HN501 Unit 8 Assignment

profilefulsiel9i7
CHAPTER12PhysicalandCognitiveDevelopmentinYoungAdulthood.docx
Home>Social Science homework help>Sociology homework help>HN501 Unit 8 Assignment

CHAPTER 12 Socioemotional and Vocational Development in Young Adulthood

What is required for a happy, well-adjusted adult life? For Sigmund Freud, both love and work are powerful methods by which we “strive to gain happiness and keep suffering away” (Freud, 1930/1989, p. 732). Love, he felt, may bring us closer to the goal of happiness than anything else we do. The disadvantage of love, of course, is that “we are never so defenseless . . . never so helplessly unhappy as when we have lost our loved object or its love” (p. 733). Work, from Freud’s perspective, not only helps justify our existence in society, providing the worker with a “secure place . . . in the human community,” but it also can be a source of special satisfaction if it is “freely chosen—if, that is . . . it makes possible the use of existing inclinations” (p. 732). For Erikson (e.g., 1950/1963), both intimacy (love) and generativity (work) are arenas for expressing and developing the self, dominating the concerns of adults in their young and middle years. True intimacy and generativity require achieving an adult identity and are part of its further enrichment and evolution. “Intimacy is a quality of interpersonal relating through which partners share personal thoughts, feelings, and other important aspects of themselves with each other” (McAdams, 2000, p. 118). True intimacy is marked by openness, affection, and trust. Generativity is a motive or need that can be filled through one’s vocation or avocations, through child rearing, or through community service. It includes productivity and creativity (Erikson, 1950/1963). Generativity is also a trait that people can be described as having when they are contributing members of society. “It is about generating: creating and producing things, people, and outcomes that are aimed at benefiting, in some sense, the next generation, and even the next” (McAdams, Hart, & Maruna, 1998). For most adults, achieving generativity is central to their belief in the meaningfulness of their lives. Erikson considered young adults to be especially driven by needs for intimacy, middle adults by needs for generativity. Modern research suggests that both are powerful influences on behavior throughout adulthood, although intimacy needs may predominate early and generativity needs later. More recent conceptions of how adults achieve happiness or mental health or “wellness” are quite consistent with the importance that Freud and Erikson placed on love and work. Close relationships with lovers, friends, and family, as well as the opportunity to make productive use of one’s time and talents, figure prominently in nearly all modern theorizing about what people need to be happy and well-adjusted (e.g., Ryan & Deci, 2000). From a developmental perspective, then, the period of young adulthood should be a time when identity issues are resolved sufficiently to allow a person to make significant progress on two major tasks: The first is establishing and strengthening bonds with people who will accompany him on his life journey, and the second is becoming a productive worker. LOVE Making connections with others in adulthood—establishing intimacy with a mate, making friends, reworking family ties—has been studied from many perspectives. One promising developmental approach examines the impact of attachment style, which is assumed to have its roots in infancy and childhood, on the formation of adult relationships. Adult Attachment Theory Attachment theory has enjoyed a prominent place in the child development literature since the groundbreaking work of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth (see Chapter 4). Following an explosion of studies on childhood attachment, researchers began to train their sights on attachment theorists’ suggestion that early bonds with caregivers could have a bearing on relationship building throughout the life span (Ainsworth, 1989; Bowlby, 1980). Today, attachment theory provides a useful framework for conceptualizing adult intimacy. The abundance of research in this area makes it the most empirically grounded theory available for explaining the formation and nature of close interpersonal relationships throughout adulthood. As we saw in Chapter 4, the process of attaching to a caregiver in infancy is considered species-typical. According to Bowlby (1969/1982, 1973, 1980), the attachment bonds of infancy serve survival needs. Infant behaviors, such as distress at separation, ensure proximity to the caregiver, who acts as a secure base for exploration, a safe haven in case of threat, and a preferred provider of emotional warmth and affect regulation. How the attachment process unfolds is a function of the caregiving relationship. Depending on the caregiver’s sensitivity and responsiveness, an infant becomes securely or insecurely attached to that caregiver. To the extent possible, he adapts his behavior to the caregiver’s style to get his needs met, and he begins to internalize a working model of how relationships operate. Despite diminishing demands for physical caretaking as individuals age, adults continue to need the emotional and practical support of significant others. As we have noted, Erikson (1950/1963) identified the achievement of intimacy as the central task of early adulthood. In his view, even though adults are much more independent than children, they still need to establish and maintain intimate connections to people who will provide them with love and care. Although you may never have thought of your adult relationships with significant others, including your bonds to your parents, as attachment relationships, many researchers believe that they are precisely that. Let us look more closely at the various manifestations of attachments in adulthood and consider a framework for organizing the existing research. Research Traditions in Adult Attachment Attachment theory has been used to understand relationships as divergent as those between parents and their adult children (Scharf, Mayseless, & Kivenson-Baron, 2004; Vivona, 2000) and those between romantic partners (Simpson & Rholes, 2010). It provides a conceptual framework for individual differences in people’s responses to bereavement and loss (Rando, 1993), to stress (Mikulincer & Florian, 1998), and to the processing of information about relationships (Dykas & Cassidy, 2011). And, as you will see below, attachment theory predicts intergenerational transmission of attachment classifications (van IJzendoorn, 1995). Among helping professionals, attachment theory has been used as a framework for explaining conflict resolution in interpersonal relationships (Creasey & Hesson-McInnis, 2001), family dysfunction (Byng-Hall, 1995), and psychopathology (Brennan & Shaver, 1998; Dozier, Stovall, & Albus, 1999), and it provides a basis for therapeutic interventions (Dozier & Tyrell, 1998). One way to make sense of the multitude of studies on adult attachment is to identify which kind of attachment relationship is being explored. Simpson and Rholes (1998) offer a useful organizational framework that distinguishes between two major research traditions. First, there is a body of work that examines the outcomes of a person’s attachment to his primary caregiver in infancy, once the person becomes an adult. This has been referred to as the nuclear family tradition. Research in this area seeks to understand the degree to which one’s earliest attachments to primary caregivers may endure throughout life and how they might affect the quality of the caregiving provided to one’s own children. A parallel line of research, called the peer/romantic partner tradition, focuses on the peer attachments of adults. Questions about how early attachments impact the quality of romantic and friendship relationships in adulthood form the core of inquiry from this angle. The two bodies of work share conceptual linkages, to be sure. However, they differ in their methodologies and even in their terminology, and they “tend to speak past each other” (Bartholomew & Shaver, 1998, p. 27). It is sometimes assumed that findings from both traditions should converge into a coherent picture of an adult’s attachment status. This has been a difficult goal to achieve, primarily because different domains are studied, different methodologies are used, and different typologies are employed. Despite these problems, there is some correlation between the different kinds of attachment findings in adulthood. As Bartholomew and Shaver (1998) note: When we step back from the details of specific measures and measure-specific findings, the results produced by attachment researchers are all compatible with the possibility that various forms of adult attachment arise from a continuous but branching tree of attachment experiences, beginning in infancy and developing throughout the life course. (p. 42) We will continue our discussion of adult attachment by focusing on each approach in turn. First, we will consider how the nuclear family tradition contributes to our understanding of adult caregiving. Then we will present an overview of significant contributions from the peer/romantic partner tradition. The Nuclear Family Tradition: The Past as Prologue Does the nature of your attachment to your caregiver predict your behavior in adulthood, influencing the quality of attachment you will form with your own children? This is the intriguing question that is at the heart of the nuclear family line of research. We briefly examined this issue in Chapter 4. Now we’ll take a closer look. You may recall that the primary instrument used to measure the attachment representations of adults vis-à-vis their early caregivers is the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) developed by Main and Goldwyn (1984). It is composed of a series of 18 open-ended questions with follow-up prompts that are transcribed verbatim by a trained interviewer. The questions concern memories of relationships with mother and father, recollections of stressful events such as separations, loss, harsh discipline, or abuse, interpretations of parental behaviors, and evaluation of the effects of these early events on the interviewee’s later development. Main and her colleagues (see Hesse, 2008) hypothesized that the primary task for the interviewee is to resurrect emotionally loaded memories of early childhood experiences while simultaneously presenting them in a coherent fashion to an interviewer. Because the questions deal with very complicated, personal, and often intense issues in a person’s early history, they may never have been articulated by the individual prior to this interview experience. The rapidity of questioning, combined with the nature of the items and the interview setting, are thought to elicit material often heretofore unconscious, yet highly descriptive of the adult’s state of mind regarding early attachments to primary caregivers. The assumption is that by adulthood, security has become a characteristic of the individual. Representations of different relationships—like relationships with mother versus father—tend to coalesce, and a single working model of attachment can be tapped (Furman & Simon, 2004). Interviews are scored according to Grice’s (1975) criteria for coherent discourse: truthfulness as supported by evidence, succinctness, relevance to the topic, clarity, and organization of responses. Additional scoring criteria include the coder’s assessment of the interviewee’s early attachment quality as well as an assessment of the language used in the interview (e.g., angry, passive, derogating). Four qualitatively different classifications, or attachment styles, are then assigned to adults based on their verbatim transcripts. These are secure or insecure (which includes three subcategories: dismissing, preoccupied, and unresolved) categories. Different classifications of insecurity are thought to reflect the different strategies and rules of information processing that the person has developed to manage the anxiety of early relationship failure, loss, or trauma. Let us examine each of these categories in turn (see Hesse, 2008, for more detail). Autonomous (secure) adults provide a transcript that is coherent and collaborative. They answer questions with enough detail to provide sufficient evidence without giving excessive information. For example, incidents of caregiver insensitivity are described matter-of-factly, without embellishment or defensiveness. Secure adults also demonstrate the ability to integrate and monitor their thinking, summarize answers, and return the conversation to the interviewer. They seem to be less egocentric in their presentation than insecure individuals, and they demonstrate good perspective-taking skills. Secure individuals acknowledge the importance of attachment-related experiences in their development. Their memories of the parenting they received match up with the specific instances they present to the interviewer as illustrations. The emotions they express, both verbally and facially, are consistent with the content of their remarks (e.g., Roisman, Tsai, & Chiang, 2004). Can adults be classified as secure if they have had less than favorable experiences as a child? Some individuals do come from circumstances of early adversity but describe their painful backgrounds truthfully and believably, while acknowledging the stressors their own parents faced. This ability to reflect on a difficult past realistically, yet with a certain level of generosity toward parents, results in a special classification called earned secure. Such adults appear to have come to terms with less than optimal early experiences, quite possibly with the help of a secure spouse or partner. Individuals in both secure categories typically have children who are securely attached to them (see Chapter 4 for a detailed discussion of children’s attachment categories). Dismissing (insecure) individuals provide transcripts that are characterized by markedly low levels of detail and coherence. They are likely to describe parents as very positive or idealized; however, they do not support their evaluations with any specific evidence. Whatever details these dismissive respondents offer may actually contradict their generally favorable presentation of parental behavior. They tend to minimize or avoid discussion of attachment-related issues and downplay the importance of close relationships. When discussing nonemotional topics, dismissing individuals generate coherent and comprehensive records and can talk at some length. Responses to attachment themes, in contrast, lack elaboration. Failure to remember is often cited as a reason for the impoverished answers. Adults classified as dismissive tend to have children who are in the avoidant attachment category. The dismissive style has been linked to early experiences of rejection or other trauma and the development of repressive personality styles. Do these individuals simply hide their distress, or have they managed to actually suppress their attachment needs? Some evidence using an information-processing approach indicates that these individuals, over time, function with the goal of avoiding emotional thoughts and other reminders of unpleasant emotional experiences, such as parental unavailability (Fraley, Davis, & Shaver, 1998). This motivated avoidance may lead to less cognitive elaboration of attachment themes and reduction of behaviors that would encourage intimacy, such as sharing intimate conversation, mutual gazing, cuddling, and so on. However, it is unlikely that the system has been deactivated completely. Dozier and Kobak (1992) provide interesting evidence that dismissive individuals do react strongly to emotional issues. These researchers interviewed college students using the AAI while measuring their rates of skin conductance. Dismissive subjects, although outwardly appearing unfazed during questioning, had significantly elevated levels of skin conductance, as compared to baseline levels, when asked questions about the emotional availability of their parents and the effects of early attachments on their self-development. Roisman et al. (2004) replicated these results cross-culturally, studying European Americans, Chinese Americans, and Chinese nationals who were students at a midwestern American university. This physiological phenomenon suggests that dismissive interviewees are effortfully engaged in diversionary tactics (either idealizing parents or restricting memory) to deal with the anxiety generated by the topics. This feature of the dismissive attachment style has been referred to as “deactivating” (see Roisman, 2007). Yet, the physiological data suggest that the emotional distress of the early attachment system may never be fully deactivated, but rather just kept at bay. The attachment system responds to emotionally provocative issues when they cannot be avoided. Individuals in a third group, classified as preoccupied (insecure), typically violate the rule of collaboration on the AAI interview. These individuals provide very long, incoherent, egocentric responses that shift from topic to topic. They perform in ways that suggest they are overwhelmed by the emotional memories elicited by the interview questions and are sidetracked from the task of responding succinctly. Such speakers often sound angry, sad, or fearful, as if they have never resolved the painful problems of their childhood. Parents may be remembered as intrusive or egocentric. Their transcripts paint a picture of substantial enmeshment or preoccupation with parents, registered by angry, accusatory language or by conflicted descriptions that connote ambivalence and confusion about early relationships. This feature of the preoccupied attachment style has been referred to as “hyperactivating,” and there is emerging evidence that individuals with hyperactivating responses to the AAI are more likely than others to show heart rate increases in situations that arouse the attachment system (Roisman, 2007). Both their facial expressions and self-reported emotions during the AAI are often inconsistent with the childhood memories they describe. For example, distressed facial expression might be combined with their description of a positive experience (e.g., Roisman et al., 2004). Linguistic features of their transcripts include run-on sentences, idiosyncratic uses of words, and juxtaposition of past and present tense, as though early problems continue to persist in the present. The children of preoccupied adults often have anxious-ambivalent attachments. Individuals in the fourth category, called unresolved (insecure), produce transcripts characterized by marked lapses in logical thinking, particularly when these individuals discuss loss or other traumatic memories. One example of a lapse in reasoning might be an interviewee’s mention of a deceased parent as still living. Hesse and Main (1999b) have suggested that these abrupt shifts may be related to temporary changes in consciousness, possibly due to the arousal of unintegrated fear. Individuals in this category may also receive a secondary classification of dismissive or preoccupied. The children of unresolved individuals show a higher frequency of disorganized attachment patterns than other children. A fifth category, cannot classify, is used when protocols do not meet the criteria for other categories. Only a very small number of cases fall into this classification. Data on AAI classifications and psychopathology demonstrate that psychiatric disorders are clearly associated with insecure status and that, in particular, unresolved status is the clearest predictor of emotional disturbance (Dozier et al., 1999). We have learned from longitudinal studies that an infant’s attachment behavior, as measured by the strange situation test, reliably predicts the same individual’s secure or insecure responses on the AAI in adolescence or adulthood (see Grossman, Grossman, & Waters, 2005; Simpson, Collins, Tran, & Haydon, 2007). As we saw in Chapter 4, however, a child’s attachment status can become either more or less secure if he has either positive or negative experiences with close relationships after the infant–toddler period. Longitudinal studies in which participants have reached adolescence or young adulthood are finding that people can either “earn” security, as we have already noted, by experiencing later supportive relationships or can develop insecure representations of attachment if they experience negative life events after early childhood. Adults who were secure as children can later demonstrate insecure states of mind because of intervening, highly stressful events such as parental loss, divorce, abuse, illness, or psychiatric disorder. Such findings suggest that deviations from the predicted pathway are most likely explained by lawful rather than random discontinuity (Sroufe, Egeland, Carlson, & Collins, 2005; Weinfield, Sroufe, & Egeland, 2000). In Search of the Working Model Perhaps you are wondering if the attachment representation categories that are derived from adults’ AAI performances could simply be measures of general linguistic style. If so, then interviews would have no particular relevance to attachment, and their predictive value for children’s attachment characteristics might be coincidental. Crowell et al. (1996) investigated whether the different linguistic features used to make AAI classifications characterize individuals on other measures of discourse. Using the Employment Experience Interview, he examined a group of adults who had been assigned AAI classifications. The Employment Experience Interview had the same structure as the AAI and was coded using the same criteria. Note that the only difference between the two was in the nature of the questions: about job skills or early attachment relationships. Results showed differences among the transcripts (e.g., vague vs. clear discourse). However, the interesting finding was that respondents’ classifications were different on each measure. In other words, an adult who might be judged “secure” on the employment interview could be “insecure” on the AAI. The researchers concluded that there is something unique about the attachment questions. They appear to provide a window into a person’s state of