To the editor,
A great deal of stress is common among students pursuing professional training in behavioral science and engineering. They often face stress associated with education, interpersonal relationships, workloads, financial difficulties, emotions, physical health, family, academics, jobs, and careers. Stress perception is influenced by personality traits. A person’s perception of stress and their ability to cope with its negative effects are complex processes involving both interpersonal and intrapersonal factors. Stress affects students across all disciplines, but students who employ positive coping mechanisms are more likely to succeed academically.[1–4] Coping and stress are strongly associated with empathy. Empathic self-efficacy is positively correlated with adaptive coping strategies, while it is negatively correlated with maladaptive ones. An empathic person is likely to have better interpersonal skills, as well as a natural tendency to comfort others. Professionals in the mental health field, especially those who provide care, need empathy to understand their clients’ problems and provide effective care.[1–3] In non-clinical professions such as engineering, empathy also comes into play, as it promotes intrapersonal and interpersonal skills, helps in multidisciplinary environments, and helps facilitate healthy relationships between staff, administrators, and other stakeholders. Engineers are more autonomous, independent, dominant, oriented to their jobs, less inclined to social issues, tough-minded, and low in extraversion according to studies of personality characteristics.[4–7] Our study examined the impact of personality characteristics and empathy on stress perception and coping of 80 postgraduate students in mental health and engineering disciplines [MPhil students (Clinical Psychology and Psychiatric Social Work) and MTech students (Engineering Disciplines)]. Measures like the 16 Personality Factor Test, Toronto Empathy Questionnaire, Perceived Stress Scale, and Coping Orientations to Problems Experienced (COPE) were used for data collection.[8–11] In this study, we noted significant differences between the postgraduate students of these two disciplines in three areas of the 16 PF Test, viz., E (Dominance), L (Vigilance), and Q2 (Self-Reliance). Engineering professionals tend to be dominating, autonomy-seeking, and tough-minded.[3,6,7,12] Engineering postgraduates scored significantly higher in all these three areas of 16 PF. We observed “perfectionism” is a strong predictor of stress perception among postgraduate students of behavioral sciences, while, emotional stability is a strong predictor of stress perception among engineering postgraduates [Table 1]. Emotional stability and empathy are predictors of perceived stress in postgraduate students of either discipline. Empathy and emotional stability were both found to be significant predictors of perceived stress. Stress would be perceived differently by students with higher emotional stability and empathy. Empathy is a key component of every profession, including engineering. In the healthcare field, empathy plays a key role, since professionals with high levels of empathy do a better job with their clients.[1–5]
Table 1.
Personality Factors (scores in 16 PF Personality Factor Test) between the postgraduate students of mental health and the postgraduate students of engineering (n=80)
| Variables | Group (n=80) | t (df=78) | P | 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|||||
| Mental Health postgraduates (Mean±SD) n=40 | Engineering postgraduates (Mean±SD) n=40 | Lower | Upper | |||
| Personality Factor E (Dominance) | 5.00±1.30 | 5.55±1.01 | -2.111 | 0.038* | -1.06 | -0.03 |
| Personality Factor L (Vigilance) | 4.07±1.59 | 5.02±1.29 | -2.932 | <.004** | -1.59 | -0.30 |
| Personality Factor Q2 (Self-Reliance) | 4.70±1.52 | 5.55±0.93 | -3.011 | <.004** | -1.41 | -0.28 |
Sig P<0.05*; P<0.01**
Ethical clearance
Ethical approval of this study has been received from the Ethical Committee of the Central Institute of Psychiatry, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India.
Financial support and sponsorship
Nil.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to express their deep gratitude and respect to the Late (Professor) Dr. CRJ Khess, Director-Professor of Psychiatry, Central Institute of Psychiatry, Ranchi for his guidance in preparing this study.
REFERENCES
- 1.Nelson NG, Dell’Oliver C, Koch C, Buckler R. Stress, coping, and success among graduate students in clinical psychology. Psychol Rep. 2001;88:759–67. doi: 10.2466/pr0.2001.88.3.759. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 2.McKinzie C, Burgoon E, Altamura V, Bishop C. Exploring the effect of stress on mood, self-esteem, and daily habits with psychology graduate students. Psychol Rep. 2006;99:439–48. doi: 10.2466/pr0.99.2.439-448. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 3.Balaji NK, Murthy PS, Kumar DN, Chaudhury S. Perceived stress, anxiety, and coping states in medical and engineering students during examinations. Ind Psychiatry J. 2019;28:86–97. doi: 10.4103/ipj.ipj_70_18. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 4.Behere SP, Yadav R, Behere PB. A comparative study of stress among students of medicine, engineering, and nursing. Indian J Psychol Med. 2011;33:145–8. doi: 10.4103/0253-7176.92064. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 5.Park KH, Kim DH, Kim SK, Yi YH, Jeong JH, Chae J, et al. The relationships between empathy, stress and social support among medical students. Int J Med Educ. 2015;6:103–8. doi: 10.5116/ijme.55e6.0d44. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 6.Walther J, Brewer MA, Sochacka NW, Miller SE. Empathy and engineering formation. J Eng Educ. 2020;109:11–33. [Google Scholar]
- 7.Negi AS, Khanna A, Aggarwal R. Psychological health, stressors and coping mechanism of engineering students. Int J Adolesc Youth. 2019;24:511–20. [Google Scholar]
- 8.Cattell RB, Cattell AK, Cattell HEP, Russell MT, Bedwell S. Champaign, IL: Institute for Personality and Ability Testing; 2003. The PsychEval Personality Questionnaire. [Google Scholar]
- 9.Spreng RN, McKinnon MC, Mar RA, Levine B. The Toronto empathy questionnaire:Scale development and initial validation of a factor-analytic solution to multiple empathy measures. J Pers Assess. 2009;91:62–71. doi: 10.1080/00223890802484381. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 10.Cohen S, Kamarck T, Mermelstein R. A global measure of perceived stress. J Health Soc Behav. 1983;24:386–96. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 11.Carver CS, Scheier MF, Weintraub JK. Assessing coping strategies:A theoretically based approach. J Pers Soc Psychol. 1989;56:267–83. doi: 10.1037//0022-3514.56.2.267. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 12.Van Der Molen HT, Schmidt HG, Kruisman G. Personality characteristics of engineers. Eur J Eng Educ. 2007;32:495–501. [Google Scholar]