Psychological factors influencing the reliability of personnel in power plants

Relevance. The article presents research results regarding personal and regulatory factors influencing the reliability of personnel in power plants. We discuss the possibility of integrating different psychological approaches to assessing functional reliability. We had assumed that including dynamic variables (acute and chronic stress manifestations, “internal cost” of activity) and stable personal factors in the analysis will permit to compare their contribution to psychological stability and reliability. 

Methods.The main indicators of the study include: personality traits (ITO, Sobchik, 1998); functional components of self-regulation (“SSPM with a reliability scale”, Morosanova, Bondarenko, 2015); occupational stress indices (IDIKS, Leonova, 2006). 

The number of errors in the cognitive microstructural tests “Attention Span” and “Stimuli Recognition”, S. Sternberg's model) was assessed as objective parameter of the operators’ reliability. 

The sample includes 378 employees of power plants (average age 41): 31 people are middle managers (chiefs and their deputies) and 347 are operational and technical personnel (engineers, electricians, controllers). 

The results indicate that the main psychological predictors of low occupational stress manifestation include: (1) regulatory processes and features (modeling performance conditions and assessing the result); (2) personality traits (high extraversion and emotional lability, moderate anxiety, sensitivity and self-sufficiency). The level of self-regulation determines differences in indicators of performance reliability of the operating personnel (error-free completion of microstructural tests).

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