mind concerning interpersonal representations. The power of attachment theory rests on the concept of the inner working model. The AAI was designed to tap an adult’s representation of attachments to primary caregivers. The assumption is that the individual’s narrative reflects partly unconscious representations. Results are not considered to be a direct measure of an individual’s attachment to any one person, but rather are an indicator of the individual’s state of mind regarding attachment-related issues. Like an algorithm for our close interpersonal associations, the working model is thought to provide rules for processing information about relationships and for behaving in relationships. Researchers agree that the working model of relationships that one has as an adult cannot simply be a carbon copy of the one that was formed with the primary caregiver in infancy. It is a cognitive structure or schema (often now described as a prototype) that must evolve with time and experience, becoming more elaborate, incorporating new elements into the original version in dynamic, qualitatively transformed ways. Like all cognitive schemas, our working models of relationships help us understand, predict, and act on information that is only fragmentary (Dykas & Cassidy, 2011). The obvious advantage is that they allow us to process information and to respond quickly. The downside is that we may fail to accommodate real differences in present relationships, and we may behave in these relationships in ways that are adapted to quite different circumstances. For example, consider Sheila, whose mother was depressed and dependent. As a youngster, Sheila felt that her mother’s needs always came before her own. Because even the simplest task was a chore for her mother, Sheila began taking on the care of the household and her younger siblings in order to spare her mother. Sheila grew increasingly competent as a caretaker, which, in turn, caused her mother to depend on her even more. As a young adult, Sheila has difficulty getting close to people. She bristles when any friend or romantic partner, in an attempt to get close to her emotionally, talks about a personal problem. She quickly changes the subject of conversation. Sheila’s relationships in adulthood appear to be affected by the legacy of her earlier attachments. She exaggerates other people’s reliance on her and fears she will be overcome by their needs, despite any real evidence for this. Because this is a relatively new area of research, several important questions are yet unanswered. In particular, no one fully understands how the working model of infant–caregiver attachment gets transformed into a working model of attachments in adulthood. Main (1999) suggests that the multiple attachments formed in childhood coalesce into a “classifiable state of mind with respect to attachment in adulthood and that whatever this particular state of mind, it is predictive of a concordant and ‘classificable’ form of caregiving” (p. 863). In this description, Main uses the phrase “state of mind with regard to attachment” instead of “working model” because she wants to avoid the oversimplified assumption that adult states of mind are always derivative of early experiences with parents in straightforward, linear ways. Main notes that insecure children often have multiple, contradictory models of attachment that are harder to integrate than those of secure children, who tend to have more unified models. As we have seen, adults’ attachment representations predict the quality of their attachments to their children (see Chapter 4). This link suggests that attachment representation is a determinant of parental caregiving behavior. Does attachment representation also affect the way that adults interact with other adults? If the working model, in fact, functions like an algorithm for close relationships, individual differences in attachment representations should also affect adults’ ability to relate to others in romantic and friendship relationships. This is the subject of our next section. The Peer/Romantic Relationship Tradition As she prepares to get married, this young woman struggles to sort out her feelings toward her fiancé and her family’s—and her own—expectations of what marriage “should” be. What can you infer about her feelings toward passion, intimacy, and commitment with a husband? Any reader of romance novels can testify that the topic of adult love relationships has considerable appeal. In the research community as well, quite a bit of time and energy has been devoted to understanding the formation and development of adult pair-bonds. Researchers have examined specific issues such as mate selection, relationship satisfaction, conflict resolution, relationship dissolution, and so on and have produced a wealth of findings in each of these areas. Studies have also been done that show consistent individual differences in adults’ approaches to romantic relationships, sometimes called “love styles” (Lee, 1973). Similarly, there are theories about the elements of love, such as Sternberg’s (1986) passion, intimacy, and commitment, and the ways they function in relationship formation. Passion refers to erotic attraction or feelings of being in love. Intimacy includes elements of love that promote connection and closeness, whereas commitment refers to making a decision to sustain a relationship with a loved one. We will discuss these elements further in the next chapter. An early investigation by Shaver and Hazan (1988) contributed significantly to the growing body of knowledge on adult relationships by anchoring the fledgling field within the conceptual framework of attachment theory. These researchers tried to integrate the disparate threads of data into a comprehensive theory of relationships. Today, research conceptualizing adult pair-bonds as attachments represents the second influential offshoot of attachment theory. Features of Adult Pair-Bonds Do adult pair-bonds qualify as bona fide attachment relationships? Although there are some dissenting opinions (e.g., McAdams, 2000), many researchers answer yes (e.g., Haydon, Collins, Salvatore, Simpson, & Roisman, 2012). Consider Bowlby’s definition of a behavioral system as a set of behaviors that serve the same function or goal. Human beings are equipped with multiple behavioral systems, meeting multiple goals, which interact in coordinated ways. In early childhood, attachment behavior—which includes proximity maintenance, separation distress, and treatment of the caregiver as both a safe haven and a secure base—is the most important behavioral system because it serves the ultimate goal of survival. When security is felt, other behavioral systems, such as exploration, can be activated. When security is threatened, the attachment system is triggered, and proximity-seeking behaviors increase. In adulthood, as in childhood, particular behavioral systems are organized to meet specific needs. Attachment (based on the need for felt security) is just one of the adult behavioral systems serving psychosocial needs, which also include caregiving, sexual mating, and exploration. Because of their structure and function, pair-bonds in adults provide an effective way to integrate three of the basic systems: caregiving, attachment (felt security), and sexual mating (Simpson & Rholes, 2010). The support provided by the secure base of an attachment relationship also enhances exploration in adults, just as it does in children. Hazan and Zeifman (1999) conclude that adult attachments generally enhance reproductive success (or promotion of the species) as well as provide for the psychological and physical well-being of partners. Infant–caregiver bonds and adult pair-bonds are notably similar in the kinds of physical contact they involve, such as mutual gazing, kissing, cuddling, and so on, and in the goals they serve (support, emotional closeness, etc.). Adult attachments, however, do differ from childhood attachments in the following three ways. First, the attachments adults have with adults are structured more symmetrically than are parent–child bonds. Both partners mutually provide and receive caregiving, whereas the parent is the unilateral source of caregiving for the child. Second, adults rely more than children do on “felt security” rather than on the actual physical presence of the attachment figure (Sroufe & Waters, 1977). Longer periods of separation can be tolerated by adolescents and adults because they understand that attachment figures will be dependable and available when they need contact. Third, adult attachments typically involve a sexual partner or peer rather than a parent figure. The Process of Relationship Formation in Adulthood Adult pair-bonds meet multiple needs, such as attachment needs (especially the need for security), the need for caregiving or nurture, and sexual needs. How does the attachment system of early childhood become transformed into the attachments of adulthood? Hazan and Zeifman (1999) chart the progress of attachments by tracing the behaviors that serve the goals of the system. In infancy, as we have stated, all four functions of the attachment system (proximity maintenance, separation distress, secure base, safe haven) depend on the presence of an attachment figure, and infant behavior toward the caregiver clearly is adapted to meet these goals. As children get older, behaviors toward peers appear to serve some attachment functions as well. For example, children transfer some proximity-seeking behaviors to peers by early childhood. Children begin to spend more time with age-mates and seek them out as preferred playmates (Gottman, 1983). By early adolescence, needs for intimacy and support are often met within the peer group (e.g., Steinberg & Monahan, 2007), suggesting that needs for a safe haven in times of distress are directed to peers as well as parents (see Chapter 10). By late adolescence and early adulthood, romantic partners may satisfy all the needs of the attachment system. To provide support for this theory, Hazan and Zeifman (1999) asked children and adolescents from 6 to 17 years old a number of questions that tapped attachment needs. Researchers asked the participants whom they preferred to spend time with (proximity maintenance), whom they turned to if they were feeling bad (safe haven), whom they disliked being separated from (separation distress), and whom they could always count on when they needed help (secure base). Results of this study supported shifts away from parents to peers, apparently preparing the way for adult attachment behaviors. The great majority of respondents sought proximity to peers instead of parents at all ages. Between the ages of 8 and 14, participants’ responses indicated a shift toward use of peers for safe haven as well. Most children and adolescents identified parents as their secure base and the source of their separation distress. However, among those older participants who had established romantic relationships, all four attachment needs were met in the context of their pair-bonds. See Figure 12.1 for a model of the attachment transfer process across age. Individual Differences in Adult Attachments The preceding discussion describes what might be considered normative processes involved in the development of adult attachments. Remember, however, that individuals differ in their states of mind regarding attachment experiences. Do these different “states of mind” predict different approaches to peer or romantic relationships in adulthood? To shed light on this question, we must recall that each tradition of attachment research has its own way of looking at these issues. Even though researchers start from the same premise, namely that adults’ attachment styles will resemble Ainsworth’s infant attachment typology, the typical measures used are different from those of the nuclear family tradition. Adult romantic relationship research began with self-report or questionnaire measures that were presumed to tap conscious, rather than unconscious, expectations about relationships. The sheer volume of work done in the area of measurement prevents a comprehensive discussion of this topic in this chapter. However, we will present an introduction to certain key issues and describe some important instruments. The interested reader is referred to Simpson and Rholes (1998) for a more thorough presentation. FIGURE 12.1 Age changes in attachment and close relationships. SOURCE: Hazan, C., and Shaver, R. (1994). Attachment as an organizational framework for research on close relationships. Psychological Inquiry, 5, 1–11. Reprinted by permission of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. TABLE 12.1 Three Attachment Prototypes in Peer/Romantic Tradition Avoidant. I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others; I find it difficult to trust them completely, difficult to allow myself to depend on them. I am nervous when anyone gets too close, and often, love partners want me to be more intimate than I feel comfortable being. Anxious-ambivalent. I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I often worry that my partner doesn’t really love me or won’t want to stay with me. I want to get very close to my partner, and this sometimes scares people away. Secure. I find it relatively easy to get close to others and am comfortable depending on them. I don’t often worry about being abandoned or about someone getting too close to me. SOURCE: Hazan, C., and Shaver, P.R. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 515. Reprinted by permission of the American Psychological Association. The first influential measure of adult romantic attachment, developed by Hazan and Shaver (1987), asked adults to identify which of three statements (see Table 12.1) best captured their approach to and beliefs about romantic relationships. Descriptive statements represented avoidant, anxious-ambivalent, and secure classifications. As measurement was refined and attempts to integrate the fields of nuclear family and adult peer attachments increased, researchers recognized that the category called “avoidant” from Hazan and Shaver’s instrument did not correspond to the “dismissing” category of the AAI. The avoidant person clearly acknowledged anxiety about getting too close to another, whereas the dismissive individual reported no subjective distress. Faced with the needs to include both aspects of avoidance, Bartholomew and her colleagues (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991; Bartholomew & Shaver, 1998) proposed a new conceptual framework consisting of four categories across two dimensions. Figure 12.2 illustrates this typology which operationalized Bowlby’s (1973) view that working models of the self and of others are interrelated. People are thought to develop expectations about how reliably their significant others will behave in close relationships, as well as expectations about how worthy or unworthy they are of care and support. Four categories of attachment orientation are defined by crossing the working model of self with the working model of others. FIGURE 12.2 Bartholomew’s typology: A four-category model of adult attachment categories. SOURCE: Bartholomew, K., & Shaver, P. (1998). Methods of assessing adult attachment: Do they converge? in J. A. Simpson and W. S. Rholes (Eds.), Attachment theory and close relationships (pp. 25–45). New York, NY: Guilford Press. Used by permissions of Guilford Publications, Inc. In Bartholomew’s typology, secure individuals have internalized a positive sense of themselves along with positive models of others. In general, they expect others to be available and supportive of their needs in close relationships. They are comfortable with emotional closeness but are also reasonably autonomous. Individuals classified as preoccupied hold positive models of others but negative models of themselves. Others are viewed as not valuing the preoccupied person as much as he values them. Preoccupied attachment is marked by emotional demandingness, anxiety about gaining acceptance from others, fear of and hypervigilance to cues of rejection, and excessive preoccupation with relationships. The avoidant category is subdivided into two, based on reports of felt distress. Dismissing individuals are characterized by a positive model of the self but a negative model of the other. Denying the need for close relationships permits these adults to maintain a sense of superiority while devaluing the importance of others to their well-being. Self-sufficiency is preferred, and anxiety about attachment relationships is inhibited. A fearful attachment is the product of negative models of both self and others. For individuals with this style, attachments are desirable but seen as out of reach. Their desire for close relationships with others is thwarted by fear of rejection, and ultimately they withdraw. A high level of distress surrounds attachment themes. The use of categories such as the ones we have just described is intuitively understandable and attractive but poses a number of problems. There is a danger of failing to recognize that individual differences often exist on a continuum, reflecting the degree to which a certain tendency is exhibited (e.g., high to low levels of anxiety), as opposed to differences in kind (highly anxious vs. not anxious). Therefore, measurements that place people in quadrants will undoubtedly mask the continuity that actually exists along the underlying dimensions. This kind of categorization may actually underestimate the real continuity of attachment patterns from childhood to adulthood and diminish the strength of associations between attachment research from the parental and romantic traditions (Fraley & Waller, 1998). It may be convenient to use a typology, but a number of studies suggest that attachment scales are really measuring two continuous dimensions: avoidance and anxiety (e.g., Brennan, Clark, & Shaver, 1998; Haydon, Roisman, & Burt, 2012; Roisman, Fraley, & Belsky, 2007; Roisman, 2009). For helping professionals, a dimensional perspective may make it easier to think of individuals as operating within a range of possible behaviors. Specific attachment patterns should be viewed as tendencies to perceive and act in certain ways but not as guarantees that individuals will always operate according to type. So clinicians and other helpers should avoid “typecasting” clients on the basis of attachment categories that are fixed and orthogonal, a practice that can distort clinical judgment by acting as a cognitive bias or stereotype. It may be more helpful to keep in mind that the most basic issues involved in relationships concern a person’s level of anxiety about social interaction and his level of approach or avoidance. The prototypical classifications may best represent individuals with very pronounced characteristics at the extremes of the anxiety-avoidance dimensions. It is probably more accurate to think of people having particular attachment styles rather than classifications, which is a less forgiving term. It may also be helpful to keep in mind that there is wide variability in behavioral expression of anxiety and of approach-avoidance in relationships. Research on Young Adult Dyadic Relationships Western research in the peer/romantic tradition has uncovered a number of interesting aspects of dyadic relationship patterns that are related to attachment style. The focus of most of this work has been the exploration of how individual differences in attachment orientations play out in areas of social interaction. Let us take a brief look at some of the results of these investigations in areas of concern to young adults: partner selection, satisfaction with and stability of relationships, and communication and conflict resolution styles. When appropriate, we will also consider how gender differences mediate these relationships. Partner Selection. Attachment theory offers an intuitively reasonable framework for understanding why partners choose one another. First, secure individuals, who neither avoid intimacy nor are desperately in search of it, should be more likely to seek out balanced partners like themselves. Research indicates that secure individuals tend to be paired more often with other secure rather than insecure partners (Senchak & Leonard, 1992). Mate selection may be influenced by one’s adult attachment status: Secure individuals are likely to be paired with other secure individuals. Insecure individuals, according to attachment theory, should also be likely to select partners who confirm their expectations or working models of close relationships. Avoidant partners, who are fearful or dismissing of intimacy, expect partners to cling and overwhelm them with their demandingness. Anxious partners, who crave closeness, may expect rejection and believe that their needs for intimacy will go unmet. Thus, a certain synergy might propel an avoidant individual to pair with an anxious one, fulfilling expectations of both partners. Several studies have documented the fact that avoidant-avoidant and anxious-anxious pairings are rare. In Kirkpatrick and Davis’s (1994) study of 354 heterosexual couples, not a single couple showed either of these patterns. From the perspective of attachment theory, such symmetrical matches would not make sense because they do not fit the expectations predicted from working models. What is far more likely is the complementary pairing of avoidant with anxious mates, and several studies have found a preponderance of anxious-ambivalent matches among insecure individuals (Collins & Read, 1990; Kirkpatrick & Davis, 1994; Pietromonaco & Carnelley, 1994; Simpson, 1990). At this point, although the findings match the predictions of attachment theory, it is unclear whether romantic partners actually enter relationships with these complementary attachment styles or whether something in the nature of the relationship alters the attachment style. As you will see in Box 12.1, attachment styles can change with experience in a romantic relationship, but the probability of change is not large. Although distribution of attachment classification is independent of gender, gender-related stereotypes might be one possible contributor to changes in relationship quality over time. While traditional western stereotypes for masculinity might encourage greater emotional distance for males, recent cross-cultural research shows that dismissiveness in relationships is not characteristic of males in many non-western cultures (Schmitt, 2008). Intimacy, Satisfaction, and Stability of Relationships. Consistent with attachment theory, the attachment styles of romantic partners help predict their emotional closeness and mutual acceptance—the intimacy of their relationships (e.g., Scharf et al., 2004). The quantity and quality of both caregiving and sexual experience are affected (see Simpson & Rholes, 2010). Highly avoidant partners tend to provide less physical comfort to their partners and their care tends to be less sensitive and nurturing. With primary romantic partners they engage in sex less frequently than secure people, even though they might be more inclined than others to have casual, uncommitted sex. Highly anxious partners are more controlling and intrusive in their caregiving than secure partners, and they are more likely to view sexual relations as a way of avoiding rejection and strengthening their attachment (see Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). Not surprisingly, feelings of commitment and relationship satisfaction are also tied to people’s attachment styles. Some studies assess attachment status at one time and follow up later with assessments of partners’ interactions and/or feelings about their relationships (e.g., Holland & Roisman, 2010; Kirkpatrick & Davis, 1994; Simpson, 1990). Secure individuals tend to experience more positive and less negative emotion, have more harmonious interactions with their partners, and report greater satisfaction in their relationships than those who are insecure. They also report more trust, commitment, and interdependence. Highly avoidant partners report weaker interdependence and less commitment; highly anxious people are more likely to say that their relationships lack trust. There are also some interesting gender differences. Avoidant males experience less distress when their relationships end than others, but that is not the case for avoidant females. Perhaps this is due to the commonly held perception that women are primarily responsible for maintenance of personal relationships and so they feel more accountable for the partnership’s success. Box 12.1: The Benefits of Love: Stability and Change in Adult Attachment Styles A child’s attachment status can change if the caregiving environment changes. We saw in Chapter 4, for example, that major disruptions of family life, such as parents’ divorce or loss of employment, can impact the quality of care a child receives and alter the security of the child’s attachment. Is an adult’s attachment style open to revision? If so, it seems likely that such change would happen primarily in the context of major relationship shifts—after marriage, or with parenting, or because of the dissolution of an intimate partnership. Crowell, Treboux, and Waters (2002) studied stability and change in young adults’ attachment representations after they were married, expecting that although stability might be the rule, the intimacy and intensity of marital relationships could be especially conducive to positive change for some individuals. One hundred fifty-seven couples, averaging about 24 years old, were recruited for the study when they sought marriage licenses in one county of New York State. None was previously married and none had children. They had already been together for an average of 51 months, although most (about 67%) were still living separately, usually with their parents. These young men and women were tested 3 months before and 18 months after their weddings. At each assessment they were given an attachment classification based on an Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). In addition, participants completed a “Family Behavior Survey,” answering questions about amount of happiness, discord, and aggression in their relationship. Finally, each partner participated in a “Current Relationship Interview.” In these interviews, participants were required to use adjectives to characterize their own and their partners’ behaviors, and they had to provide examples that supported those descriptions. They also talked about what factors were important aspects of, and influences on, their relationships, and about qualities of their interaction in different circumstances, such as when one partner was sick or upset. From these interviews, the researchers assigned each participant a relationship rating. A relationship, like an attachment status, could be classified as “secure,” “dismissing,” “preoccupied,” or “unresolved.” Individuals whose relationships were secure, for example, were likely to report examples of shared comfort and support, saw their partnership as an opportunity for both partners to grow, and spoke coherently about the importance of attachment elements, like emotional closeness. In dismissive relationships, individuals tended to express support for their partners only conditionally, that is, only for concerns that they regarded as important. They also talked more about the material or personal goals they had for their relationship (e.g., we’ll be buying a house together) than they did about factors like their emotional bond. In preoccupied relationships, partners spoke of feeling anxious about their partners’ expressed concerns and about the relationship, sometimes manifesting that anxiety as anger or confusion. As expected, for the majority of participants (78%), attachment status remained stable through the marriage transition. This was especially true of those who began with a secure attachment. The relationships formed by secure partners were also more secure. As we would expect from other studies, the partnerships of secure individuals were more intimate from the beginning, and they had fewer difficulties, like arguments or verbal aggression, during the first 18 months of marriage. According to attachment theory, a working model of attachment should be fairly stable by adulthood, representing a characteristic state of mind in relationship contexts that affects the behavior of the individual and that in turn affects the responses of the relationship partner. As we have seen, these mental and behavioral patterns begin in infancy, evolve through childhood and adolescence, and become more entrenched with time. As a result, we should not only expect stability in the attachment status of the typical adult, but we should also find that his relationships tend to reflect his attachment style. However, the idea of a “working model” is that it can be influenced by new input. If a new relationship provides truly different interactive experiences from those that have come before, then change is possible (Bowlby, 1988). Crowell et al. (2002) found that nearly all secure individuals remained secure at the end of the study, but over 20% of individuals who were insecure at the beginning of the study were secure by the second assessment. Those who changed were more likely to have been classified as preoccupied than dismissive at the beginning of the study. It may be that because dismissive individuals tend to avoid intimacy, they are less likely to experience the kinds of support that can transform one’s expectations of relationships. The “became secure” participants were no more likely than the “stable insecure” participants to be paired with a secure partner, suggesting that “a committed, devoted, but insecure partner can be as effective as a secure partner in fostering growth and change, and may even be relatively tolerant and supportive of a partner’s secure-base ‘missteps’” (p. 476). The telling difference between the “became secure” and the “stable insecure” groups was that the “became secure” group had more positive relationships, even before the wedding. They were more intimate, happy, and passionate, and there was somewhat less discord than in the relationships of the “stable insecure” participants. The “became secure” group also tended to have more education and to have lived away from parents prior to marriage. “This suggests that experiences and opportunity in such settings (e.g., exposure to new ideas, new people, and new relationships), as well as physical and psychological distance from parents, facilitate the reconceptualization of childhood attachment relationships” (p. 476). If we think of the parent–child relationship as a child’s “first love,” it does indeed seem that love can be sweeter the second time around. The lowest levels of satisfaction are usually reported by couples composed of avoidant men and anxious women (e.g., Kirkpatrick & David, 1994). Yet these matches are typically about as stable as matches between more satisfied, secure partners. The couples who are most vulnerable to break up seem to be those made up of anxious men and avoidant women. Once again, this may have something to do with women being the stereotypical tenders of relationships. Avoidant women may be less skilled at accommodating, or less motivated to accommodate, the needs of the more dependent partner. Anxious women, overly concerned with possibilities of abandonment, might be more willing to do what it takes to maintain a relationship with an avoidant partner, perhaps explaining the high level of stability in these relationships. Communication Style and Conflict Resolution. Consider for a moment a problem that you experienced at some time in one of your close relationships. Now reflect on how you dealt with that problem. Was your response typical of the way you usually deal with relationship problems? You undoubtedly know, by virtue of your training, that when faced with a relationship’s inevitable glitches, it is a good idea to be open, nondefensive, reasonably assertive, and yet flexible enough to compromise. Keeping a clear head so that problem solving can be effective is another requirement. Easier said than done, you’re probably thinking! Why is it often so hard to do this well? One reason is that conflict and communication in close relationships frequently have one or more subtexts: love, loss, trust, and abandonment, to name a few. In short, conflicts are stressful, they elicit emotions, and, perhaps, they can trigger the patterns of emotion regulation learned in the earliest of attachment relationships. Many studies have documented the advantages of attachment security for interpersonal communication (e.g., Haydon, Collins, et al., 2012; Holland & Roisman, 2010; Keelan, Dion, & Dion, 1998; Mikulincer & Arad, 1999). Secure individuals display more reciprocity and flexibility in communication. Greater self-disclosure characterizes the communication of secure and anxious groups as compared to avoidant ones. Several studies also document the advantages of having a secure orientation when it comes to solving problems (Pistole, 1989). In general, secure individuals are more apt to compromise in ways that are mutually beneficial. Avoidant individuals tend to be more uncompromising, whereas anxious individuals tend to give in. What actually happens when a couple has to deal with conflict in the relationship? According to attachment theory, the conflict produces stress, which activates the attachment system, makes the working models more accessible and influences how affect gets regulated. Simpson, Rholes, and Phillips (1996) asked 123 heterosexual couples, who had been dating from 6 months to 2 years, to discuss problems in their relationships. Participants were videotaped, and their interactions were rated by observers. Secure individuals were less defensive than insecure ones and held the most favorable views of their partners after discussing a major problem. Avoidant participants kept the greatest emotional distance in the discussion. Presumably uncomfortable with the expression of emotion, they appeared to minimize personal involvement. By the same token, they did not display evidence of anger, distress, or less positive views of their partners. Avoidant men provided less warmth and supportiveness to their partners, consistent with theoretical predictions. In contrast, avoidant women did not display this pattern in this study. The strength of society’s mandate that women be relationship caretakers might, in certain circumstances, override avoidant dispositions. But this is not the case in every close relationship. In at least one other study, both men and women with avoidant styles were less likely to give emotional support to close friends (Phillips, Simpson, Lanigan, & Rholes, 1995). Ambivalent partners in the study by Simpson and colleagues (1996) reacted with the most negative emotion to the discussion of problems, displaying high levels of stress and anxiety during the interaction. They also reported feeling more hostility and anger toward their partners after the session. Ambivalent couples report more disruptions and more shifts in satisfaction in general when compared to other types (Tidwell, Reis, & Shaver, 1996). Consistent with attachment theory, these individuals expect their partners to fail at meeting their needs in stressful situations. Rholes and his colleagues (Rholes, Simpson, & Stevens, 1998) explain the phenomenon in this way: Conflict elicits a cascade of unpleasant feelings in ambivalent persons, and it should raise doubts about the quality and viability of their current partner and relationship. Moreover, if fears of abandonment become salient, ambivalent partners ought to derogate the partner and relationship to minimize or “prepare for” potential loss. Persons who are not ambivalent, in contrast, may not experience conflict as aversive, but as an occasion in which open communication and the joint, constructive sharing of feelings can occur. (pp. 181–182) Attachment style affects not only a couple’s interactions in conflict situations. It also affects their physiological responses. We noted earlier that dismissive and preoccupied individuals appear to have distinctive physiological responses in situations that arouse the attachment system, such as participation in the AAI. Dismissive people tend to show increased electrodermal reactivity (i.e., increased skin conductance), which is associated with effortful emotional inhibition, whereas preoccupied people may show increased heart rate, associated with higher behavioral activation. Roisman (2007) observed both young engaged couples (ages 18 to 30) and older couples (older than 50, married for at least 15 years). After completing the AAI, the couples were asked to identify and discuss a problem area in their relationship and to try to resolve it. In these conflict discussions, dismissive individuals showed increased electrodermal reactivity and preoccupied individuals showed increased heart rate, regardless of age or length of relationship. In contrast, secure individuals showed little physiological change in these mildly stressful conversations. (Similar findings are reported by Holland & Roisman, 2010). The physiological data are consistent with the idea that dismissive adults are motivated to avoid their partners when asked to resolve problems in the relationship, whereas preoccupied adults tend to be emotionally overinvolved in their relationships. In general, attachment theory serves as a useful template for conceptualizing the universal human needs served by close, interpersonal relationships as well as the systematic differences individuals display in their personal associations. Clinicians are already very familiar with the notion that certain qualities of family relationships experienced early in life tend to get repeated in later relationships. Although not derivative of attachment theory per se, psychoanalytic and some family therapy approaches, such as Bowen’s (1978), advise clients to examine the nature of conflicted childhood relationships within one’s family of origin in an effort to achieve insight and gain the freedom to make more adaptive relationship choices in the present. WORK For most young adults, the launching of a vocational life is as important a developmental task as the process of forming or reforming attachments. What are the key elements in a successful launch? A large body of theory and research has addressed this question. The theories share in common a general notion that career success and satisfaction depend heavily on matching the characteristics of an individual and the demands of a job. If this notion is correct, then self-knowledge is a critical element in career decision making. Thus, not only is establishing an occupational role an important part of identity or self-concept development, it is also an emergent property of that process. The stronger our sense of who we are as we become adults, the more likely we are to make good career choices. Two classic theories of career development will illustrate. Some Theories of the Career Development Process This career counselor, following John Holland’s theory of personality-environment types, helps a college student think about and narrow down a diverse set of career interests and choose a major. What personality type does this young woman appear to have? Holland’s Theory of Personality–Environment Types Holland (e.g., 1985, 1997) suggests that by early adulthood each individual has a modal personal orientation: a typical and preferred style or approach to dealing with social and environmental tasks. Holland proposed that most people can be categorized as having one of six modal orientations (described in Table 12.2), which can be seen as part of the individual’s personality. According to Holland, a job or career typically makes demands on an individual that are compatible with one or more of these interactive types. That is, a job can be construed as creating an environment within which a certain personal orientation will lead to both success and happiness. For example, one of the personal orientation types is “social.” A social type is likely to be sociable, friendly, cooperative, kind, tactful, and understanding and is often a good match to occupations that involve working with others to educate, to cure, or to enlighten them—such as counseling or social work. A contrasting type is the “enterprising” individual. He too is likely to be sociable, but more domineering, energetic, ambitious, talkative, and attention getting. He is also likely to be more effective in vocational tasks that involve maneuvering others to achieve goals, such as reaching a certain level of sales, or more efficiently delivering services as a salesperson, for instance, or an executive. Thus, each type of modal personal orientation, such as social or enterprising, is also a type of vocational environment. Usually, neither individuals nor environments fall neatly into only one “type.” Holland and his colleagues have developed coding systems for rating both individuals and environments. In these systems, three-letter codes indicate the most characteristic style for the individual (e.g., Holland, Viernstein, Kuo, Karweit, & Blum, 1970) or the environment (e.g., Gottfredson, Holland, & Ogawa, 1982), as well as the second and third most characteristic styles. So, for example, a person (or environment) might be coded RIS, meaning primarily realistic (R), secondarily investigative (I), and finally social (S). (See Table 12.2 for some characteristics of these types for individuals.) Studies spanning several decades have corroborated the notion that a good fit between modal orientation (also called personal style) and job characteristics is correlated with job satisfaction, performance, and stability, as well as feelings of personal well-being (for reviews see Kristof-Brown, Zimmerman, & Johnson, 2005; Nye, Su, Rounds, & Drasgow, 2012; Spokane & Cruza-Guet, 2005). For example, Gottfredson and Holland (1990) studied young adult bank tellers for 4 months after they were first hired. Congruence between an individual’s personal style and job type was clearly correlated with job satisfaction. In two studies of school teachers, Meir (1989) examined several kinds of congruence or fit: between personal style and job type, between personal style and outside activities (avocations), and between the individual’s particular skills and opportunities to use those skills on the job. All three kinds of congruence appeared to contribute to the participants’ reported feelings of well-being. A person’s happiness seems to be closely linked to the fit between his personality characteristics and both his work, as Holland predicted, and his leisure pursuits. It appears that creating a good match in one arena can help compensate for a lack of congruence in another. One intriguing area of research on person-job fit explores how employees can actively improve fit by shaping their jobs to some extent. In this process, called job crafting, employees may initiate change in a number of different ways: by the kinds of tasks they choose or projects they launch, by negotiating with employers to modify job content, by proactively seeking feedback, by changing aspects of their jobs that involve relationships, and so on (Tims, Bakker, & Derks, 2012). You might think that job crafting opportunities would be limited to high level positions that allow employees a great deal of autonomy, but the data suggest that it happens at all levels of employment, especially among workers with good self-esteem, feelings of self-efficacy (see discussion later in this chapter), and self-regulation skills (Bakker, 2011). In one example, some nurses added the task of relating with and seeking information from patients’ families to their specified tasks of patient care, improving the fit between their social needs and their job requirements (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). Lower ranking employees do seem to have different obstacles to face in job crafting than higher ranking employees. In particular, they are more likely to have to change others’ expectations in order to modify their jobs to fit their own personal styles (Berg, Wrzesniewski, & Dutton, 2010). TABLE 12.2 Some Characteristics of Holland’s Personality Types REALISTIC INVESTIGATIVE ARTISTIC Conforming Analytical Complicated Dogmatic Cautious Disorderly Genuine Complex Emotional Hardheaded Critical Expressive Inflexible Curious Idealistic Materialistic Independent Imaginative Natural Intellectual Impractical Normal Introverted Impulsive Persistent Pessimistic Independent Practical Precise Introspective Realistic Radical Intuitive Reserved Rational Nonconforming Robust Reserved Open Self-effacing Retiring Original Uninsightful Unassuming Sensitive SOCIAL ENTERPRISING CONVENTIONAL Agreeable Acquisitive Careful Cooperative Adventurous Conforming Empathic Ambitious Conscientious Friendly Assertive Dogmatic Generous Domineering Efficient Helpful Energetic Inflexible Idealistic Enthusiastic Inhibited Kind Excitement seeking Methodical Patient Exhibitionistic Obedient Persuasive Extroverted Orderly Responsible Forceful Persistent Sociable Optimistic Practical Tactful Resourceful Thorough Understanding Self-confident Thrifty Warm Sociable Unimaginative Super’s Developmental Approach Super (e.g., 1972, 1984, 1990) agrees with Holland’s notion that a satisfying work life is most likely when an individual’s personal characteristics are well matched to the demands of a job. His theorizing about career development, however, focuses less on specifying personal style or job types and more on describing the developmental processes that determine both the emergence of one’s vocational self-concept and the multiple factors that influence job choices throughout the life span. Vocational self-concept is part of one’s total identity. It includes ideas about which qualities of the self would (or would not) provide a match to the requirements of an occupation (Super, 1984). Vocational self-concept is a function of two things: first, a person’s view of his personal or psychological characteristics, and second, how he assesses his life circumstances, such as the limits or opportunities created by economic conditions; by his socioeconomic status; by his family, friendship network, and community; and so on. Super described a series of typical life stages in the development of vocational self-concept and experience, beginning in childhood. In the growth stage (up to age 14 or so), children are developing many elements of identity that will have a bearing on vocational self-concept, including ideas about their interests, attitudes, skills, and needs. In the exploratory stage, which includes adolescence and young adulthood up to about age 24, vocational self-concept is tentatively narrowed down, but often career choices are not finalized. General vocational goals are formulated in the earlier part of this stage (crystallization), gradually leading to the identification of more specific vocational preferences (specification), and finally to the completion of education along with entry into full-time employment (implementation). In the establishment stage, from about 25 to 44, work experiences provide the laboratory within which the matching of vocational self-concept and job settings is tried out, sometimes reevaluated, sometimes confirmed, and eventually stabilized (stabilization). From about 45 to 64, in the maintenance stage, an individual makes ongoing adjustments to improve his work situation, often achieving more advanced status and seniority (consolidation). If not, this can also be a time of increasing frustration with work. Finally, in the decline stage, right before and after 65 for most people, the career winds down, with retirement planning and actual retirement taking precedence over career advancement and consolidation. Note that although these are typical life stages, at least partially verified by longitudinal research (e.g., Super & Overstreet, 1960), an individual can go through additional sequences of crystallization, specification, implementation, and stabilization when life circumstances change. These “mini-cycles” of reevaluation can be initiated by any number of events: disappointment with a career choice, job loss, changes in family life, and so on. Note the similarity to MAMA cycles in identity development described in Chapter 9. Perhaps Super’s most important insight is his recognition that career development is a continuing process. It serves as both a source of and an outgrowth of an individual’s overall personal growth. For Super, a career is the life course of a person encountering a series of developmental tasks and attempting to handle them in such a way as to become the kind of person he or she wants to become. With a changing self and changing situations, the matching process is never really completed. (Super, 1990, pp. 225–226) Research indicates that many aspects of a job beyond compatibility with one’s interests and talents influence how rewarding it is. Quality of supervision, participation in decision making, interaction with others on the job, geographic location, personal health, pay, and a number of other factors are also correlated with job satisfaction and work engagement (e.g., Allen & Finkelstein, 2003; Bakker, 2011; Decker & Borgen, 1993; Perry-Jenkins, Repetti, & Crouter, 2000; Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002). However, theories and research such as Holland’s and Super’s make the powerful suggestion that even when all these other factors are acceptable, a person’s work responsibilities can be incompatible with his or her personality characteristics. Under these circumstances, although a hardworking individual could succeed in meeting his responsibilities, real satisfaction and the opportunity to truly excel are likely to elude him. We will have more to say about personality characteristics in Chapter 13. Classic career development theories emphasize the importance of fitting personal characteristics to the demands of the job. Self-knowledge is seen as critical to making the right career choices. The interdependence of career and self-development is an important focus of some career counseling approaches. McAuliffe (1993), for example, describes a developmentally oriented career counseling system that has an Eriksonian flavor. He argues that a central role of the counselor is to help clients address the following key question: “Who am I becoming and how shall I express this emerging self?” He points out that many clients may begin counseling with a different, but less helpful, way of conceptualizing their career issues. Some, for example, may be asking themselves, “What does my community, my family, my ethnic or religious group expect of me?” That is, they frame the issue such that their career, and their self-definition, is embedded in interpersonal relationships, not authored from within. Perhaps for this group, career identity represents a closed, rather than a constructed, facet of their identity (see Chapter 9). Other clients, especially those facing some career threat, such as downsizing, may begin with the question, “How do I maintain the current form I am in?” With this conceptual framework the self is embedded in what the person has always done, so that new career paths, expressing other needs or dimensions of the self, are not imaginable. The task for helpers may be to facilitate the development of a new, personally constructed sense of self as worker. For many clients, then, career counseling may need to begin with help in reframing the way one construes the self. In McAuliffe’s words, it is the counselor’s challenge to assist clients in their transformations of meaning making. . . . For example, for the young adult college student whose seemingly simple dilemma is to choose between pursuing a parent-approved pre-medical track or to consider the internal voice that draws her to the social sciences, counseling would operate on two levels: one to weigh the pros and cons of various fields of study and the other to support and challenge the person so that the tacit assumptions about “who’s in charge” become conscious, so that the dissonant voice that implicitly calls the person to author his or her own career can be considered. (1993, pp. 25–26) The Realities of Career Development in Young Adulthood For young adults launching a work life, many variables influence the speed and form of that process. Consider the prospects of two 18-year-olds, Akil and Jarod, who have just graduated from high school. Akil comes from a middle-class family. His parents take great pride in being the first ones in their own families to have graduated from college and to provide their children with a comfortable middle-class life. They expect their children to attend college and to select careers that will help them maintain or even improve on their socioeconomic status. They have several children to educate, but they are quite savvy about how to finance a college education, having put themselves through college, and they are convinced that college is a necessity for career success. Akil sees college as a necessary step on his way to a professional career, although his future plans are not specific. He expects his college experience to help him figure out what profession to enter. When Mak’s early career expectations were not fulfilled, he searched for ways to make money to support himself. Focusing on his interests and his education, he has a job that he finds personally satisfying. The expectations that Jarod and his family have are quite different. Jarod’s mother earns low wages working for a janitorial service, and she often puts in overtime to help make ends meet. Neither she nor Jarod’s father (from whom she is estranged) completed high school, and both are quite proud that Jarod has. However, they have never even considered the possibility of college for Jarod. As they see it, he has completed his education and should now be able to earn a living. His mother expects him to find his own apartment to relieve the crowding in her small place. Jarod himself is quite unsure of what he can do in the world of work. He is simply hoping to find a job, any job, one that will give him a start, providing an opportunity to learn a skill and to find a niche. Even if these two young men happen to have similar interests and personalities, their careers are likely to follow very different trajectories, largely because of the differences in their socioeconomic class, their families’ views of education, and the opportunities that they perceive to be available to them. In the following sections, we will consider what the typical course of career development is for individuals like Akil and Jarod. We will specifically examine the characteristics of the process when young people move on to college from high school and when they do not. We will also consider the impact of other major factors on one’s early career experiences, factors such as immediate environment, social class, race, and gender. College Trajectories: Aspirations and Outcomes In the United States, the percentage of high school students who say they plan to earn a bachelor’s degree has skyrocketed in the past half century. By 2004, 89 percent of high school graduates aspired to do so (Rosenbaum, Stephan, & Rosenbaum, 2010). Young adults entering college have many hopes and expectations for the college years. Some of their concerns are incidental to the educational setting and are focused on either maintaining or establishing social networks or finding intimate relationships—the pursuit of love. But many of their hopes are relevant to work, their vocational lives. Some 1st-year students expect the college years to be a time of self-development, when they will “construct a philosophy of life” and become more clear about the course their adult lives might take. For most, very practical, work-related issues are among their highest priorities. The majority of students entering college indicate that “to get a better job” and “to make more money” are important reasons why they chose to go to college. Figure 12.3 illustrates that more recent cohorts of college students are even more likely to emphasize these kinds of practical career concerns than students did 20 or 30 years ago (Pryor et al., 2012). The first vocationally relevant decision that students make is the choice of a major. Those students who are career oriented tend to decide on an occupation first and then select a major, whereas students more focused on self-development tend to select a major first and then consider possible occupational choices (Goodson, 1978). A majority of students change their majors at least once during college, although the changes they make are usually among related disciplines (Herr, Cramer, & Niles, 2003). There are substantial cohort differences regarding which majors and occupations are more popular with students. For example, Astin (1993) compared two large samples of college students who entered college 17 years apart, the first in 1968 and the second in 1985. Members of the 1985 cohort were more likely to want careers in business, law, or medicine and less likely to choose teaching or scientific research than members of the 1968 sample. Surveys of more recent cohorts indicate that the most popular majors in the 1990s were business, psychology, engineering, education, English literature, and accounting (Murray, 1996). By 2010 first-year college students were showing record-high interest in majors related to health careers, such as nursing, and the biological sciences. Although a smaller percentage chose business than previously, it continued to be the most popular major (Higher Education Research Institute, 2004; Pryor et al., 2012). FIGURE 12.3 What college students consider important reasons for attending college. SOURCE: © 2013 The Regents of the University of California. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission of John Pryor, Higher Education Research Institute. Reflecting social and political change over recent decades, women often choose occupations traditionally occupied by men. We have seen that theorists such as Holland and Super argue that career choices often are, and should be, based on one’s personal characteristics. What other factors, besides self-concept or personal style, might influence the choice of a major in college, and ultimately the choice of a career? First, cohort changes in choice of majors indicate that social and economic conditions influence choice of major. This includes economic upturns and downturns, change in the kinds of goods and services that are in demand, shifts in population size and composition, advances in technology, and developments in political and legal philosophy, such as in the area of civil rights law. Some of the most interesting changes in majors and occupational choices across recent decades are gender specific and appear to reflect political and social trends in our beliefs about the role of women in society. The Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA reports that the proportion of women majoring in traditionally male-dominated fields, such as the biological sciences, the physical sciences, engineering, prelaw, premed, and business, increased dramatically in the last three decades of the twentieth century, as hiring patterns in related fields became less gender biased than they once were (Dey & Hurtado, 1999). Social Class, Ethnicity, and Race In addition to the influence of social, civil, and economic changes, other more stable factors appear to play a role. As the stories of Akil and Jarod indicate, socioeconomic status (SES) is important in shaping the expectations of young people, heavily influencing the educational choices that they make and the jobs to which they aspire. Research indicates that other family and environmental factors, such as race and ethnicity, also affect the choice of whether to go to college. Individuals from minority and low-SES groups are less likely than other groups to make the college choice. If an individual enrolls in college, are a student’s career aspirations affected by such variables? Some indicators suggest that the answer is yes. To illustrate, the probability of retention, staying in college long enough to graduate, is related to SES (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012). The influence of SES on retention is probably multifaceted. Often, low income high school students expect to go to college, and are encouraged to do so, but their high schools often do not provide adequate academic preparation (e.g., little or no access to AP courses or SAT preparation), and they may offer little access to counseling services designed to inform them of what will be required of them as they move on to college (Rosenbaum et al., 2010). Students who enroll in a 2- or 4-year institution often find that they must take remedial classes that are a financial drain, but which do not provide college credit. Lower SES students also have more problems paying for college, and they may receive less support from family and friends to remain in college than higher SES students do (e.g., Ryland, Riordan, & Brack, 1994). Being of minority status is also linked to lower rates of retention (see Aud, KewalRamani, & Frohlich, 2011). Black and Native American students are at particular risk for dropping out, a problem that may be partially a result of the stress of dealing with minority status, such as feeling unwelcome or unsupported in predominantly White institutions (e.g., Newman & Newman, 1999; see Figure 12.4). How engaged and involved students feel in academic and social activities is clearly connected to retention rates (e.g., Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). A student’s “internal sense of validation”—a feeling that the institution and its representatives believe in and will support the student’s ability to succeed—may be especially important here (Hurtado, Cuellar, & Guillermo-Wann, 2011). Institutions vary in how likely they are to create an inclusive educational environment where both faculty and staff engage in behaviors that support the success of individual students. What kinds of behaviors are important? A study of nearly 4,500 students from a wide range of 2- and 4-year institutions uncovered several key experiences that promoted students feelings of validation (Hurtado et al., 2011). First, students felt “academic validation in the classroom” when their instructors indicated that they were keyed into students’ level of understanding, would provide students with adequate feedback, valued students’ in-class contributions, were available to meet outside of class, encouraged questions and participation, and demonstrated concern for students. Students felt “general interpersonal validation” when faculty and staff showed interest in them, recognized students’ achievements, believed in their potential, and encouraged students to get involved in campus activities. Unfortunately, minority students consistently reported experiencing substantially less validation, both academic and interpersonal, than White students. FIGURE 12.4 Percentage of students graduating within six years of enrollment at 4-year colleges and universities (by first year of enrollment). SOURCE: National Center for Education Statistics (2012). Do factors such as SES affect one’s choice of a college major? There is indirect evidence that they can. For example, students attending private universities are more likely to choose premed majors than students attending public 4-year colleges, and students at public institutions are more likely to choose school teaching as a career than students at private universities (Astin, 1993). Given that SES has some influence on the choice of private versus public educational facilities, it appears that SES may contribute to these differences. Other characteristics of the college environment also seem to influence choice of major or career (see Astin, 1993). For example, students are more likely to select college teaching as a career if they attend smaller colleges that provide high levels of student–faculty interaction, opportunities for independent research, and written evaluations of students’ work. African American students are more likely to choose premed if they attend a traditionally Black college. Membership in a fraternity or sorority is linked to greater tendencies to select business or prelaw as a major. Of course, whether one attends a small college or a Black college, or joins a sorority or fraternity, is probably influenced by preexisting characteristics of the student. For example, extroverts appear to be more attracted to Greek life on campus than introverts (e.g., Sher, Bartholow, & Nanda, 2001). Therefore, it is difficult to say whether such features of college life have a causal influence on students’ major or career choices or whether students who favor such environments also tend to prefer certain fields of study. It seems likely that the causal connections work both ways. One role that the college experience seems to play in choosing a major and ultimately a career is that it provides opportunities to try out different choices with relatively little cost. Some students enter college aspiring to be lawyers or physicians or engineers, for example, only to find that the prelaw, premed, or engineering course work is not suitable to their interests or abilities. Such majors often lose enrollment as students move through their college years. Other majors tend to draw increasing numbers over the college years. Education and business majors are among these. Interestingly, some of the more academically challenging fields also increase their draw somewhat after students get a taste of college, fields like scientific research and college teaching (see Astin, 1993; Bright, Pryor, Wilkenfeld, & Earl, 2005). Since one’s choice of a college major is associated with college success as well as career choice, career counseling in college should begin with advisement on choice of a major. Unfortunately, leaving this task to relatively untrained faculty advisors seems to be insufficient for helping students to make good choices. Herr et al. (2003), in their text on career guidance throughout the life span, argue that career guidance professionals at the college level should provide students with assistance in selecting a major. In pursuit of this and other career goals, even 1st-year students should have help available in self-assessment and self-analysis, as well as in decision making. It is clear that a college education plays a critical role in occupational opportunity. One’s highest educational degree is the single most important predictor of level of job entry, and level of job entry weighs more heavily than IQ or job skill in predicting career advancement. But the value of a college education goes beyond its contribution to career development. For example, being a college graduate means a greater likelihood of being healthy or of having a successful marriage. Some of the effects of higher education are probably due to the income opportunities it creates and so are career linked; others may be related to the development of critical thinking skills and flexibility in problem solving that it seems to foster (Pascarella, Bohr, Nora, & Terenzini, 1995; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991). The Forgotten Half The forgotten half was the name given by the William T. Grant Foundation Commission on Work, Family, and Citizenship (1988) to 18- to 24-year-olds who do not go to college. These were just under half of the total young adult population in the United States in 1988. They were described as the young people who build our homes, drive our buses, repair our automobiles, fix our televisions, maintain and serve our offices, schools and hospitals, and keep the production lines of our mills and factories moving. To a great extent, they determine how well the American family, economy and democracy function. They are also the thousands of young men and women who aspire to work productively but never quite “make it” to that kind of employment. For these members of the Forgotten Half, their lives as adults start in the economic limbo of unemployment, part-time jobs, and poverty wages. Many of them never break free. (1988, as cited in Halperin, 1998a, cover) Ten years later, the American Youth Policy Forum sponsored a follow-up report on the forgotten half (Halperin, 1998a). The good news is that the high school dropout rate had declined since the original report, and the numbers of high school graduates entering 2- or 4-year colleges had increased, so that the proportion of young adults with no postsecondary training had dropped several percentage points, and that drop has continued (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012). The bad news, however, is that the real income of young adults in the United States had declined, and that downward trend has also continued. The most serious losses have been experienced by those with the least education. Further, poverty rates have increased for those at every educational level, but especially for those without a college degree (see Figure 12.5 for U.S. poverty rates by education in 2009). Graduation rates for those who begin college have improved over the last decade, but still only somewhat over half complete a degree (see Figure 12.4; National Center for Education Statistics, 2012). Interestingly, the basic attitudes of young adults toward work and family do not differ regardless of whether they go to college. Young people usually rank good pay and opportunities for advancement as highly desirable features of a job. They also want their work to make a meaningful contribution to society. As for their social aspirations, young people of all backgrounds generally consider having a good marriage and having children to be important life goals for them (e.g., Hill & Yeung, 1999). FIGURE 12.5 Percentage of young adults (18- to 24-year-olds) living in poverty in the U.S. in 2009. SOURCE: Based on National Center for Education Statistics (2012). Digest of Education Statistics: 2011. Retrieved from [no longer online] http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/. Despite the broad similarities in the goals of college and noncollege youth in the United States, the chances of achieving these goals are substantially reduced for the latter group. As we have already seen, education is a key predictor of employment success, career advancement, and general success in life, so that when a young person chooses to end education with high school, he limits his options and opportunities. “Until the last few decades, young people without an education beyond high school were often able to find family-sustaining work in service industries or manufacturing operations. Today, they face lives of grinding economic struggle virtually shut out from jobs that will allow them to build assets and support children of their own” (Pennington, 2003, p. 60). A number of other factors also affect the degree to which a young person’s goals are likely to be achieved. These factors include socioeconomic status, as was the case with Jarod. Even when young people fail to attend college, coming from a family of relatively high socioeconomic status provides opportunities and advantages that youth from lower SES families usually do not have. Another important factor is race, which can have a profound impact on the probability of employment across all education levels. Finally, a variety of “behavioral obstacles,” including having a child early or out of wedlock and engaging in criminal behavior, are important determiners of whether young adults will make significant strides toward meeting their goals. Among noncollege youth, those most at risk of slipping into poverty, for example, are Blacks with criminal records who come from low-income families (e.g., Halperin, 1998b; Hill & Yeung, 1999). As we have discussed earlier, these outcomes may be the result of histories of accumulating and interlocking risks. Although many factors can contribute to a slide into poverty, adequate educational preparation is clearly the most effective avenue to avoiding poverty and to achieving the typical goals that young people have for work and family. The problems faced by noncollege youth in America are partly a function of a disorganized and inadequate system for training adolescents and young adults for the kinds of skilled employment that are personally rewarding and that can provide an adequate income to support a family. As you have already seen, it is often difficult for high school students from lower income groups to get information that helps them prepare for the rigors of college (Rosenbaum et al., 2010). Young people face similar obstacles obtaining information on how to prepare themselves for particular jobs and occupations. Recommendations for improving the lot of noncollege youth begin with ideas for improving basic skill training in public schools, including the teaching of such traditional academic skills as reading, writing, math, and speaking abilities, as well as thinking skills, self-management, and social skills. The particular concern is to improve the quality of secondary education for students who go through general or vocational (noncollege preparatory) tracks in high school. These programs are often criticized for having watered-down, boring curricula (Bailey & Morest, 1998). Next, reports on the forgotten half encourage providing high school students with better access to extensive vocational counseling; information and support for moving into post-secondary training designed to culminate with technical certificates or associates degrees; and with opportunities for work-based learning (e.g., Rosenbaum & Becker, 2011). They also suggest increasing the participation of employers in providing training and apprenticeship programs, using the community college system to create expanded opportunities for technical training, and creating community-based resources to provide young adults with information about pathways into specific occupations (Bailey & Morest, 1998; Neumark & Rothstein, 2005; Pennington, 2003). For some young adults, special training programs designed for economically disadvantaged participants who face multiple risks can be quite effective. In one longitudinal study of over 8,000 adolescents, beginning when they were 12 to 17 years old, high school mentoring programs, co-op programs, school enterprise programs, and internship/apprenticeship programs all had beneficial effects on employment and college attendance for males after graduation. For females, there were fewer benefits, but internship/apprenticeship programs led to better earnings after high school (Neumark & Rothstein, 2005). Similarly, the American Youth Policy Forum evaluated a large number of programs launched in the United States over the last several decades (see Partee, 2003; Hooker & Brand, 2009). The most successful of these helped young men and women move on to postsecondary education or to quality employment opportunities, simultaneously supporting the young adults they served and reaping economic and social benefits for their communities. For example, Job Corps, a public–private partnership administered by the U.S. Department of Labor, returned about $2.00 to society for every $1.00 invested. Private programs like Strive, operated in New York City’s Harlem, helped at-risk young adults sustain employment over multiple years. Like other effective interventions (see Box  1.2 in Chapter 1), these programs tend to have certain characteristics in common, such as implementation quality (e.g., sufficient and sustained resources, strong leadership, and professional staff development); caring and knowledgeable teachers, counselors, and mentors; high standards and expectations; and a holistic approach, meaning that they address multiple needs (e.g., providing child care and transportation, life skills and assertiveness training, individualized attention, and so on). Many researchers note that there is a particularly sinister trend that affects the forgotten half. Arrest and imprisonment for minor crimes (e.g., drug possession) have increased dramatically since the early 1970s, especially for males, such that the United States now far outdistances every other country in the world in incarceration rates (numbers of prisoners per 100,000 people; see Figure 12.6). The number of young men incarcerated in U.S. prisons more than doubled between 1986 and 1995, continued to rise slowly until 2009, when the number leveled off and started to decline slightly (Carson & Sabol, 2012; Halperin, 1998b). Minority males have been especially affected. By 2008, for example, 1 in every 15 Black males, age 18 and older, was in prison, compared to 1 in every 106 White males (The Pew Center, 2008). The disparity in minority versus White incarceration rates for males has decreased somewhat in recent years, but it remains substantial. The rate of incarceration for both White and minority women is low in comparison, but it has shown a rise in recent years as well (Mauer, 2013). For some segments of society, crime control policy . . . has regressed to the point that imprisonment is the major governmental intervention in the transition to young adulthood. . . . This means that segments of the population are cut off from voting, employment, and community organizations. This disenfranchisement will further contribute to increased unemployment and undermine family life. (Laub, 1999) Given that friendships, family ties, and a sense of belonging in a community play a significant role in a young adult’s hope for the future and chances for upward mobility, school- and community-based vocational training and counseling seem like much better alternatives than jail for many adolescent and young adult delinquents. When we consider that young adult incarceration has cascading negative effects for the families of those who are jailed as well, the importance of implementing alternative interventions is strikingly clear (e.g., Green, Ensminger, Robertson, & Juon, 2006). FIGURE 12.6 Incarceration rates (per 100,000 people) in countries around the globe. SOURCE: Based on National Center for Education Statistics (2011). America’s Youth: Transitions to Adulthood. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from [no longer online] http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2012/1012026/chapter3_3.asp. Women versus Men Traditionally, gender has been a significant factor in career development. In 1957, Super found that a variety of career patterns characterized adults in the mid-20th century in the United States. For men, the “conventional career pattern” included a period or periods of “trial work,” that is, trying out possible jobs and then launching into a stable career. The conventional career pattern for women, however, involved entry into work as a stopgap after high school or college. Once married, women tended to shift to full-time homemaking. Even in 1957, there were other patterns for both men and women that were common enough not to be considered atypical, but most of the alternative patterns also displayed gender differences. For example, women sometimes followed the “double-track career pattern,” first establishing a career and then adding a second career as homemaker. Or they might show the “interrupted career pattern,” first establishing a career, then marrying and becoming a full-time homemaker, and then shifting back to a career when home responsibilities were less pressing. Interestingly, none of the patterns Super characterized as typical of men included double-tracking or any kind of interruption based on family or homemaking concerns. How important is gender in career development today? As we have already seen, there have certainly been substantial changes relevant to gender in our culture since 1950. These changes have grown out of the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement in particular, and are also linked to technological changes such as the availability of reliable contraceptives and an increase in the use of machines to do heavy labor. Many work-related gender differences have diminished, and some have even disappeared or reversed. For example, women now enter college in larger numbers than men do, whereas up until about 1980, men outnumbered women (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2012). As we have already noted, women now often choose majors in college that traditionally were the preserve of men, such as premed and business. Women earn as many or more graduate degrees as men. Half of all MDs are now earned by women, as well as the majority of veterinary degrees. Women constitute nearly half of the employed labor force, and in 2006, women filled about 51% of executive, administrative, and managerial positions in the United States, more than doubling their representation in these kinds of jobs in 30 years (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2010). Still, the representation of women in various jobs within these categories is often linked to gender traditions. Women are particularly under-represented in fields that are math intensive, such as engineering, math, physics, chemistry, economics, and computer science (Ceci & Williams, 2010). They are over-represented in fields that involve primarily caregiving, such as nursing, social work, education, and child care (Weisgram, Bigler, & Liben, 2010). Historical changes favoring greater gender equity have occurred in most fields, however. For example, women earn 29.6% of the PhDs in mathematics today (as compared to 5.9% in 1960); males are entering fields such as nursing and child care in increasing numbers as well. Yet, gender continues to be a powerful predictor of vocational interests, more so than other individual differences, such as race or ethnicity (e.g., Fouad, 2004). Although men and women use most of the same criteria to evaluate potential careers (they try to match their interests, and they carefully consider professional advancement and income opportunities), women are more likely than men to consider relationships with people (opportunity for and kinds of) and altruistic concerns as important factors in selecting a career (e.g., Su, Rounds, & Armstrong, 2009; Weisgram et al., 2010). A greater focus on relational/social elements of career choice may help explain why women with exceptional math ability are more likely to choose paths to social and health science careers than careers in the physical sciences (Perez-Felkner, McDonald, Schneider, & Grogan, 2012). It is also interesting to note that women with outstanding math skills also tend to have outstanding verbal skills, whereas that is less likely to be true for men. As a result, such women may see themselves as having a wider range of good career options (Park, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2008). Gender differences in career choice are also influenced at least in part by gender-role beliefs and life style preferences (Ceci & Williams, 2010). Both men and women anticipate that marriage and parenting will be important to their lives, for example, but men give greater priority to their role as breadwinner in the family, and women give greater priority to their role as caregiver (e.g., Vermeulen & Minor, 1998). Overall, women seem more concerned with work-life balance (Robertson, Smeets, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2010). For example, in surveys of young, high ability adults (e.g., graduate students), women say that they work fewer hours per week than men, and when asked about how many hours per week they are willing to work on their ideal job, they choose fewer hours than men. Different role expectations are nowhere more evident than in the typical patterns of career development. There have been several noteworthy changes in career patterns for women, and to some extent for men, but these changes continue to reflect the tendency for women to focus more than men on family and child-rearing concerns at every stage of career planning. For example, despite the fact that both men and women have the right to take parental or family leaves in some companies in the United States (a right that is mandated by law in many European countries), it is quite rare for a man to exercise that right. The most dramatic change in women’s career patterns since the 1950s has been the great increase in women’s choice of a double-track pattern. To illustrate the enormity of the change, in 1950, most mothers of children under age 6 were full-time homemakers (88%). In 2009, more than 63% of U.S. mothers of preschoolers were employed, and the percentage of employed mothers continues to rise (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011). Mothers who work are described as having two careers because they typically take more responsibility for child care and daily household tasks than fathers who work, although there is an increasing tendency for men to share somewhat more equitably in homemaking responsibilities and to make job-related decisions that take into account their parenting role (e.g., Bond, Thompson, Galinsky, & Prottas, 2002). Men have also become more likely to take their wives’ careers into account in making other job-related decisions, such as whether to relocate (e.g., Gill & Haurin, 1998). Despite some improvements, old habits do die hard. Women, for example, still make less money than men (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011). Unsurprisingly, researchers find that one contribution to earnings differences is the degree to which people endorse gendered separation of roles. In fact, women who endorse this view tend to earn less than other women, and men who endorse this view tend to earn more than other men (Judge & Livingston, 2008). “Overall, . . . although gender role attitudes are becoming less traditional for men and for women, traditional gender role orientation continues to exacerbate the gender wage gap” (Judge & Livingston, p. 994). Organizational structures, possibly constructed and maintained to build in certain privileges for select groups, are slow to change. Research has demonstrated that women in male-dominated occupations are not viewed as favorably as men, despite comparable skills. Their work is evaluated more negatively than men’s, and they face more exclusion from the kinds of informal networks and social activities that often pave the way for advancement in the workplace (e.g., Eagly & Johannesen-Schmidt, 2001). Clearly, both traditional gender roles and the realities of secular change are influencing career patterns for both women and men. We will revisit the issue of dual careers and parenting in the next chapter. Work and the Development of Self-Concept As we have now seen, theorists in the arena of career development see an individual’s vocational self-concept as critical for the evolution of a successful, satisfying career. Both Holland and Super specify the importance of self-knowledge in career development: accurate assessment of one’s own style, interests, and characteristics. Super also emphasizes that one’s vocational self both emerges from one’s broader sense of identity and contributes to it. Thus, it seems that self-concept is a central force behind career development and is, in turn, a product of it. These ideas have formed the backbone of many career counseling approaches. In the following sections, we will consider how feelings and attitudes toward the self as a worker develop. What do these aspects of identity contribute to work and its role in the life of an adult and vice versa? We begin by recapping Erik Erikson’s ideas about how work and self-concept are related in development. Erikson’s Theory of Identity Development In Erikson’s (1950/1963) view of the developing self-concept, children begin to formulate a sense of themselves as workers when they first confront serious work. In both nonindustrial and industrial societies around the world, children are expected to begin to work by the time they are 5 or 6 years old. In nonindustrial societies, they work alongside adults, caring for younger children, doing household tasks, helping with farm animals, working in the fields, or hunting. They are expected both to contribute to the productive efforts of the community and to learn the skills they will need as full-fledged adults. In most industrial societies today, children’s work begins in school, where they are expected to achieve competence in basic skills, such as reading and arithmetic, that will serve them in nearly any adult work they might take on. Erikson argued that these early work experiences can provide a child with a feeling of industry, which is both a belief in his ability to master the skills and tools needed to be productive and a sense of “the pleasure of work completion by steady attention and persevering diligence” (p. 259). Feelings of industry help the child to be “an eager and absorbed unit of a productive situation” (p. 259). The child can, unfortunately, also slip into feeling inadequate and inferior if he cannot seem to master the skills that are required of him and begins to be discouraged about how effective he can be in contributing to productive work efforts. Feelings of inferiority can also begin at this point if social barriers, such as those experienced by the poor, limit a child’s opportunities to try