The Caregiver Personality: What Psychology Says About Choosing a Career in Care
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The demand for healthcare services is growing in the United States, and supply will be unable to keep up. The nation is already facing a nursing crisis, and the shortage is expected to worsen by 2030.
Due to the aging population, the demand for home health and personal care aids in the US is also continuing to grow. Over the coming decade, over 700,000 new job openings in aged care are expected.
If you’re someone with a caregiver personality, considering nursing as a second career or a similar profession can be a great opportunity. Due to consistently high demand, nursing offers strong job security and career advancement opportunities.
Personality can play a massive role in deciding what career path is best for you. The Big 5 personality test, also known as the OCEAN test, can help you determine your personality and traits.
The importance of personality
Personality makes you who you are—it’s why some people prefer to stay in and read while others thrive in social settings. Personality can also be measured and identified through the use of tests, like the Big 5 personality test.
Many people have historically considered the Myers-Briggs type indicator to be the best personality test. However, this belief isn’t rooted in evidence-based research. The Myers-Briggs personality test is a self-report questionnaire that belongs to pseudoscience.
If you’re interested in finding out more about your personality, The Big 5 test is rooted in science. The test is based on trait theory, also known as dispositional theory, which is a popular approach to understanding human personality.
Personality can also be a useful tool for deciding life factors, like a career path. Being able to recognize your strengths, weaknesses, and interests through personality traits can help you decide what industry you’d excel in.
What is the Big 5?
The Big 5 test is based on the Big 5 model, which defines human personality as a combination of 5 measurable traits. These traits are: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.
- Openness: This describes how open an individual is to new experiences and their sense of curiosity about others and the world.
- Conscientiousness: Conscientiousness refers to how careful and detail-oriented an individual desires to be.
- Extraversion: This term refers to the energy the person draws from social interactions. For instance, a high score means you might make friends easily and enjoy being active with others.
- Agreeableness: Agreeableness measures how an individual interacts with others, characterized by a degree of compassion and cooperation.
- Neuroticism: This measures an individual’s tendency towards negative personality traits or behaviors, like emotional instability and self-destructive thinking.
The first letter from each trait is also why the personality test is commonly called the OCEAN test. Another popular (and water-themed) way to remember the different personality types is by the acronym ‘CANOE’.
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Caregivers and personality theories
If you believe that you might have a ‘caregiver’ personality, there are a few psychological theories related to caregiving. These include altruism and attachment theory. They can explain why an individual might go into a caregiving role and what they get out of it.
In psychology, altruism can be described as a person’s concern for the well-being of others, independent of their personal benefits, gains, or reciprocity. Altruistic urges and behavior have been an important part of humans’ ability to survive and thrive as a race.
It’s also possible for people to receive psychological rewards through displaying altruism. So for example, an individual may go into an altruistic role to help others for personal satisfaction or because it ‘feels good to give to others.’
What is attachment theory?
Attachment theory is a psychological and evolutionary framework that focuses on the relationship between humans. The theory was first developed by the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby.
Essentially, attachment theory is a lifespan model for human development and emphasizes the role caregivers (attachment figures) play. The theory hypothesizes that early caregivers, like parents, establish social-emotional developmental foundations.
These foundations are then built upon (and can be changed) depending on caregivers and relationships during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Depending on the caregivers in a person’s life, especially during the developmental stages, it can lead to different attachment styles:
- Ambivalent: Also known as the ‘anxious’ attachment style, it describes someone who is often very reluctant to get closer to others and worries that their partner does not reciprocate their feelings.
- Secure: Someone with a secure attachment style typically has high self-esteem, an ability to share their feelings with other people, and enjoy intimate relationships. As a whole, they’re self-assured.
- Avoidant: An individual with an avoidant attachment style tends to avoid intimacy and close relationships. This can result in investing little emotion into social/romantic relationships and the inability to share their feelings/thoughts with others.
- Disorganized: Also known as a ‘fearful’ attachment style, it is like a mix of ambivalent and avoidant. It often comes from an individual receiving inconsistent behavior from their caregivers, resulting in behavior like self-sabotage, poor communication, and toxicity.
While these attachment styles are typically discussed in relationship settings, they can be applied to careers, too. Research has found that there have been associations between a healthcare worker’s attachment style, what their patients think of them, and positive outcomes.
There has also been a study that found attachment styles could be used as a predictor of empathy in nursing students—which is a critical soft skill for anyone in a caregiving profession.
The study outlined that secure attachment styles are linked with higher levels of empathy—a crucial skill for facilitating nurse-patient relationships. The study also revealed that individuals with insecure attachment styles were more likely to lack social skills, which would be poorly matched for caregiving roles.
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Psychological rewards and personal experience
If you’re someone with personality traits or an attachment style that lends well to caregiver professions, like nursing or aged care, it can also provide psychological rewards. Informally, many caregivers report that caring for a loved one has positive aspects.
The American Psychological Association reports that many caregivers feel like the role gives meaning to their lives, produces pride, and is gratifying. Similarly, data has found that formal caregiving roles, like nursing, have similar psychological and emotional rewards.
Beyond attachment theory and personality traits, personal life experiences may also be a deciding factor in choosing a career in care. For instance, being in a situation where you require ongoing care or losing a loved one due to poor health.
Personal experiences like these shape who we are, and can contribute to wanting to pursue a career in a caregiving occupation.
Choosing a career in care
If you have a ‘caregiver’ personality, there are various caregiving career paths you could pursue. Potential professions include the field of nursing, social work, disability care, aged care, and mental health.
Almost all caregiving fields are experiencing workforce shortages due to rising demand. They’re great opportunities if you want a psychologically and emotionally rewarding job, job security, and the ability to work nationwide.
