Personal Characteristics of Students Studying Existential Analysis Programs

The study deals with the research of personal characteristics of existential psychologists namely students and specialists of this approach. It is assumed that existential psychology is a special world view. Personality of a psychologist plays an important role in the process of interaction with a client, this sets relevance of the study. On the first year of the research the comparison between existential psychologists and non-psychologists respondents demonstrated clear differences between experimental and control group. Namely existential psychologists showed higher rates on Life Meaning Scale, Multiple Stimulus Types Ambiguity Tolerance Scale, Differential Test Of Self-Reflection, Existence Scale & etc. (Leontiev et al., 2016). In this study there are results of an empirical research on a sample of specialists (N=178) of different existential psychology approaches and other psychological paradigms (students and graduates of existential and non-existential programs, participants of conferences on existential psychology). The questionnaire contains a number of methods for measurement of the specific characteristics of existential psychologists: Life Meaning Scale, Sources of Life Meaning, Satisfaction With Life Scale, Multiple Stimulus Types Ambiguity Tolerance Scale, Differential Test Of Self-Reflection, Existence Scale and Self-Determination Scale. An effect size of the results doesn’t confirm the hypothesis about significant difference between existential psychologists and specialists of other approaches. The study suggests possible reasons for the results. The possible developing of career guidance methods is discussed.