out challenging work, provide substandard educational opportunities, or lead him to question his abilities. Thus, for Erikson, the elementary school years are a crucial time for establishing a strong sense of industry. In adolescence, teens work on fashioning an adult identity, which includes developing a sense of direction for their vocational lives. This process continues, as we have seen, well into young adulthood. Identity formation is influenced by the attitudes toward self that evolved in childhood. We can expect that young people who bring to this process a strong sense of industry will find the task of vocational self-development less cumbersome than those who are plagued by self-doubt. As you know, Erikson theorized that in adulthood the process of self-concept development continues. Individuals with a sense of who they are and what they can do are motivated to use their lives and their skills to leave a legacy for the next generation. Erikson called this a need for generativity and hypothesized that generativity motives have a strong influence on one’s work life as adults move into middle age. Concepts akin to what Erikson called “industry” and “generativity” have been the focus of intensive study in several different research traditions. In the following sections, we will take a closer look at some findings on the importance of these two aspects of self-concept for young adults. The Importance of Industry. Erikson’s ideas about one’s sense of industry are similar to what Bandura and his colleagues have called self-efficacy beliefs, meaning beliefs about our ability to exercise control over events that affect our lives (see Bandura, 1989, for a summary). A positive, optimistic sense of personal efficacy, like a feeling of industry, motivates a person to work hard at a task and to persevere even in the face of obstacles. There is evidence that high levels of achievement usually depend on “an optimistic sense of personal efficacy” (Bandura, 1989, p. 1176; Cervone & Peake, 1986; Taylor & Brown, 1988). Closely related to Bandura’s work on self-efficacy is research by Dweck and her colleagues who have studied mastery orientation and the helpless pattern in school children and in college-aged adults (see Dweck & Allison, 2008). These are two different orientations to failure. Individuals with a mastery orientation move forward optimistically even when they fail. They assume that they can succeed with further effort. They construe failure as a challenge rather than as an obstacle. Individuals with a helpless pattern, however, often begin to denigrate their abilities when they encounter failure and typically stop applying themselves or trying to improve their performance. Dweck emphasizes the importance of our theories of intelligence or ability in influencing how we deal with failure. She has found that mastery-oriented people are likely to be incremental theorists, seeing intelligence as a dynamic and malleable quality that can be increased by hard work and instruction. People who show a helpless pattern are more often entity theorists, who see intelligence or ability as a fixed, concrete thing: “You can only have a certain amount of it, so you’d better show that it’s enough and you’d better hide it if it isn’t” (Dweck, 1999, p. 20). When individuals with different orientations to failure move out of work environments where they have been successful into more challenging situations where they encounter more experiences of failure, they show different degrees of progress and different emotional reactions. Mastery-oriented people dig in and try harder and by that very effort make success more likely in the future. Helpless people tend to turn away from the new challenges. They seek tasks where they feel more certain they can succeed, settle for mediocre performance, or give up altogether. They also tend to feel more stress and shame when they find the new work they are faced with difficult. This pattern has been observed in children moving out of elementary school, where teachers often protect children from failure, into the more impersonal and competitive environment of a junior high school (e.g., Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007; Sorich & Dweck, 1996). It has also been found with young adults as they move through challenging college programs (Grant & Dweck, 2003; Robins & Pals, 1998). In both kinds of transitions, individuals with entity theories of ability performed less well than those with incremental theories, and they found their experiences in the new situations more emotionally distressing. This was true despite the fact that both groups entered the new environments with equally good credentials. Findings like these might have particular significance for the patterns of career development observed among women and minorities. Gender differences in the choice of a career in male-dominated fields have been linked to lower self-efficacy in women, especially women who perceive themselves as highly feminine. Whereas women in general tend to have lower self-efficacy beliefs for “masculine” occupations requiring quantitative or leadership skills, males have about the same sense of efficacy for both masculine and “feminine” career options (Betz & Hackett, 1981; Betz & Schifano, 2000). A closely related factor affecting self-efficacy for women and other minority group members is stereotype threat, the fear that a stereotype might be true or that one will be judged by that stereotype (see Schmader, 2010). When people are reminded of stereotypes that pertain to their own category (e.g., women, Blacks), they often show increased stress and reduced performance. For example, when researchers showed an engineering conference video to male and female math, science, and engineering students, females reacted differently depending on the gender stereotype cues in the video (Murphy, Steele, & Gross, 2007). Specifically, in a version of the video with no stereotype cue, equal proportions of men and women were depicted as attending the conference. In another version of the video, many more men were depicted than women, cuing the stereotype that engineering is a masculine profession. Men appeared to pay no attention to the cues, but women who watched the more stereotypical video were more physiologically reactive (e.g., their heart rates increased) and they reported both a lower sense of belonging and less willingness to attend the conference. In another study of gender stereotype threat, Krendl, Richeson, Kelley, and Heatherton (2008) used functional brain imaging techniques to demonstrate that creating a threat by calling attention to a gender stereotype literally changed how women’s brains functioned as they solved math problems. College students were asked to solve math problems both before and after the researchers reminded them that “research has shown gender differences in math ability.” Men’s functioning was unaffected by the stereotype induction. For women, performance on the math problems declined somewhat, and the parts of the cortex that they recruited to solve problems were different before and after the threat induction. Beforehand, they used neural networks that are typically associated with math learning, but afterward they showed more activation of neural regions associated with social and emotional processing. Such studies show us that when environmental cues trigger “entity” style thinking, people’s performance tends to suffer (see Cimpian, Mu, & Erickson, 2012). Why does stereotype threat impact performance? One important reason is that working memory space that should be available for learning or problem solving is partially taken up with concerns about being judged negatively. People under threat use up precious working memory space with worry about making mistakes, feeling too anxious, looking stupid to others, and so on. The following study illustrates that people are often paying close attention to their own anxiety when they are experiencing stereotype threat. In one condition, female participants were given a threat-cue: they were told that females’ reaction times are slower than males’ (Johns, Inzlicht, & Schmader, 2008). They then performed the task of identifying the position of a dot on a screen as quickly as possible. If the dot were preceded by an anxiety word in the location where the dot would appear, women who were given the threat-cue actually responded more quickly to the dot than they did if the dot were preceded by a neutral word in the same location. Women who were not given the threat-cue did not show this increased attention to anxiety-related stimuli: They responded with the same speed whether the dot was preceded by an anxiety word or a neutral word. In this particular study, being hypervigilant to anxiety was helpful to performance, but in most situations, it simply uses up memory space that is needed for the task at hand. As we noted earlier, African American college students are more likely than White students to drop out of college. We also saw that when African American students attend Black colleges, they are more likely to pursue some particularly challenging majors, such as premed, than when they attend predominantly White colleges. Aronson and Fried (1998) posited that African American students are burdened by the stereotype that Blacks are less intelligent than Whites. Being in school with White students may have a tendency to evoke this stereotype and may make some Black students more susceptible to a helpless pattern, interfering with their achievement. In a now classic study, Aronson and Fried provided undergraduates with a training program that they hoped would reduce stereotype threat. The researchers hoped to foster a mastery orientation and thereby help improve achievement. Through film and lecture, citing scientific research, they instructed both Black and White undergraduates at Stanford University on the processes by which intelligence can actually be cultivated and changed. The training emphasized that when people take on new tasks and learn new skills there is neuronal growth so that they literally become smarter. To make sure that students had consolidated the information, participants were required to explain the incremental view of intelligence in letters to elementary school children. By the end of the school year, African American students who had been taught the incremental theory showed significant increases in achievement, reflected in their grade point averages. These students also were enjoying school more and felt more academically oriented than African American students in a control group, who had not been part of the incremental theory training. There is evidence that many interacting variables in one’s development affect the feelings of industry or positive self-efficacy or mastery orientation that people carry into adulthood. Such variables ultimately influence the likelihood of long-term achievement. These variables include parenting styles (e.g., Lamborn et al., 1991), teacher expectations (e.g., Rosenthal, 2003), stimulation and opportunities for personal challenge in one’s home environment (e.g., van Doorninck, Caldwell, Wright, & Frankenberg, 1981), security of attachments (e.g., Jacobsen & Hofmann, 1997), and, as we have just seen, gender and cultural stereotypes. Dweck and her colleagues have also demonstrated that parents’ and teachers’ approaches to children’s successes and failures play a role. For example, praising the whole person for success (“You’re a smart girl” or “You’re a good boy”) tends to foster helplessness, apparently because it focuses attention on entity explanations rather than process or incremental explanations of performance. Praising process (“You found a good way to do it”) fosters a mastery orientation (e.g., Cimpian, Arce, Markman, & Dweck, 2007; Kamins & Dweck, 1999; Ng, Pomerantz, & Lamb, 2007). The Importance of Generativity. How important are generativity needs in career development? As we have seen, Erikson described generativity as most influential in middle adulthood, but some recent work indicates that young adults are also influenced by generativity as they plan and launch their work lives. Stewart and Vandewater (1998) examined two broad features of generativity—desire and accomplishment—and found that the desire for generativity is quite strong even in early adulthood and actually declines through middle and late adulthood. Desire was defined as expression of generativity goals, such as caring for future generations (“I’m concerned about the planet”), wanting to produce something of lasting value (“I want to write a major piece of nonfiction”), and being concerned about being needed (“It’s nice to discover that my kids still come to me for advice and help”). In two cohorts of women who were studied longitudinally, such desires were strong through early adulthood, peaking in the early 30s and then declining. Generative accomplishment peaked later, in middle adulthood. The authors propose that “healthy early adulthood includes the formulation of generativity goals or desires, while healthy midlife includes the subjective experience of the capacity to be generative as well as the beginning of a sense of satisfaction in generative accomplishment” (p. 94). Stewart and Vandewater’s results seem consistent with the finding, noted earlier, that even right after high school, young adults from all walks of life are likely to say that they would like their work to make a meaningful contribution (Hill & Yeung, 1999). We will look again at generativity issues in the next chapter, as we consider the development of adults in midlife. Applications The search for intimacy in adulthood demonstrates the continuing human need for social connectedness. The deepest aspects of a person’s emotional life as an adult are often expressed within the confines of pair-bonds. The importance of these associations is evidenced by the fact that the most common referral problems that counselors encounter are those involving interpersonal relationships (Veroff, Kulka, & Douvan, 1981). As we have seen, early attachment experiences can act as templates for the intimate relationships of adulthood. In particular, they may influence our willingness to rely on others to meet our needs for intimacy and to help us manage stress (approach). They can also affect how trusting we are that others will meet these needs (anxiety). These representations are intimately linked to how we view ourselves. Attachment theory provides a dynamic theoretical framework to explain the simultaneous pulls for intimacy and autonomy that can make interpersonal behaviors seem puzzling and contradictory. As the poet David Whyte puts it, “We are strange, difficult creatures who long for both freedom and belonging at the same time, and often run a mile when the real thing appears” (Whyte, 2001, p. 234). Attachment in Counseling Contexts The major theoretical tenets of attachment theory can be applied to individual, marital, and family therapies in some of the following ways. For helpers who assume an attachment perspective, the therapeutic bond is the primary mechanism of change. The therapist functions as the secure base, provides the client with appropriate responsiveness and availability, and offers opportunities to explore models of self and others. Traditional views of therapy have long held that early attachment patterns carry over into therapeutic relationships (transference) and that therapy provides a chance for a corrective experience (Alexander & French, 1946). The way to revise insecure internal models, according to Bowlby (1988), is through the power of another, more secure and more responsive, base. Therapeutic issues that are most applicable to an attachment-based approach include, but are not necessarily limited to, loss, separation, feelings of connectedness to others, and response to stress. Problems in close interpersonal relationships—particularly pair-bonds—are viewed as recapitulations of early childhood problems. When clients are capable of insight, some connection between childhood patterns and adult attachment relationships might be appropriate. Clients can be helped to understand that their ideas of self and others might not conform to the reality of their present circumstances. In general, this involves helping clients articulate their feelings about current interpersonal encounters or conflicts, explore how they handle such situations, and draw connections between prior experiences in close relationships and present patterns of relating. One central task for the therapist is to make attachment-based interpretations of how the client behaves in relationships. “The qualities Ainsworth called for—sensitivity in perceiving the patient’s signals and the capacity to interpret them correctly and react to them appropriately and promptly—are just as necessary in the therapeutic situation and are just as helpful there as they are in the creation of attachment between mother and child” (Brisch, 1999, p. 79). Remember that attachment is a flexible construct; many different behaviors can signal similar intent. Bowlby noted that when people feel threatened by loss of or separation from the secure base, the attachment system is activated and responds in protest (see Chapter 15). If protest behaviors prove ineffective in restoring connection, despair and detachment may follow. We have seen in earlier chapters what these behaviors look like in children. In adult partners whose attachment systems are activated due to conflict, protest can include crying, pleading, controlling, nagging, or seeking reassurance. Despair behaviors might include detachment, withdrawal from the partner, or anhedonia. These behaviors have been frequently reported in depressed individuals with respect to their partners (Anderson, Beach, & Kaslow, 1999; Coyne, 1976). Interpreting behaviors as expressions of attachment needs shifts the ownership for marital or family problems away from only one member of the system. A principal task in therapy involves appraising what the verbal or nonverbal behaviors communicate about the felt security or insecurity of partners vis-à-vis each other. Emotionally distressed individuals or couples, viewed from this perspective, may be chronically “on alert,” never quite sure that their bids for connection will be read accurately by intimate others, expecting rejection, and prepared to respond to threats of rejection by escalating demands or defensive withdrawal. Their real need for emotional closeness is hard to see when their bids for intimacy are accompanied by irritable, critical, or dismissive acts that are sometimes incorrectly interpreted by their counselors as resistance or regression. Individuals can be helped to understand how their attachment needs are provoked and what their responses to provocation are. Although not an attachment-based therapy per se, Greenberg’s (2002) emotion-focused therapy provides a framework for working with the deep emotions at the heart of human relationships. In this model, the counselor acts as an “emotion coach” who guides clients to greater awareness and acceptance of their true feelings, helps them access their primary feelings, encourages them to listen to healthy feelings, and facilitates the transformation of less healthy ones. This approach can be useful for individuals as well as couples whose emotions are dysregulated or who are trapped in repetitive cycles of unresolved or unexpressed sadness or anger. In a manner that draws on many attachment-related concepts, the therapist provides a safe place in which clients can disclose “soft” attachment-related feelings of vulnerability, fear, loneliness, or grief through use of skills like reflective listening, use of “I” statements, nonblaming, and other structured activities (see Greenberg, 2002). The goal is to help clients use the wisdom of their emotions to achieve greater empathy for themselves and others, to improve emotion regulation skills, and, ultimately, to achieve greater intimacy with others. The therapist has to be mindful of his own level of closeness and distance so as not to activate avoidance or dependency inadvertently (Brisch, 1999). With anxious clients, therapists need to monitor arrangements to avoid starting late, postponing sessions, taking frequent vacations, or other situations that trigger the client’s needs for care. These events can be easily interpreted as rejection. For the avoidant client, too much emotional closeness may trigger anxiety as well and prompt premature termination. Attachment behaviors are about exploration as well as connection. Healthy independence, assuming the presence of a secure base, should be a goal of therapy. It might be appropriate, therefore, for therapists to interpret their clients’ need for a break in therapy or their desire for some choice in the counseling arrangements as a signal of healthy exploration rather than as indicating rejection of the therapy or therapist. Attachment Applied to Couples and Families One example of a therapy that applies attachment theory directly and that shares links with interpersonal therapy (see Chapter 11) is attachment-based family therapy (ABFT; Diamond, 1998; Diamond, Siqueland, & Diamond, 2003), a model typically used for families with adolescent children. According to ABFT, the major components of therapy are (1) alliance building, (2) reattribution, (3) teaching effective parenting, and (4) reattachment. Alliance building involves creating a relationship that provides a safe place for the therapeutic work and a source of ongoing support for family members. The target of alliance building, typically the relationship between therapist and client in individual counseling, is the relationship among family members. The therapist does, however, build personal alliances with parents and their adolescent to ensure a safe haven for expression of emotions and to provide the empathy needed for parents and children to feel heard and understood. “Alliance with the therapist is best understood as a transitional relationship that helps individual family members to uncover or learn about new parts of themselves” (Diamond & Diamond, 2002, p. 51). The task of reattribution involves helping family members conceptualize their conflicts in more positive ways. Questions take an attachment perspective by orienting clients’ attention to a family member’s need for connection. For