MASSACHUSETTS SCHOOL OF PROFESSIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

Interpersonal Relationships and Life Satisfaction

Among Information Technology Professionals

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Brian Bermack
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M.A., Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, 2012

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S.B., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1995

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Psychology

2014
 UMI Number: 3644069

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Copyright 2014

By

Brian Bermack

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 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

One of the lessons of the study you are about to read is that good, positive

relationships with other people are important. By the time I began this project, I already

knew this, even if from time to time I needed to be reminded – but reaching that

realization from where I began has been a long journey, and one I could not have made

without the support of others. This is therefore a fitting place for me to acknowledge

some of the relationships I value the most.

I thank those who helped me complete this project. First and foremost, my

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committee: Claire Fialkov, Kathryn Stanley, and Joanne Hadlock. You gave me the

impetus I needed to finish this project, the criticism I needed to learn how to do it right,
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and the independence I needed to maintain my own motivation to complete it.

Relatedness, competence, and autonomy… that sounds about right. I thank Aimee
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Yermish, my discussant, whose doctoral project was part of the inspiration for my own,

and whose history reminded me that what I was doing was possible. I thank Julia
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Clement for her patience in finding me the sources I needed, Laurel Wainwright for her

help turning classroom knowledge of statistics into practical knowledge I could apply,

and everyone who reviewed drafts for me. I thank Jayson Dibble and James Driskell for

their gracious permission to use the scales they developed, and Ed Diener and Beatrice

Rammstedt and their respective colleagues for making their scales freely available.

Finally, of course, I thank those who thoughtfully completed my survey, providing the

data without which there would have been no study.

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 I thank all of the many other MSPP faculty members whose teaching informed

and will continue to inform my work, but in particular Claire Fialkov, Robert Jampel,

Judith Leavitt, Brian Ott, Gary Rose, Wynn Schwartz, Laurel Wainwright, and Anne

Waters. I also thank my clinical supervisors: Leah Logan, Lauren Caswell, Meg

Anzalone, Margot Conley, Dorothy Vacca, Amaro Laria, Enzo Finore, and Bobbi

Wegner. Each of you has made a contribution to making me the psychologist and the

human being that I am today. More importantly, what I have learned from you makes and

will continue to make a difference to the lives of my clients of the past, present, and

future.

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I thank all of my friends. In my teens you kept me from complete isolation; in my
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twenties you provided a community for me to be part of; in my thirties you gave me the

support I needed to build a life and a career. To name a few who stand out in my mind:
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Steve, Jason, Steve, Susan, Fenway House, Pete and Sara, Rob and Sybil, Rachel, Dave,

Alex and Jenise, Andrea, Jen, Elie, Erica, Rebecca, Buddy, Dee, Ruth, Yaqui, Lauren,
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Alison, Stan, Ben, Molly, Diane, David, and Claudia. To those I have not named here,

rest assured that you are also appreciated.

Finally, I thank my wife, Courtney. You have brightened my life for over four

years and I look forward to many decades more of your company, your support, and your

love. The wedding we crafted together and celebrated with our friends and family will

forever remind us of the very truth this project demonstrated: Relationships matter.

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 Interpersonal Relationships and Life Satisfaction

Among Information Technology Professionals

Brian Bermack

Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology

June 2, 2014

Chairperson: Claire Fialkov, Ph.D.

Abstract

This study investigated some possible differences between Information Technology (IT)

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professionals and other professionals. The hypothesis was tested that interpersonal

relationships are less important to the life satisfaction of IT professionals than they are to
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the general population. Comparisons were also made between the interpersonal

relationships, life satisfaction, and personality traits of these two groups. Participants
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included 111 professional adults, 43.2% of whom were IT professionals, who were

surveyed using web-based questionnaires. No significant differences were found between

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IT professionals and others. Interpersonal relationships were found to be a significant

factor in life satisfaction for all demographic groups examined, and in particular for

individuals who reported believing that relationships are not as important to themselves

as they are to most people. Nevertheless, there were individuals who reported high

satisfaction despite low relationship ratings. Finally, some evidence was found to suggest

that self-identified “geeks” may have characteristics different from those of the general

population. The results of this study suggest that mental health professionals should avoid

making assumptions about the personality traits, relationship needs or social skills of IT

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professionals based on their profession. These results add weight to already-strong

evidence that most people with limited interest or skill in building relationships will

benefit from intervention in these areas, but also suggest that there may be some

individuals for whom interpersonal relationships are not as important a need. Finally, the

results suggest that self-identified geeks may be a population with characteristics distinct

from the general population. Further research will be needed to discover how clinicians

should take these differences into account when working with members of this

population.

