Stability and Change in the Social Status of Occupations Over 21 and 42 Year Periods

Forty-two years ago, Counts (1925) surveyed the social status of occupations and found a well-defined prestige order, with banker at the top and ditch digger at the bottom. Because of changes wrought by the depression and World War II, Deeg and Paterson (1947) repeated Counts' study and found only minor relative changes in social status. Because of the extensive social and cultural changes since World War II, Counts' study was repeated again, and again only minor relative changes in the social status of occupations were found. The prestige order of the occupations surveyed is remarkably stable.     

The Meaning of Unpatterned Vocational Interests

The purpose of the study was to find the relationships between SVIB patterning and psychological adjustment, maturity, and intelligence. Male SVIB profiles were categorized as Primaries, Secondaries, or No Patterns. The three groups were compared on MMPI scales, using a two-factor ANOVA; no differences between the groups were obtained at the .05 level of confidence. The groups were compared on age and aptitude scores, using in each case a simple ANOVA; no mean differences were obtained at the .05 level of confidence. Related research was reviewed and this study was found to be confirmed by several others. There is little support in the literature for the widely held belief that something is “wrong” with the client who has an unpatterned SVIB profile.     

The Vocational Interests of Beautiful Women

This paper reports the analysis of Strong Vocational Interest Blank scores for about 100 fashion models. Their interest patterns reflect preferences for the dramatic over the routine, the unstructured situation over the structured. These girls favor verbal occupations, and show particular aversion toward working with numbers in precise, disciplined settings. They are pretty, they know it, and they prefer activities that permit them to take advantage of their attractiveness.     

Income Inequality and Life Satisfaction: Unrelated Between Countries,Associated Within Countries Over Time

This article shows for the first time that people are less satisfied when inequality in their country is higher than before, but not when inequality in their country is higher than in another country. It distinguishes this between- and within-country effect of inequality on life satisfaction by using hybrid regressions with the World Values Survey, the British Household Panel Study, the Australian panel study of Household Income and Labour Dynamics, the Korean Labor and Income Panel, the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring study, the Swiss Household Panel and the German Socio-Economic Panel. That life satisfaction is unaffected by long-run levels of inequality, but by changes of inequality over time, suggests that life satisfaction researchers should focus on changes of inequality over time to understand its influence on life satisfaction.     

The Structure of Vocational Interests for Diverse Racial-Ethnic Groups

We investigated differences in the circular structure of Holland's interests types across racial-ethnic groups (African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Caucasians; N = 11,610). The samples consisted of college-bound persons who completed the revised Unisex Edition of the ACT Interest Inventory (UNIACT; Swaney, 1995), as well as comparison group of 10th graders ( N = 4,133) in the 1992 UNIACT norms sample. Analyses using a randomization test of hypothesized order, targeted principal components, and three-way multidimensional scaling suggest that Holland's model adequately represents the interest structures of both sexes in all the diverse samples.     

Review Essay: The Fate of Romance Over Time

Can Love Last? The Fate of Romance Over Time by Stephen A. Mitchell (New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 2002, 224 pp.)

This review of Stephen Mitchell's posthumously published book details the intelligence, vitality, and emotional depth that so many found in Mitchell as writer, teacher, colleague, analyst, friend, and family member. The review also notes the loss that Mitchell's death brought to the lives of individuals and to the life of the psychoanalytic movement.     

Sex Role Expectations in Children's Vocational Aspirations and Perceptions of Occupations

To study sex role expectations, 120 boys and girls from three age groups—preschool, second grade, and fifth grade—in two socioeconomic levels were asked to name their vocational aspirations and to choose whether a man, woman, or both could do the work in 30 occupations depicted in a slide-tape series. Results indicated that sex typing was present in the way their aspirations conformed to traditional sex roles, with a significant relationship (p <.001) between sex typing of aspirations and sex of the respondents. Significant differences in responses to the occupational slides were found on the variables of sex (p <.01), grade level (p <.001), and socioeconomic level (p <.05), with greater sex typing indicated by boys than girls, by preschool children than by older children, and by lower to lower-middle class children than by middle to upper-middle class children. The study revealed a disparity between many children's perceptions of occupations as ones in which both sexes could work and their own personalized, sex-typed aspirations.     

The Delay Hypothesis: The Manifestation of Media Effects Over Time

A between‐participants experiment (N = 147) tested for the presence of a delayed effect following exposure to an episode of a legal drama that contained false information. Participants were more likely to endorse false beliefs if they were queried two weeks after watching the program rather than immediately following exposure. The relationship between time and false belief endorsement was found to be moderated by perceived reality of the program. Consistent with the delay hypothesis, those who perceived the legal drama to be unrealistic following exposure had significantly higher false belief scores at Time 2.     

