Features of Physicians’ Self-Concept in Connection with the Sense-Creating Motives of Their Professional Activity

The paper concentrates on cognitive, emotional-evaluative, and behavioral components of self-concept, as well as on physicians' sense-creating motives of their professional activity. The authors reviewed recent psychological research on this issue and presented the results of a study conducted in medical centers in Rostov-on-Don. The theoretical review showed the specicity of cognitive, emotional-evaluative, and behavioral components of physicians' self-concept at the stage of vocational education, as well as throughout the whole professional life. The authors describe preferences in choosing an empirical object in various researches. Most often, these studies involved medical students and pharmacy students. The research novelty was to study features of all the three components of self-concept in connection with sense-creating motives of professional activity of physicians of medical centers. Byresults of the study, male and female physicians showed dierences in scores on the signicantly preferred categories which were reected in their self-concept. Thecategory of“Abilities” was asignicantly preferred category in the male sample, while female physicians preferred “Personal qualities”. Harmonious self-concept, self-vision invarious connections and relations of reality, and subjectivity of self-evaluation were characteristic for the respondents. The structure of self-concept components depended on thesexual differentiation ofphysicians. The structuredness of thecognitive component of elf-concept was high in male respondents. The structuredness of theemotional-evaluative component was average in them; the behavioral component was low. The structuredness ofthe cognitive component ofself-concept was average in female respondents. They had high structuredness ofthe emotionalevaluative and behavioral components ofself-concept. Male and female respondents had dierent types of interrelation between the cognitive and emotional-evaluative components of self-concept and sense-creative motives of earning money. The study showed that only male respondents had the interrelation between the emotional and evaluative component of self-concept and sense-creating motives of team relationships. Both men and women had features of self-concept and sense-creating motives of professional activity that required psychocorrection.