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 Table of Contents
Acknowledgments iii
Abstract v
List of Tables x
List of Figures xi
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1
Information Technology Professionals Defined 1
The Importance of IT Professionals 2
Personal Perspective 6
The Importance of Life Satisfaction 8
IT Professionals and Relationships 9

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Research Question 10
CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW 13
Satisfaction with Life: Theory and Measurement 13
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Interpersonal Relationships: Theory and Measurement 16
Personality: Theory and Measurement 25
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Information Technology Professionals 30
Demographics 30
Technology Professional Stereotypes 31
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Empirical Data About the Technology Workplace 32

Work Conditions 38
Technology Professionals as People 43
Revisiting the Research Question 52
CHAPTER THREE: METHOD 56
Research Design 56
Participants 57
Measures 57
Professional Category 57
Life Satisfaction: SWLS 58
Relationship Closeness: URCS 58

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 Collective Orientation: COS 59
Personality Traits: BFI-10 59
Additional Demographic Information 59
Procedures 60
Survey Preparation 60

Soliciting Participants 60
Data Collection 61
Data Analysis 61
CHAPTER FOUR: RESULTS 63
Participant Characteristics 64
Outcome Variables 67

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Personality Differences Between Groups 69
Group Differences in Outcome Variables
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Importance of Relationships to Life Satisfaction 71
Expected Results 72
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Post Hoc Analysis: Importance of Relationships 73
Participants’ Comments 75
CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION 77
Interpretation of Results 77
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IT Professionals 78
Interpersonal Relationships 79
Geeks 82
Clinical Implications 84
IT Professionals 84
Interpersonal Relationships 84
Geeks 85
Limitations of the Study 88
Participant Solicitation 88
Unexpected Results 89
Study Weaknesses 91
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Recommendations for Further Research 93
IT Professionals 93
Interpersonal Relationships 93
Geeks 94
Summary and Conclusions 96
List of Appendices 99
Appendix A: Survey Questions 100
Appendix B: Invitation to Participate 111
Appendix C: Calculated Variables 113
References 115

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 List of Tables

Number Title
1 Participant Attrition 64
2 Participant Demographics 65

3 Outcome Variable Descriptives and Comparison 67

with Other Studies

4 Outcome Variable Differences Between Groups 70

5 Summary of Hypotheses and Results 76

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 List of Figures

Number Title
1 Model of Correlation Moderators Between Relationships 12

and Life Satisfaction

2 Results Predicted by Participants 72

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 CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Prager (1999) writes, “We all know intuitively that IT [Information Technology]

professionals behave differently than everyone else” (p. 12). There is evidence that

people respond to the behaviors they perceive with complementary behaviors of their

own (e.g. Horowitz, Dryer, & Krasnoperova, 1997). Therefore it is possible that people

might behave toward IT professionals differently than they behave toward others. This

interpersonal behavior forms interactions that are the building blocks of relationships. If

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Prager is right that we view the IT professionals as different, then the interpersonal

relationships of IT professionals must necessarily be affected. This study examines some

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aspects of the interpersonal relationships of IT professionals to determine whether their
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self-reported relationship experiences differ from those of non-IT professionals and how

any difference found affect the life satisfaction of these professionals.

In this introduction, I will begin by providing a working understanding of the term

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“IT professional”. Next, I will explain why IT professionals are a population worth

studying, and suggest some of the benefits of studying this particular aspect of IT

professionals' lives. I will briefly discuss some of my personal experiences as an IT

professional, which inform both my sense of the importance of this topic and my biases

as I approach it. Finally, I will define the research question to be addressed, the method

by which I will investigate it, and the specific hypotheses that will operationalize the

question.

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 Information Technology Professionals Defined

The Joint Task Force for Computing Curricula 2005 (2005) broke down the field

of computing into five distinct but related disciplines: computer engineering (dealing

with the design and construction of computer systems), computer science (focusing on

computing theory and its application), information systems (integrating computer

technology with business processes so as to effectively meet the needs of organizations),

information technology (developing the technology needed to meet the needs of

organizations), and software engineering (developing and maintaining software systems).

