Values, Personal Influence, and Occupational Choice

Values, personal influence, and occupational choice interact in complex ways, and more can be learned by studying their three-way relationships than by using the traditional dependent-and-independentvariable design. This research attempts to show that these variables are systematically interrelated in the career decisions of college students planning to enter business,, scientific and esthetic, and general cultural occupations. Hypotheses are tested and further hypotheses proposed for study. IN THE growing literature on factors which account for occupational choices and aspirations, studies have generally stressed either values of the chooser or personal influences upon his choice as the independent variable. Rosen, for example, has shown how "achievement value orientation" affects educational and occupational aspirations.' Investigators such as Kahl, Wilson, and Bordua have found relationships between personal influence and level of aspiration.2 Perhaps the best-known recent study of occupational choice is that of Rosenberg and associates, which relates values to the types of occupations chosen by college students.3 Rosenberg's findings suggest that people who enter different kinds of occupations have basically different outlooks on work as a facet of life. To some, work is an end in itself, valued for the opportunity it gives to express oneself directly. To others, work may be only a means to obtain leisure and luxury off the job. To still others, work itself is of value, but more for the chance it provides to deal with people or be of service to them than for any intrinsic interest in the tasks or skills of work. If people differ in these ways in their outlook on work, one would expect them to be differentially attuned to the many social cues which urge them toward different kinds of careers. Two people may hear the same idea expressed about some occupation, but if one of them regards work as an inherently worthwhile activity while the other sees it only as a way to make money, they will not be affected alike by what they hear. Personal influence is a function of what the potential influencer says or does, and of how, if at all, it is perceived. This perception may both affect and be affected by the values of the person being influenced. Moreover, a person who has thought about entering a particular occupation will pay close attention to some possible sources of influence, but will fail to heed others. It seems likely that he will lay himself open to influence by persons who embody the values he seeks to realize in his anticipated occupation, and whose advice will support rather than contradict his own inclina* Revision of a paper read at the twenty-third annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society, Atlanta, Georgia, April 7, 1960. The research reported herein was performed pursuant to a contract with the United States Office of Education, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Additional support was provided by the Graduate School of Northwestern University and the University Research Council of the University of North Carolina. The Institute for Research in Social Science, University of North Carolina, furnished statistical facilities. John R. Earle and Robert M. Rennick assisted in analysis. I Bernard C. Rosen, "The Achievement Syndrome," American Sociological Review, 21 (April 1956), pp. 203211. 2Joseph A. Kahl, "Educational and Occupational Aspirations of 'Common Man' Boys," Harvard Educational Review, 23 (Summer 1953), pp. 186-203; Alan B. Wilson, "Residential Segregation of Social Classes and Aspirations of High School Boys," American Sociological Review, 24 (December 1959), pp. 836-845; David J. Bordua, "Educational Aspirations and Parental Stress on College," Social Forces, 38 (March 1960), pp. 262-269. 3Morris Rosenberg, with the assistance of Edward A. Suchman and Rose K. Goldsen, Occupations and Values (Glencoe, Illinois. Free Press, 1957). At many points this study goes beyond the simple dependentvs.-independent-variable analysis and explores the interaction of values and occupational choice. See also Harry K. Schwarzweller, "Value Orientations in Educational and Occupational Choices," Rural Sociology, 24 (September 1959), pp. 246-256; and Schwarzweller, "Values and Occupational Choice," Social Forces, this issue, pp. 126-135. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.184 on Sun, 15 May 2016 04:40:59 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms VALUES, INFLUENCE, AND CHOICE 117 tions, but will not be susceptible to influence by others. Thus values, personal influence, and occupational choice are in a three-way relationship, each variable interacting with the other two. In this paper we explore this three-way relationship, attempting to show that the values and personal influences which accompany the choice of basically different occupations are systematically related to each other and to the nature of the occupations chosen. The paper examines the values and sources of personal influence which played a part in the occupational decisions of college students planning to enter three broad occupational fields. The fields are discussed below.4 1. Business Occupations These include such occupations as retail proprietor, manufacturer's representative, and corporation manager or executive: fields characterized in Rosenberg's findings by an emphasis on extrinsic rewards, such as high income. Most college graduates today who enter the general field of business are bureaucratic employees rather than independent entrepreneurs, and there are growing attempts to develop business management into a "profession." These attempts have not yet progressed very far, however, and the public image of the businessman remains highly distinct from that of the professional man. Business occupations are still regarded primarily as avenues to money and what money will buy-the home in the suburbs, the country club membership, the tropical vacation. 5 If this is the public image of business occupations, we would expect students who plan business careers to stress values related to income and leisure, rather than intrinsic occupational rewards stemming from the work itself. We would also expect them to reject professors as sources of influence on their career plans, since the professor is often thought to be a person who has deliberately spurned material advancement in order to seek intrinsic work satisfaction. 2. Scientific and Esthetic Occupations These include the artistic and literary occupations which Rosenberg finds to be characteristically "self-expression-oriented," such as actor, commercial artist, musician, and newspaper or advertising writer. Also in this category are scientific occupations, including medicine. All of these fields are publicly known to require specialized skills; in this respect they differ from the business occupations whose skills are more generalized and less clearly defined. The aspirant to any scientific or esthetic occupation is seeking to join a highly self-conscious occupational group which distinguishes itself from outsiders on the basis of work skills. These skills may utilize abilities which the individual had to begin with, but the skills themselves can be developed only through long training.6 From this we might expect the values of students entering the scientific and esthetic fields to revolve around the occupation itself, the opportunity for self-expression it affords, and success within the group of colleagues. As sources of personal influence, we might expect these students to rely on teachers, professors, and members of the occupation chosen, since these embody the skills for which the occupation is distinguished. 4 The typology of occupations used here was adapted from Anne Roe, The Psychology of Occupations (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1956), pp. 143-152. Other proposed non-vertical occupational classifications include those given in Paul K. Hatt, "Occupations and Social Stratification," American Journal of Sociology, 55 (May 1950), pp. 533-543; and Richard T. Morris and Raymond J. Murphy, "The Situs Dimension in Occupational Structure," American Sociological Review 24 (April 1959), 235-239. Roe's classification seemed the best of these for our purposes because Hatt's classification does not successfully avoid the vertical dimension, and the Morris and Murphy list is based on societal function of work rather than the nature of work tasks. 5The finding of Rosenberg, op. cit., that students planning to enter the business fields tended to stress extrinsic rewards, is at least indirect evidence of this. The emphasis of people in business occupations on leisure and consumption is brought out clearly in William H. Whyte, Jr., The Organization Man (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1957). 6 On the importance of specialized skills in shaping occupational ideologies, see Everett C. Hughes, "Personality Types and the Division of Labor," American Journal of Sociology, 33 (March 1928), pp. 754-768, reprinted in Everett C. Hughes, Men and Their Work (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1958), esp. pp. 35-36; Ida Harper Simpson, The Development of Professional Self-Images among Student Nurses, unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1956; Harvey L. Smith, "Contingencies of Professional Differentiation," American Journal of Sociology, 63 (January 1958), pp. 410-414, esp. pp. 413-414. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.184 on Sun, 15 May 2016 04:40:59 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms