Prikhodko
Y.A.
Civil Defence
The personality properties which are necessary for successful activity
of fire and rescue officers
Professional work of fire and rescue
officers constantly takes place in extreme conditions, and the person behavior
in such conditions can be successful only in the presence
of certain qualities. Therefore the
basic psychological personality properties are professionally significant for
experts of the given speciality. They characterize
the development of three basic spheres of properties of personality psychology:
orientations, operational and psychophisiological.
The orientation presents system of person promptings
to activity (system of motivation), determining its selectivity and intensity,
and regulating influence on other spheres and
person properties. It has the function of initiating activity, its "start", energy for
success of behavior and actions.
The basic promptings come from needs
of the person. Stoliarenko A.M. divides eight groups
of the needs existing certain hierarchy: transcendental spirituality;
self-esteem; self-expression, creation, creativity, personal growth,
individuality; social status - in
employment of worthy position in community, recognition and respect from
others, friendship and love; contacts with people - in a life among people,
communication, social involvement,
belonging to the certain community or a group, in joint liveability to live; in life-support - in the information
on an event around, in material, household, housing, transport and other
convenience, in getting means for a life, in work; in safety - in preservation
of a life (an instinct of self-preservation), protection against a pain,
traumas, illnesses, threats, the risk, unpleasant experiences; physiological - in
food, water, heat, continuation of a sort.
The system of needs of the concrete
person determines also his behavior in emergency. When the needs of the lowest levels, attempts to
make something only if there is a personal benefit, individualism, egoism, consumerism dominate in certain person it
undermines the stability in most of emergencies, especially when it is
necessary to help another, to perform his duty in attitude to colleagues,
collective, a society.
The great motivating value have belief, ideals and interests of the person. The
first one is deeply realized knowledge, ideas, representations about due and
necessary as a whole, internally approved by the person and recognized it as
being true, unique. Ideals are images of the desirable future which have
attributes of perfection and attractiveness for the given person.
Activity of the person is induced and
directed by his
valuable orientations, and their version - social installations. Valuable
orientations are those social values which are understood, internally approved
and gained personal sense and value for the given person. Social installations
are steady predisposition, readiness of the person for the certain reaction to
the various public phenomena as it represents for the person certain value or
its absence. If the social values meaning "Motherland",
"duty", "responsibility", "decency",
"collectivism", "fidelity", "conscience"
are not significant for the given person, he easily manages in emergency.
The
operational sphere of the personality includes attitudes, habits, common
skills, the qualities which are means and ways of result achievement, determined by
orientation. It contains a number of personal features influencing extreme stability.
Character of
the person is the system of steady attitudes to work, to other people and to
himself which has developed in the personality. These attitudes depend on orientation sphere
greatly, but they are also connected
with the special knowledge of a person, regulating attitudes, abilities, skills
of attitudes realization, as well as corresponding habits and properties. For
example, conscientiousness, diligence, goodwill, sociability, politeness,
neatness, self-pretensions, self-criticism, etc.
The
system of the habitual attitudes which have developed in a person forming his
character, is emotionally colored, related to social feelings.
The significant part of the last ones is expressed by feelings of duty,
responsibility, decency, humanity, company, collectivism in the developed
person. Feeling of conscience is important, it is habits of the person not to
renounce social values and moral principles, constantly to verify own behavior
with them, to suffer greatly of the slightest deviations from them (to suffer torments, remorses)
and to avoid similar experiences.
Will has special value. This quality
expresses ability of a person to mobilize the abilities to overcome problems.
Will gains features of development when acts are dictated by deep understanding
of the situation, the purposes, the necessaries , high level of development of needs and is
movable by motive - « I must ».
The motive « I must » usually does not
contradict desires of the developed person:
« I must » coincides with « I wish». Such concurrence creates feeling of
internal freedom, psychology of actions by personal prompting, instead of
compulsion. Selye has suggested to distinguish the
"superficial" and "deep" adaptable energy, the latent and
seldom used reserves of organism. The will movable by strong motivation at a
combination « I must » and «I wish », obtains greater
force and allows to use all reserves of a person.
Will is
presented in personality by strong-willed qualities: persistence, persistence,
resistance, courage, bravery. They allow to find a way
out of a difficulty with honour, and their absence
makes the person unable to overcome difficulties.