However, they also point out that the phrase “information technology” is often used more

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broadly to refer to all of computing. It is in this sense that the term is used here. Members
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of any or all of the five disciplines will be studied, without attempting to distinguish

them.
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In doing so, it is possible that important differences between the practitioners of

these related disciplines may be inadvertently obscured. However, it is expected that in

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the area being studied, these differences are likely small. More importantly, there is no

evidence that the Joint Task Force's (2005) definitions are widely used even in the

computing fields themselves, let alone in the psychology literature. Papers relevant to the

target population have studied “programmers” (e.g. Jemielniak, 2008), “software

engineers” (e.g. Hertzum, 2002), “Information Systems (IS)” workers (e.g. Lee, Trauth,

& Farwell, 1995), or “Information Technology (IT)” professionals (e.g. Prager, 1999).

None of these papers clearly defined their population of interest. Most did not specify any

method by which individuals were identified as members of the group in question; those

that did simply had members of their samples identified by their managers. For purposes
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of this study, therefore, the decision was made to use participants' own self-reported

identity as IT professionals or not, rather than attempting to impose an external definition

of their own identity upon them.

For the purpose of clarifying the population to be discussed, I use a computer

programmer as the prototypical example of an IT professional. Kociatkiewicz & Kostera

(2003) define a programmer as “a creative professional... who has knowledge and whose

work consists in translating the knowledge into a language that makes it possible to work

with computers” (p. 308). A programmer's official job title may be “programmer,” but

often is not. Among the titles used in the literature are software engineer, software

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developer, web developer, programmer/analyst, and developer. In reviewing specific
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studies, I use the terminology used in each source.

The field of information technology also includes professions that are related to,
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but distinct from, that of programmer. Examples of these professions are computer

support specialist, computer systems analyst, network administrator, and software

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manager. Some of these do not literally translate knowledge into computer languages, as

per the above definition, but they work closely with those who do and share many of the

same skills and traits. Many of them, though not all, have been programmers earlier in

their careers, or may become programmers later. Many IT professionals are considered

examples of the larger categories of engineers (such as mechanical engineers), expert

group members (such as accountants), and knowledge workers (such as psychologists).

They therefore share some traits with other members of those groups.

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 The Importance of IT Professionals

The role of these professionals in the modern world is enormous and growing. For

example, the amount of information added to the world's digital information systems has

been doubling every two years, reaching an estimated 1.8 trillion gigabytes of new

information created in 2011 (“No End In Sight,” 2011). This trend is expected to

continue, with an estimated 40 trillion gigabytes to be stored and managed by 2020

(Gantz & Reinsel, 2012). Over the next ten years, it is expected that there will be ten

times as many computer servers worldwide as there are today, and these servers will

manage fifty times as much information. In monetary terms, the annual investment in

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creation, management, storage, and use of digital data increased 50 percent to $4 trillion
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between 2005 and 2011 (“No End In Sight,” 2011) and is expected to grow a further 40

percent by 2020 (Gantz & Reinsel, 2012). Much of this money is paid in salaries to
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technology professionals.

It is important that these professionals be able to perform their jobs well. In one
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study (Griffeth, Witt, Polk, Robinson, Thacker, & Callison, 2011), the value to an

employer of a high performing computer programmer earning $50,000 per year was

calculated to be $71,934 (43 percent more than the programmer’s salary), while the value

of a low-performing programmer earning the same salary was $29,806 (41 percent less

than the salary). In an organization of 1,000 programmers, the cost to the organization of

low performing employees might thus be over eight million dollars. Such a company

would clearly benefit from a significant investment if it would help these employees to

perform more effectively. While there are many reasons why a programmer may perform

poorly, reluctance to engage in interpersonal relationships, or difficulties in doing so, can

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certainly be among them. An employee who has difficulty getting along with his or her

manager may not get a clear understanding of the work to be done and may not be

motivated to do it well.

Employers are not the only people with a vested interest in the relationships of IT

professionals. In addition to being vital members of corporate teams, IT professionals are

also spouses, family members, and friends to people who value the professional's

happiness and life satisfaction for reasons that have nothing to do with his or her job.

They want things from the IT professional which may have no direct connection with

their professional work, such as understanding, time, effort, and love. But one's

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expectations about how to interact with a person are informed by one's knowledge about
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the person's work and personality. If IT professionals tend to have personality traits and

expectations that do indeed differ from those of other people, then developing mutually
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satisfying relationships with them requires understanding who they are.

Finally, mental health workers need an understanding of the IT professional. As

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happens in many professions, IT workers form a culture, a community, with values,

standards, and idioms that distinguish its members from others. Therapists and other

professionals who are called upon to help IT professionals will benefit from a deeper and

more nuanced understanding of IT professionals, the culture in which they live and work,

and the factors that contribute to their satisfaction with life.

At this time there is little research specifically on IT workers, computer workers,

technology workers, engineers, geeks, or similar classifications to inform the practices of

mental health professionals. What little research there is often comes from the

organizational psychology, rather than clinical psychology literature, and is focused

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specifically on professional and organizational behavior. But IT professionals are also

human beings with human traits and human needs, and it is important to understand those

traits and needs. If they are as a group no different than the rest of us, then there may be

no special knowledge needed to work with and relate to them. But if they are different,

then it is important to understand how.

Personal Perspective

My own interest in this topic is not purely academic. When I was an adolescent, I

was certain that I did not need other people. Being around others felt confusing,

exhausting, and frustrating. Only when I was alone did I feel able to exercise my skills

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and talents, lose myself in a good book or programming problem, feel happy and
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comfortable. The ideal home I imagined living in someday was isolated, with a door that

could be locked and concealed so no one would ever bother me. If “no man is an island,”
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as John Donne was widely quoted as saying, I intended to fake it as well as I could.

Many well-meaning adults, including professionals and amateurs, tried to help me

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become more social. But my perception was that they just didn't understand me. They

believed everybody needed relationships, and everything they did was based on that

axiom. Their approach, if it had any effect on me at all, only drove me to become more

defensive, more certain that I was not like other people and didn't need them. I couldn't

respect people who had such a fundamental misunderstanding (as I then thought it to be)

of what I needed. Even if they were entirely correct about what I needed, they were

unable to help me as long as they could not admit the possibility that my self-

understanding might be correct.

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 As an adolescent, I was drawn to computers and engineering, as were many

isolated people like me at that time (e.g. Turkle, 1984). As that became my first career, I

found many others in the information technology (IT) fields who seemed to feel, as I did,

that they were not like “everybody else,” that relationships simply weren't as important to

us as everyone else seemed to feel they were. We often felt misunderstood by our

employers, co-workers in other disciplines, and friends.

In time, my perspective changed. I realized that I did and do need positive

relationships with other people. Once I realized that, beginning to develop them was not

that difficult. I can only imagine how different my life would have been if just one of the

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counselors I saw as a teenager had been able to help me realize the value of relationships
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much earlier than I actually did. A counselor who could acknowledge the possibility that

I might not need relationships might have been able to meet me where I was at and earn
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enough of my trust to have the chance to help me see that I did.

Upon beginning this project, I recognized that I do not know whether

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relationships are actually a universal human need, nor whether, if they are, they are as

strong a need for all people. From personal experience, I know that not everyone believes

they need relationships, although the research (e.g. Berscheid & Peplau, 1983) indicates

that at least most people believe they do. Although I eventually recognized that I did need

relationships, it remains possible that there are some people who do not. Even if everyone

does need them, it may be that the importance of that need varies greatly among people.

In informal discussions of this topic with personal friends and colleagues in the IT

field (all of whom therefore have some interpersonal relationships), every one of them

has found it quite plausible that IT professionals, often including themselves, have a
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lesser need for relationships with others than most people do. This does not mean it is

true – but it does mean that there is interest in the question from those most affected by it.

The Importance of Life Satisfaction

As mental health professionals, we seek to help our clients to live better lives. If

we are to learn how best to do this, we must have a way of measuring the goodness of a

life. Different people have different criteria on which they judge the quality of their lives

(Diener, 2000), but one of them is life satisfaction. This is defined as an individual's

cognitive judgment of his or her quality of life, by whatever criteria seem most important

to the individual (Diener, 1985). Life satisfaction in turn is considered one component of

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a larger construct called subjective well-being, which includes both the cognitive
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judgment and the affective feelings, positive and negative, that do not always match the

cognitive judgment (Seligman, 2011).

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Evidence supports the idea that professional roles interact with personality traits

in influencing well-being in general. Garden (1989), for example, observing that most
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research on burnout had examined mental health professionals, conducted a study

comparing the causes of burnout in a sample of occupational health nurses to those in a

sample of MBA students. She found that the factors leading to burnout differed

systematically between members of these different professions. A psychologist who used

the best available research on burnout in 1989 to try to help MBA students would have

based her work on inappropriate generalizations from a very different population. It could

be that a psychologist using the best available research on relationships in 2014 to try to

help IT professionals would be making a similar mistake. Clearly more research is

needed to explore the needs and behaviors of IT professionals.

