Personality type and stress of it professionals

IT careers are often characterized by hard work, long hours and tight deadlines. Coupled with these high stressed careers, personality traits like high ambition, a strong sense of time urgency, hostility, distrust and anger could play havoc on the physical and psychological well-being of the professionals. Managing stress by mobilizing and enhancing internal coping strategies and learning and employing appropriate methods of responding to stressful situations are assumed solutions to the ever increasing demands of IT field. Present study was conducted to assess personality types and stress levels of the selected IT professionals and to examine the relation between their personality types and stress levels. Data were collected from 60 IT professionals employed in four computer software organizations at Bangalore. The results showed that half of the selected IT professionals had stress prone Type A personality and on the whole they had moderate stress. It was found that personality type and stress showed a positive and a significant correlation which indicated Type A personality as more prone to stress. Recommendations and suggestions to improve the coping strategies were discussed to enable the IT professionals manage their stress.