The Vocational Interests of Dartmouth College Freshmen: 1947-67

Almost every freshman entering Dartmouth College in the last 20 years has completed the SVIB; this is a report of the trends in their measured interests over this period. Briefly, interest in scientific occupations has been increasing, interest in business occupations decreasing. Mean scores on the CEEB and high school rank information are included here, and may show substantial increases among the more recent classes. Selection with these variables may have created the trends in measured interests. Because selection of a student, or of his peer group, is probably the most important influence an institution has on a student, we should know more about the indirect effects of our current selection techniques.     

Patterns of Career Choices Over Time

The patterns of career change observed in samples of subjects of varying ages and levels of educational attainment have been examined. The pattern of occupational distribution shows consistent gains in the business and education groups, whereas the numbers of students aspiring to careers in science and engineering decrease. These findings have been interpreted on the basis of the personal characteristics of students, their perception of occupations, and the societal determinants of occupational choice.     

Attributions for Presidential Elections: The Situational Shift Over Time

Two investigations examined attributions for the outcomes of presidential elections. The first experiment examined attributions made by editorial writers for presidential elections from 1964 to 1984. The writers tended to make personal attributions for the causes of the election outcome a few days after the election, but shifted to primarily situational attributions 2 to 3 years later. Subjects in the second experiment were surveyed through a random-digit dialing procedure either a few days after the 1988 presidential election or 1 year later and asked why the election turned out the way it did. A shift toward more situational explanations over time was found, but not among those who had voted for the winning candidate. This latter finding illustrates a limitation of the situational shift effect.     

The Present of the Past: Dialogues With Memory Over Time

ABSTRACT This study analyzes the self-constructing meanings of an autobiographical episode in the life of one woman told at repeated intervals over 35 years. It demonstrates the ways in which the present constructs the past and shows how autobiographical memory may be used dialogically to create and contrast with current self-constructions, to disavow intolerable aspects of self, and to preserve disused but valued self-representations. Memories, in this sense, operate as texts whose meaning changes as the dialogue within self changes. The meanings of past memories, rather than their contents, are reshaped to hold aspects of a layered, multiple self.     

The Meaning, Development, and Career Outcomes of Breadth of Vocational Interests

Breadth of vocational interests (BVI) denotes the diversity of an individual's vocational interests. Not much is known about the meaning and development of BVI or its career outcomes. The authors' framework for conceptualizing the development of BVI includes three individual difference domains (i.e., life experiences, cognitive ability, and personality) related to the development of BVI and three possible outcomes (i.e., career commitment, job involvement, and stability of occupational classification). The framework is tested longitudinally. It appears that life experiences are more instrumental in the development of women's BVI, whereas academic achievement is more important for men. These findings have practical implications for counselors, career clients, and researchers alike. In light of the suggested changes in career management and the dynamic work environment, understanding BVI should prove insightful to all. BVI may be associated with adaptability to a changing economy and shifting job demands.     

The Influence of Holland's Vocational Interests on Work-Family Conflict: An Exploratory Analysis

Drawing on a sample of 438 working professionals from various organizations across the central United States, the authors investigated the relationship between Holland's (1959, 1997) RIASEC (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional) model and employee perceptions of work-family conflict. Results revealed that the RIASEC model contributed unique variance in predicting work-family conflict beyond demographic characteristics and the Big Five personality constructs. The RIASEC interests were found to be associated with different dimensions of work-family conflict. These results signal that vocational interests may influence not only work-related attitudes and behaviors (e.g., job satisfaction, performance), but also one's ability to balance work and family demands.     

Satisfaction with Time Allocations Within the Family: The Role of Family Type

This study examines the links between inequality in the time allocations of partners in couple families and the satisfaction they have with the way they spend their time. It uses time diary and self-reported satisfaction data from the 2006 Australian Time Use Survey. It shows that inequality in the time allocations of partners in couple families affects the satisfaction with the current allocation of time in families without children, but not in families with children. It is argued that the patterns of time use associated with children, specifically specialization in specific tasks, are the main reason for this finding.     

Persuasive Effects of Fictional Narratives Increase Over Time

Fact-related information contained in fictional narratives may induce substantial changes in readers' real-world beliefs. Current models of persuasion through fiction assume that these effects occur because readers are psychologically transported into the fictional world of the narrative. Contrary to general dual-process models of persuasion, models of persuasion through fiction also imply that persuasive effects of fictional narratives are persistent and even increase over time (absolute sleeper effect). In an experiment designed to test this prediction, 81 participants read either a fictional story that contained true as well as false assertions about real-world topics or a control story. There were large short-term persuasive effects of false information, and these effects were even larger for a group with a 2-week assessment delay. Belief certainty was weakened immediately after reading but returned to baseline level after 2 weeks, indicating that beliefs acquired by reading fictional narratives are integrated into real-world knowledge.