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 Interestingly, most studies of life satisfaction have examined non-workers such as

student, geriatric, and unhealthy populations (Erdogan, Bauer, Truxillo, & Mansfield,

2012). A study of life satisfaction in a professional population could therefore make a

noteworthy contribution to the literature.

IT Professionals and Relationships

Relationships are considered a key component of human well-being (e.g. Deci &

Ryan, 2000; Seligman, 2011; Luyten & Blatt, 2013). Yet it is a common stereotype of IT

workers that they are interpersonally inept and have few if any close relationships (e.g.

http://dilbert.com/; The Net, 1995; Buchen, 2011). These stereotypes may simply be

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wrong: relationships may be just as important to IT professionals as they are to anyone
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else. In this case, they are likely to be open (as I was not) to interventions that help them

to develop relationship skills and closer relationships, and to benefit from such
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interventions when they are available. Alternatively, the stereotype may have some truth

in it. It could be that most IT professionals know (as I thought I did) that they can be
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satisfied with their lives even if they lack the sort of close relationships that psychologists

believe everyone needs. If this is the case, then they will be likely to reject relationship

skill-building interventions that would be of value to other clients, and mental health

professionals should be ready to respect this and focus on concerns that matter more to

the client. Finally, it may be that many IT professionals feel that close relationships are

not important to them, while in fact, those who lack such relationships are less satisfied

than those who have them. If this is the case, then even though relationship skill-building

interventions would be valuable, the helper must be ready to recognize and respect the

client's skepticism about these interventions. Before such interventions can be of value,
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the client must be willing to try them. If this is in fact the case, this study will provide

evidence that will help some clients to find that willingness.

If a difference is found, it will be important to know whether it is accounted for

by a specific trait of the IT professionals. For example, men and Asians are

overrepresented among IT workers, while women, African Americans, and Latinos are

underrepresented, compared to the general population (US Department of Labor, 2012).

IT workers may not have a typical distribution of socio-economic statuses (SES). Certain

personality traits may be more common among them than in the general population. In

addition, many IT professionals fall into a loosely defined category of “geeks,” another

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group often thought of as having poor relationship skills. For example, many participants
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in the research of Jemielniak (2008) identified themselves as geeks, although they

perceived the category more in terms of creativity and curiosity than social skills. If IT
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professionals as a group have different kinds of relationships than other people, it could

simply be because members of a demographic group with different relationship skills are
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overrepresented among them.

Research Question

The central research question addressed is, “Are interpersonal relationships less

important to the life satisfaction of IT professionals than to the life satisfaction of other

professionals?” The specific measures used and formal hypotheses tested will be

discussed after the literature on life satisfaction, interpersonal relationships, and IT

professionals have been reviewed to provide context for the constructs and measures

used. The primary independent variables are work category (IT or non-IT) and

relationships (specific measures to be discussed later). The primary dependent variable

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will be life satisfaction. Work category, as well as other variables such as personality

traits, geek identity, and demographics, was examined as a possible moderator of the

correlation between relationship measures and life satisfaction. In the process of

examining these relationships, descriptive information about IT professionals was also

obtained and compared to non-IT professionals, offering a broader window on some of

the ways in which IT professionals may be similar to, or different from, their non-IT co-

workers.

For purposes of this study, I distinguish between personal and professional

relationships. Both types of relationships are important, but it is not obvious that they

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correlate. One individual could have very close personal relationships, but be difficult to
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get along with on the job, while another might be very good at forming goal-directed

relationships with a project team in a workplace setting, but have difficulty maintaining
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less structured individual interpersonal relationships. Furthermore, personal and

professional relationships have very different expectations and characteristics. Therefore,

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this study will measure personal and professional relationships as separate constructs,

allowing for the possibility that IT workers may differ as a group in one type of

relationship but not the other. The constructs and the measures used to examine them will

be discussed in Chapter 2.

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 Figure 1: Model of correlation moderators between relationships and life satisfaction

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Hypotheses were formulated to answer this central research question, to provide

insight regarding any differences between IT and other professionals regarding

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satisfaction with life, interpersonal relationships, and personality traits such as

extraversion and neuroticism. The specific hypotheses will be enumerated at the end of
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Chapter 2, after the measures to be used have been introduced.

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