example, asking parents “When your child feels so bad that she acts out, what is getting in the way of you being a resource for her?” (Diamond et al., 2003) makes the connection between negative emotion and problematic behavior explicit and evokes parents’ motivation to help rather than blame. Effective parenting education may be part of the therapy if appropriate. Finally, the task of reattachment is accomplished by supporting communication and conflict resolution skills. The ultimate goals are to repair attachment relationships, strengthen emotional connections, and support family members’ ability to recognize and acknowledge each other’s needs for closeness and autonomy. Caveats Obviously, helpers should avoid overdiagnosing attachment-related problems because there is such wide individual and cultural variation within the range of normal functioning. Some people’s relationships appear distant or enmeshed to observers, but they may be perfectly satisfactory to the couple involved. Clinicians should also resist viewing attachment style as a monolithic, traitlike characteristic that resides within a person. Working models of self and relationship are always shaped in context. Even though there has been a surge of interest in attachment-related issues in adulthood, many more questions remain to be answered by researchers (Colin, 1996). Caution is advised as well in regard to “attachment” therapies that try to rebuild attachments by resorting to high levels of confrontation and restraint to break down defenses. As we have noted in Chapter 4, these therapies, typically used with children, may involve coercive holding or “rebirthing” techniques that can be harmful. The Counselor’s Working Model If counselors keep these reservations in mind, attachment theory can also help them understand the meaning in their own patterns of interaction, conflict resolution, and stress management. Dozier, Cue, and Barnett (1994) found that the therapists’ level of attachment security was related to countertransference processes. In other words, secure therapists were more likely to respond empathically to the dependency needs of their dismissing or avoidant clients. They were able to see the needs hidden beneath a detached or a rejecting exterior, whereas insecure therapists were more likely to be driven away by the negativity. Secure therapists were also better able to manage clients with ambivalent attachment styles. They were less likely to get trapped into “taking care of” these clients by responding to their obvious needs rather than attending to the more important, underlying ones. Are working models open to revision? Bowlby believed that working models can change in more positive directions, and recent research supports this (see Box 12.1). The question that needs much more empirical support concerns how this is accomplished. Bowlby (1988) viewed good therapy somewhat like good parenting. He theorized that in a relationship with an emotionally available therapist, a person is able to reflect on the past, lower defenses, engage in perspective taking, know the experience of “felt security,” and, together, co-construct a revision of the internal working model. Lopez and Brennan (2000) make a similar point by suggesting that counseling offers clients a context in which to learn ways of minimizing the negative consequences of insecure attachments (hyperactivation or deactivation) and to find ways of coping more effectively. Although more evidence is needed, some data indicate that attempts to improve social self-efficacy and perspective taking can mediate improvements in working model representations (Corcoran & Mallinckrodt, 2000). If working models can be changed, it is probably a slow process. Revising representational models happens by engaging in a curative, therapeutic attachment that takes time, patience, and dedication. Slade (1999) draws our attention to the limitation of certain kinds of short-term, problem-centered therapies that are not well suited to reworking fundamental models of social and emotional relationships. The Importance of Work Finding a place in the world of work is another important challenge at this time of life. Historically, the helping professions has contributed significantly to the theory and practice of career development. A central tenet of this field is that finding a career is more than a simple choice. This task, like so many others, is a process that requires self-understanding and the ability to use self-knowledge to make informed decisions. Kegan (1982) believed that vocational development is a function of people’s levels of self-awareness and the kinds of meaning they attribute to themselves as workers. His theoretical ideas have some things in common with Perry’s scheme, which was described in Chapter 11. According to Kegan, adolescent vocational aspirations are heavily influenced by family and peers. From their foreclosed position, adolescents often construe their early career aspirations as the “right” choice. When confronted with confusing or contradictory feedback about their skills or when given opportunities to pursue other career paths, they may cope by becoming even more rigidly entrenched in the pursuit of their original career goals. They mistake the form of the career (such as medical school) with the underlying functions it serves (such as prestige and service). In other words, vocational identity is construed as a position rather than as an aspect of one’s self. Individuals at this stage may resist revising a career goal, even when personal experience or feedback from others challenges its suitability. With maturity, individuals can reflect on this dissonance, integrate the contradictions, and reach a new level of self-understanding and acceptance. They can also identify career goals that are a better fit with their underlying dispositions and goals. Counseling can be particularly helpful for those who need guidance in self-exploration and who may need to reconstruct new meanings about career (McAuliffe, 1993). Building Self-Efficacy One important component of success in life and work is the set of beliefs a person has about his ability to be successful. Self-efficacy is a construct that is meaningful in many different domains of development, as we have seen. It has rather recently been integrated into a model of career decision making (social cognitive career theory, SCCT; Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1996) that is based on Bandura’s (1977, 1997) self-efficacy theory. In this approach, client beliefs about how successful they will be in certain roles and work settings are given a prominent position in the career decision-making process. Our sense of self-efficacy shapes our best guess about whether some outcome is likely to be successful or not and, thus, influences the level of exploration we are willing to undertake in regard to pursuing that outcome. Self-efficacy level also influences our willingness to sustain effort in achieving desired outcomes and to learn the skills that might be needed for successful accomplishment of some goal. One’s sense of self-efficacy is shaped by past experiences with success and failure as well as opportunities to try things out. These opportunities can be constrained by social class, gender, age, race, disability, the quality of educational experience, or family and peer influences. Helpers can be both tutors and coaches in this process, scaffolding the development of a personal sense of efficacy in regard to many of life’s important challenges. Because self-efficacy beliefs influence functioning in a whole host of ways, from making decisions (What major shall I select?) to behavioral performance (Shall I ask this person for a date? Or my boss for a raise?), it is a useful target for clinical intervention. Bussey and Bandura (1999) describe four major ways to instill a strong sense of self-efficacy. Construct and try out graded mastery experiences that are tailored to the individual’s level of ability and that maximize the chances of success. To do this effectively, helpers need to listen to clients explain why they try or don’t try certain activities and what they think are their roadblocks to success. In relation to career counseling, Betz (2004) suggests asking clients what they would choose to do if they could do “anything,” what skills they need to improve their career opportunities, and what they feel is standing in the way of improving their skills. These kinds of questions can reveal something about how clients view their own capabilities and limitations and thus provide a guide for selecting specific corrective experiences. Discuss or provide models who demonstrate success in an area of difficulty for the client. Successful models encourage individuals to believe in their own capacity for success and provide skills and know-how to the motivated observer. A third way to enhance self-efficacy is to apply social persuasion. This might be done by challenging erroneous beliefs about lack of ability, making attributions for failure to lack of effort (incremental) rather than lack of ability (fixed), and providing support as well as realistic, helpful suggestions for improvement. Finally, attempt to reduce coexisting factors that lower self-efficacy, such as stress, depression, or features of the environment, like restricted opportunity structure, whenever possible. By means of these processes, clients revise versions of their expectancies, which can lead to changes in behavior. “As they (clients) continue to accumulate more and more of such success experiences, processing this information within the therapy session helps them realign their anticipatory thoughts and feelings with an appropriate self-evaluation of the outcome of their response. Eventually, a new behavior pattern, together with a greater sense of self-efficacy, begins to emerge” (Goldfried, 1995, p. 113). Adjusting to the World of Work Finding productive work enhances our lives, but choosing a career is only one step in the career development process. People also need to adjust to the demands of the workplace. Hershenson’s (1996) contextual model proposes that work adjustment is most likely to occur if the ongoing characteristics of the individual (work values, skills, goals, habits, etc.) mesh with the day-to-day demands of the job (behavioral expectations, skill requirements, available rewards, and opportunities). For example, an organizational position that is highly structured and requires adherence to routine may be unsatisfying to an individual with high needs for autonomy and little motivation to work in a corporate culture. Helping clients consider the person–environment dimensions of a career can promote more successful adjustment. Of course, not all problems in the workplace are amenable to change. Finding the ideal fit, although a desirable goal, is not always realistic. The workplace is harsh and unsatisfying for many people due to job-related threats to health, lack of job security, lack of control over tasks performed, and pressure to increase productivity with limited time and resources (Tomasik & Silbereisen, 2012). In his description of the state of work in the United States at the beginning of this century, Reich (2000) pointed to several significant changes that have had profound effects on workers: the end of steady, dependable work, the obsolescence of loyalty between employers and employees, the ever-widening inequality of wages, and the shrinking time factor. “In 1999, the average middle-income married couple with children worked a combined 3,918 hours—about seven weeks more than a decade before” (pp. 111–112; italics added). Since 2007, the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression has put many people out of work around the world. Young adults have been the most affected, but people in every age bracket find themselves either unemployed or threatened by the possibility, often needing to reexamine and/or restructure their career goals in order to improve their chances of re-employment (Tomasik & Silbereisen, 2012). Work stresses, especially periods of unemployment, can have adverse effects on workers and their families, especially on their dependent children (see Paul & Moser, 2009; Wanberg, 2012). In 1996, Jones was already suggesting that helpers help clients consider workplace safety and stability issues when contemplating career choices. In a departure from more traditional ways of viewing career development, he suggested that helpers avoid portraying job success as the primary means of achieving self-esteem. For many people, work may never be particularly meaningful or personally satisfying. The stresses of the contemporary working world should also be factored in when clients come to counseling for other problems, such as problems in relationships or difficulties with children. He also suggested that helpers take an advocacy position on issues related to work, such as government or company policies that support high-quality child care. Given the importance of love and work in adults’ lives, understanding and supporting successful adjustment in these two areas is a worthy task for clinicians. In times of high unemployment, career counselors often find themselves focused on re-employment strategies with their clients. Specific training to boost job search skills (such as locating opportunities and improving interviewing techniques) and helping clients to cultivate resilience and persistence in the face of rejection (an aspect of self-efficacy) are often key features of interventions for the unemployed (Wanberg, 2012). Summary Freud characterized love and work as the means by which adults strive for happiness. Erikson described intimacy—closeness to another that is marked by trust, openness, and affection—as the goal of young adulthood, and generativity—creating, producing, and contributing to the human community—as the goal of middle adulthood. Recent conceptions of mental health or “wellness” also emphasize both having close relationships and feeling competent and productive as essential ingredients for happiness. Love Attachment theory provides one framework for conceptualizing adult intimacy. It suggests that early bonds with caregivers could have a bearing on relationship building in adulthood and that intimate adult relationships provide some of the same benefits as infant–adult relationships: a secure base, safe haven, and emotional warmth. Two traditions or lines of inquiry characterize adult attachment research: the nuclear family tradition, exploring how early attachments might affect the quality of caregiving that an adult gives his own children, and the peer/romantic partner tradition, which focuses on the peer attachments of adults. The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) consists of questions about early memories of relationships with parents. Autonomous (secure) adults provide a coherent, collaborative narrative, acknowledging the importance of attachment-related experiences in their development. Individuals described as earned secure appear to have come to terms with painful backgrounds. They reflect on their past realistically, acknowledging their parents’ perspective. Autonomous adults tend to have securely attached children. Dismissing (insecure) adults describe parents positively but provide either no evidence or contradictory evidence. Generally, they downplay the importance of early relationships. Their children tend to form avoidant attachments. Preoccupied (insecure) individuals provide long, incoherent, egocentric monologues. They seem overwhelmed by the interview questions and are often angry, sad, or fearful. They seem preoccupied with parents, who are remembered as intrusive or egocentric. Their children often have anxious-ambivalent attachments. Unresolved individuals produce narratives with notable lapses in logical thinking. Their children have a tendency to show disorganized attachment patterns. Insecure adults are the most likely to be emotionally disturbed. Longitudinal studies find that an individual’s infant attachment status (as measured by the strange situation test) predicts his adult AAI attachment status, although intervening events can shift that status from secure to insecure or vice versa. AAI narratives are different from other interview narratives with the same interviewees, suggesting that the AAI specifically reflects a person’s state of mind regarding interpersonal representations. This working model of attachments is assumed to be a schema that has evolved with time and experience and that serves as a guide for understanding, predicting, and acting. Adult pair-bonds integrate three basic behavioral systems: caregiving, attachment, and sexual mating. The attachment system involves proximity seeking and separation distress and serves safe haven and secure base functions. Attachment functions gradually transfer from parents to peers and, eventually, to romantic partners. Proximity seeking begins to shift as early as the preschool years. Between 8 and 14 years, peers also provide safe haven. Eventually attachments to romantic partners involve proximity seeking and separation distress, and they also serve safe haven and secure base functions. The measurement procedures and typologies in the peer/romantic relationship tradition have been different from those in the nuclear family tradition. Several typologies have been proposed, and in the most recent work it is suggested that people may be better characterized as differing along two continuous dimensions, one having to do with their degree of anxiety about close relationships and the other with their approach-avoidance tendencies. Partner selection can be predicted to some degree by the attachment characteristics of the partners. Secure individuals tend to pair with secure partners; anxious and avoidant individuals tend to pair up; but anxious-anxious pairs or avoidant-avoidant pairs are uncommon. Whether individuals actually enter relationships with these characteristics or tend to evolve these styles within their relationships has not been determined. Partnerships between secure individuals seem to involve more positive and less negative emotions than other pairings. Male avoidant individuals show less distress during breakups than other males, but females of all attachment types show similar levels of distress. Ambivalent partners are most stressed by conflict within a relationship. Work In Holland’s theory of career development, people are categorized as having one of six modal personal orientations, part of their personality. Jobs or careers make demands that are compatible with one or more of these orientations. A good fit between modal orientation and job characteristics benefits job satisfaction and feelings of well-being. In Super’s theory, the focus is on the development of a vocational self-concept, part of one’s total identity. He describes five stages in its development, from the growth stage in early childhood through the decline stage in people of retirement age. Super emphasizes that career development is a continuing, lifelong process. Many career counseling approaches emphasize the important relationship between career and self-development, with self-discovery an important ingredient in career satisfaction. College students’ first vocationally relevant decision is choice of a major. Whereas personal characteristics and interests influence the choice, so do cultural changes (e.g., economic shifts) and cohort characteristics. Ethnic and socioeconomic differences appear to influence not only who attends college but also the likelihood of college retention and career choices. Career counseling in college should begin with advisement on choice of a major. For the forgotten half, those who do not attend college, the chances of achieving career goals shared by all young adults (e.g., good pay, opportunities for advancement, opportunities to make a meaningful contribution to society) are substantially reduced. As with college students, factors such as socioeconomic status and ethnicity affect these chances as well. Career opportunities for noncollege young people could be improved if there were more systematic and effective resources for them, such as basic skill training in public schools, extensive vocational counseling, and opportunities for work-based learning. Some well-designed training interventions for high-risk groups have been successful, such as the Job Corps program. Traditionally, women with careers have followed different career paths from men. Substantial changes have occurred, such as women outnumbering men in college. But there are still gender differences: Some careers are still highly gendered, and women are still more likely to consider the impact of career choices on their relationship opportunities, although men are increasingly attending to such concerns as well. Self-concept and self-understanding are central features of many theories of career development. How do basic feelings and attitudes toward the self as a worker develop? Erikson describes a sense of industry, belief in one’s ability to work productively and expectation of satisfaction from work, as beginning in middle childhood, when children have their first work experiences. Generativity becomes important in adulthood, as people become motivated to leave a legacy for the next generation. Bandura has studied self-efficacy beliefs, beliefs in one’s own ability to affect events, as motivating people to work hard and persevere even in the face of failure. Such beliefs are correlated with high levels of achievement. Mastery orientation is similar to self-efficacy and to a sense of industry. Mastery-oriented individuals move forward even when they fail, apparently because they are incremental theorists, believing that hard work and instruction can affect ability. Conversely, people who show a helplessness pattern, who give up when they fail, tend to be entity theorists, seeing ability as fixed. Differences in self-efficacy beliefs, or mastery orientation, may have significant effects on minority groups and women. Stereotype threat, the fear that an inferiority stereotype might be true, can influence achievement. In some research, stereotype threat has been reduced and achievement improved when individuals have received intensive training on the scientific evidence for the malleability of intelligence and ability.

