvement]. Transport: science, equipment, management 2016;6:41-51. Available at: https://elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=26254884. (in Russ.)

13. Malishevsky A.V., Arinicheva O.V., Brovkin P.E. [A study of individual professionally important qualities of a pilot]. Vestnik of the Saint Petersburg State University of Civil Aviation 2011;1(2):13-19. Available at: https://elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=37290539. (in Russ.)

14. Malishevsky A.V. [Some matters regarding the improvement of socionic psychodiagnostics of aeronautical personnel]. Transport: science, equipment, management 2017;2:23-30. Available at: https://elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=28422669. (in Russ.)

15. Arinicheva O.V., Malishevsky A.V., Shkuntik M.S. [Topical issues related to the reduction of the effect of the human factor on the dependability of an aircraft system]. Problemy bezopasnosti poliotov 2018;12:24-35. Available at: https://elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=37283956. (in Russ.)

16. Arinicheva O.V., Lebedeva N.A., Malishevskii A.V. Socionics aspects of the human factor in aviation. Revista Espacios 2020;41(21):391-407. Available at: http://www.revistaespacios.com/a20v41n21/a20v41n21p30.pdf.

17. Leychenko S.D., Malishevsky A.V., Mikhaylik N.F. [The human factor in aviation. In 2 volumes. Volume 2]. Saint Petersburg: Saint Petersburg State University of Civil Aviation; Kirovograd: State Flight Academy of Ukraine; 2006. (in Russ.)

18. Arinicheva O.V., Malishevskiy A.V. Psychodiagnostics− one of the tools of aircraft crew resource management. Civil Aviation High Technologies 2014;1(199):117-125. Available at: https://www.elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=21066600. (in Russ.)

19. Leychenko S.D., Malishevsky A.V., Mikhaylik N.F. [The human factor in aviation. In 2 volumes. Volume 1]. Saint Petersburg: Saint Petersburg State University of Civil Aviation; Kirovograd: State Flight Academy of Ukraine; 2006. (in Russ.)

20. Dillon K.M., Wolf E., Katz H. Sex roles, gender, and fear. The Journal of Psychology 1985;119(4):355-359. DOI: 10.1080/00223980.1985.9915454

21. Fowler S.L., Rasinski H.M., Geers A.L., Helfer S.G., France C.R. Concept priming and pain: an experimental approach to understanding gender roles in sex-related pain differences. Journal of Behavioral Medicine 2011;34(2):139147. DOI: 10.1007/s10865-010-9291-7.

22. Muris P., Meesters C., Knoops M. The relation between gender role orientation and fear and anxiety in nonclinic-referred children. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology 2005;34(2):326-332. DOI: 10.1207/s15374424jccp3402_12.

23. Kolos Yu.V., Danilova M.V. Relationship between self-actualization, emotional and personality-related factors in students. Nauchnyie issledovaniia vypusknikov fakulteta psikhologii SPbGU 2013;1(1):115-122. Available at: https:// elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=20255612.

24. Azarnykh T.D. Post-traumatic stress, female sex and gender. Vestnik of Kostroma State University. Pedagogics. Psychology. Social work. Youth studies. Sociokinetics Series 2014;20(3):160-164. Available at: https://elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=22287308.