Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Negative Career Thoughts in Postgraduate Unemployed Adults (2014)

In recent years, interest has grown with regard to the impact of individual differences in career decision-making (Austin & Cilliers, 2011; Gati, Landman, Davidovitch, Asulin-Peretz, G Sampson, Peterson, Reardon, & Lenz, 2000).The construct of negative or dysfunctional career thoughts is also based on CIP theory and is related to a lower sense of coherence (Lustig & Strauser, 2002). This construct is also related to nearly all areas of career development, such as career exploration, (Selling & Betz, 1990), decision making (Luzzo, Hitchings, Retish, & Shoemaker, 1999), workaholic tendencies (Burke, 2001), and job satisfaction (Judge & Locke, 1993). During the last decade, the role of experience and expression has received inclusive attention in career development literature. Caruso and Wolfe (2001 ) affirmed that emotions assume an essential role in career selection and development. Therefore, intelligence (El) has been center of interest for career development researcher around the globe.For the present purpose, we accept the definition of El given by Mayer and Salovey (1997): emotional intelligence involves the ability to perceive accurately, appraise, and express emotion; the ability to access and generate feelings when they facilitate thought; the ability to understand emotions and knowledge; and the ability to regulate emotions to promote and intellectual growth (p. 5).Research on El has been found to be associated with a range of outcomes that include positive associations with life satisfaction and social network size and quality, and negative associations with loneliness (Palmer, Donaldson, & Stough, 2002; Saklofske, Austin, & Minski, 2003), whereas, negative career thoughts usually revolve around issues of self- worth, perfectionism, and overgeneralization and have a tendency to decrease the likelihood of overall life satisfaction (Sampson et al., 1996). Negative career thoughts includes (1 ) decision making confusion (DMC) which is an inability to begin the decision-making process because of impairing emotions and/or a lack of knowledge about the process of decision-making, (2) commitment anxiety (CA) that is known as an inability to commit to a specific career choice and the presence of generalized anxiety about the consequence of making a career decision, and finally (3) external conflict (EC) is failure in balancing between one's own perceptions and the perceptions of significant others related to making career choices (Saunders, Peterson, Sampson, & Reardon, 2000). The role of El has been investigated with respect to managerial decision-making (Sayaegh, Anthony, & Perrewe, 2004) and worker performance and effectiveness (Bar-On, Handley, & Fund, 2006).Plausibly, NCT is assumed to be linked negatively with El. Relationship between El and NCT, although found negative, has yet been scarcely studied. Dhal, Austin, Wagner and Lukas (2008), measured the factors of El most related to NCT and findings revealed significant inverse relationship between total El and NCT scores.Career indecision has also demonstrated a significant relationship to poor career beliefs (Enright, 1996), and negative career thoughts (Saunders et al. …