A challenge to vocational psychology: How important are aspirations in determining male career development?

Nationally representative longitudinal data on 1394 employed white men aged 15 to 24 in 1966 were used to assess whether job opportunities or vocational aspirations are the more important determinants of later job held. Support was found for two hypotheses: (a) men more often achieve congruence between their aspiration and their field of employment by changing aspirations to match the job rather than vice versa; and (b) aspirations for field of work generally are not as useful as actual job field for predicting the field of jobs held 1 to 5 years later. Contrary to expectation, middle-class young men were no more able to attain their aspirations either for field of employment or for status level of occupation than were lower-class male youths. These results suggest that although aspirations have some predictive power, the opportunity structure—which both conditions aspirations to narrow ranges early in life and affects the direction of early career development—is too often neglected by vocational psychology. One suggestion for counseling practice is that interest and maturity assessments be used as sources of information to both client and counselor about past influences. Attempts to actually counteract those influences should be clearly specified as such and separated from the assessment process.     

Creating and criticizing theory

F. W. Vondracek, R. M. Lerner, and J. E. Schulenberg (Journal of Vocational Behavior, 1983, 23, 179–202) criticize the vocational literature for failing to “follow acceptable scientific procedures for building a theory” and for failing to attend to important methodological and substantive developments. It is argued here that no single acceptable process for creating theory exists and three strategies useful for developing a theory are illustrated: immerse yourself in data, pick a specific set of results to explain, and try to resolve inconsistencies in the literature. Three criteria for evaluating theories and criticisms of them are discussed: comprehensiveness (content value), accuracy (truth value), and clarity (form). The paper by Vondracek et al. is examined from this perspective and is shown to lack the specificity, clarity, and accuracy necessary to be an effective guide to better vocational research or theory.     

A reappraisal of the relation between performances of quantitative identity and quantitative equivalence conservation tasks

Previous studies of children's performance on quantitative identity and equivalence conservation problems in the number domain are suggested to be flawed because of the low numbers of items in the arrays. In Experiment 1, children were tested on three different number versions of identity and equivalence conservation tasks. Their performance varied with the number of items and no child was found to pass a large number version of an equivalence conservation task and fail the corresponding version of an identity conservation task. In Experiment 2 the notion that the contextual effect of asking two similar questions might underlie the difference in performance on the two tasks was tested and rejected. The results are discussed in relation to recent analyses of conservation problems.     

The effects of exposure to political and domestic violence on preschool children and their mothers

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of exposure to political violence on preschool children and their mothers. We explored whether these dyads are different from dyads with no known history of exposure to violence and from mother–child dyads with known exposure to domestic violence. Specifically, we explored differences in mothers' psychological status (depression and anxiety), dyadic emotional availability (EA), children's social information processing, and children's social behaviour, in a sample of 216 dyads divided into three groups (exposure to political violence, no exposure to violence, and exposure to domestic violence). We found evidence to support our hypotheses that children exposed to domestic violence exhibit the highest levels of social maladjustment with smaller but still significant differences between children exposed to political violence and children in the comparison group. As expected, the lowest EA scores were found in the exposure to domestic violence group, followed by dyads in the exposure to political violence group. Dyads belonging to the comparison group (no exposure) exhibited the highest levels of EA. These findings contribute to our understanding of the meaning of exposure to political violence, as well as sharpen the difference between exposure to political and domestic violence.     

The Politics of Choice: Political Ideology and Intolerance of Ambiguity

The authors examine how political ideology impacts consumer preferences for hedonic and utilitarian choices and the underlying reasons for these differences. Five studies indicate that conservatives are less tolerant of ambiguity than liberals, leading to a preference for utilitarian options, whereas liberals are more tolerant of ambiguity leading to a preference for hedonic options. However, these preferences were reversed when utilitarian options were framed as ambiguous and hedonic options were framed as explicit and clear.     

Living with Contradictions: The Taken-for-Granted in Israeli Political Discourse

Two apparently contradictory ideas are closely linked in Israeli political discourse: Israel is powerful and independent and Israel is vulnerable and dependent. This study used content analysis and focus groups, as well as existing survey data analyzed by others, to explore how this paradox has been reflected in newspapers and conversations during six different time periods from 1948 to 1996. The goal was not to explain the paradox but to examine its consequences for Israeli perceptions of U.S. policy in the Middle East—and, in the process, to explore Israeli self-images. The nature of U.S. strategic interests was originally treated as problematic and in need of political discussion, but in the past 25 years these interests have become taken for granted. Surprisingly, even after the end of the Cold War, a critical discourse moment in which a reexamination of U.S. interests in the Middle East would seem inevitable, the U.S. role remains taken for granted and largely unexamined. The strong/vulnerable paradox explains this absence of discussion: Examining U.S. interests too closely upsets the delicate balance that keeps the sense of vulnerability in check.     

Does Differential Cohort Socialization Matter? The “Age Invariance” Hypothesis and Political Socialization

In classical and contemporary social theory alike, the key to understanding how cultural change comes about has been thought to lie in the long-term effect of differential cohort socialization. Cultural change is thought to proceed as differently socialized cohorts replace each other in the course of time. Moreover, distinct generations have been claimed to emerge. Thisarticle addresses the impact of cohort replacement and the presence of generations, including discussions of the theoretical framework underlying these concepts and the problem of disentangling age, period, and cohort effects. Analyses of Dutch survey data substantiate that cohort membership matters. Yet the impact of cohort replacement on cultural change turns out to be limited, and little evidence is found in support of the idea that specific generations arediscernible.     

Personality and political orientation: Meta-analysis and test of a Threat-Constraint Model

We synthesized and meta-analyzed 73 studies (N = 71,895) examining the associations between Big-Five personality and single-item self-placement measures of political orientation. Openness to Experience (r = −.18) and Conscientiousness (r = .10) were significantly but weakly correlated with political conservatism. The weak Openness-political orientation link was moderated by systemic threat and uncertainty (indexed by nation-wide homicide and unemployment). We propose a Threat-Constraint Model explaining this previously undetected Person × Situation interaction. The model shows that there was a moderately-sized negative correlation between Openness and political conservatism when systemic threat was low (r = −.422) but that this association was negligible at only moderate levels of threat (r = −.066). These findings highlight the economic and societal constraints of personality-political ideology associations.     

The effect of Obama saliency on individual-level racial bias: Silver bullet or smokescreen?

President Obama's election has been construed as a potentially positive force for intergroup relations, but this issue has not been previously addressed experimentally. In experiment 1, conducted 4-5 months after the election, White participants were primed with either President Obama or nature before completing a variety of race-related measures. Results indicated that priming Obama did not influence implicit racial bias or internal motivation to control prejudice. However, consistent with exemplar and symbolic racism theories, participants primed with President Obama expressed greater agreement with the tenets of symbolic racism and were more reluctant to accept the possibility that they personally harbored subtle racial bias. Experiment 2, conducted 21 months after the election, replicated the Obama effects from experiment 1 and showed that priming another Black exemplar (Oprah) also increased symbolic racism. Results suggest that highly successful Black exemplars currently serve as a smokescreen for symbolic and subtle racial biases.     

Investigation de l’effet des ressources personnelles dans la relation des demandes et de la santé psychologique en emploi des directions d’établissement scolaire

A proportion of 55 % of school administrators experience a high level of job stress mainly caused by relationship conflicts and overwork. According to the demands and resources of employment model, having personal resources would protect against the harmful effect of the difficulties experienced and the more specific a resource, the more it can counter the effect. Thus, political skills (HP) would decrease the effect of demands related to relationship conflicts, while the sense of self-efficacy (PES) decreases the negative impact of the workload on the PES. The objective of this study is to verify the effect of personal resources, HP and MS, on the relationship between job demands and job psychological health. A total of 232 school administrators from Quebec participated in the study. Job demands, as well as personal resources, are linked to anxiety and serenity according to Bakker and Demerouti (2007). Nevertheless, the SEP does not interact with the relationship of demands and psychological health in employment (PES). In addition, only the social astuteness dimension of HP moderates the relationship of demands and anxiety.