Mind constantly participates in a
life and activity of a person, it is cognitive
qualities such as sensations, perception, memory, representations, imagination,
thinking. Emergencies
make increased demands to ability of a person to understand, to
realize, to take into account and act with judgment. Each of cognitive
qualities plays its role, but the qualities of thinking describing an
intelligence level of a person have special value, they are speed, flexibility,
resource, depth, analytical
and synthetic character,
logicality, clearness, practicality,
predictabilities, criticality, intuitivism, independence, creative character.
Special value has ability of a person
to over-situation thinking. To understand a situation correctly and
successfully to act, it is not enough to proceed only
from those its features which are perceived directly. Such thinking is called
evident or evidently effective. To think over-situation means mentally to rise above a
situation, to see what lays behind horizon directly perceived, i.e. to see an event on
the next sites of the activity which is carried out by other people, work of
cooperating groups, events in the country, to recollect standards of appropriate behavior, etc. It
allows to appreciate situations quickly and correctly
and adequately to it to adjust behavior. The over-situation thinking in
emergency allows
to make more reasonable decisions, to understand interrelation of visible and
imaginable, all the factors which are in the given situation.
The phenomenon of biological stress,
so peculiar for emergency and closely connected with features of human
organism, emphasizes the importance of its psychophisiological features.
Traditionally
psychophisiological
features of the person are corresponded with concept of temperament - set of
dynamic features of mental human
activity, caused by type of his higher nervous activity. Classification of
temperament types by set of features specific nervous processes is widely
known. I.P.Pavlov divided also types of higher nervous activity
according to features of a parity in it verbal and direct irritant (influences of objects and the
phenomena of an environment and their traces kept in memory): cogitative and
art. The person with the first type is more reasonable, the second type is more impressionable, pliable to external influences, more
emotional.
The basic features i.e. the list of
features concern to characteristics of temperament. The major of them are force - intensity, vigour,
expressiveness of mental processes; mobility - speed of occurrence and the seige of mental processes; speed of mental processes;
steadiness - equation of activity, promptings, impulsive answers with
restraint, braking; rigidness, plasticity - difficulty or ease of psychological
changes, formations and changes of internal relations; activity - a steady
level of activity, vigor of mental activity; sensitivity - the increased or
lowered sensitivity of the person all or some influences on sense organs;
emotional sensitiveness -
emotional reactance, a degree of emotional reaction to influences; psychophisiological stability - stability to risk and
danger, overloading, shocks (caused by sight of blood probably, a corpse, vital
failures, etc.); workability - a stock of psychophisiological endurance, etc.
The importance of listed psychophisiological features is obvious for emergency
stability of the person. The role of the force caused by corresponding
physiological features of nervous processes is especially great. Its negative
value - weakness - appeared in bad bearableness by the person of mental and
nervous loadings, its susceptibility to mental traumas and frustration. People
with melancholic temperament are least steady in emergencies. The melancholic
is increasingly sensitive, emotional and because of this is insufficiently
counterbalanced, unstable, psychologically damageable.
Other types of temperaments are
extremely comprehensible: the phlegmatic person is the steadiest in psychophisiological terms, and choleric person is called by
I.P.Pavlov « fighting type » for his high activity,
vigor, mobility, speed of reactions, easy switch from one interest to another,
fast adaptation to new conditions.
To psychophisiological features of
the person having extreme value, it is often carried noise stability - an opportunity not to
worsen quality of actions at influence of extraneous handicaps; stability to
risk; stability to an emergency pressure; stability to overloading; long-term stability;
spontaneous counter-attraction etc.
All above-mentioned properties of the
personality determine the common extreme features of the personality which
refer to as emergency stability. The general emergency stability of the person is one of
complete displays of its inside also cannot be brought to one element of
mentality or to the arithmetic sum of several ones. The more difficultly task, problem,
conditions, the more success depends on complete characteristics of the
personality, from their conformity to requirements of events and environment.
Thus, the general stability of the
person to emergency is a special display of all above listed properties of the
person. And for successful activity in
special conditions it is important not only presence of these properties at the
personality, but also their quantitative expression. Definition of quantitative
parameters of properties of the personality of the fire and rescue officers
determining effectiveness of
their work, is a task of our further researches.