CHAPTER 12 Socioemotional and Vocational Development in Young Adulthood

What is required for a happy, well

-

adjusted adult life? For Sigmund Freud, both love and work are

powerful methods by which we “strive to gain h

appiness and keep suffering away” (Freud,

1930/1989, p. 732). Love, he felt, may bring us closer to the goal of happiness than anything else we

do. The disadvantage of love, of course, is that “we are never so defenseless . . . never so helplessly

unhappy

as when we have lost our loved object or its love” (p. 733). Work, from Freud’s perspective,

not only helps justify our existence in society, providing the worker with a “secure place . . . in the

human community,” but it also can be a source of special sa

tisfaction if it is “freely chosen

—

if, that is

. . . it makes possible the use of existing inclinations” (p. 732). For Erikson (e.g., 1950/1963), both

intimacy (love) and generativity (work) are arenas for expressing and developing the self, dominating

the

concerns of adults in their young and middle years. True intimacy and generativity require

achieving an adult identity and are part of its further enrichment and evolution. “Intimacy is a quality

of interpersonal relating through which partners share pers

onal thoughts, feelings, and other

important aspects of themselves with each other” (McAdams, 2000, p. 118). True intimacy is marked

by openness, affection, and trust. Generativity is a motive or need that can be filled through one’s

vocation or avocations

, through child rearing, or through community service. It includes productivity

and creativity (Erikson, 1950/1963). Generativity is also a trait that people can be described as

having when they are contributing members of society. “It is about generating:

creating and

producing things, people, and outcomes that are aimed at benefiting, in some sense, the next

generation, and even the next” (McAdams, Hart, & Maruna, 1998). For most adults, achieving

generativity is central to their belief in the meaningfuln

ess of their lives. Erikson considered young

adults to be especially driven by needs for intimacy, middle adults by needs for generativity. Modern

research suggests that both are powerful influences on behavior throughout adulthood, although

intimacy needs

may predominate early and generativity needs later. More recent conceptions of how

adults achieve happiness or mental health or “wellness” are quite consistent with the importance that

Freud and Erikson placed on love and work. Close relationships with lo

vers, friends, and family, as

well as the opportunity to make productive use of one’s time and talents, figure prominently in nearly

all modern theorizing about what people need to be happy and well

-

adjusted (e.g., Ryan & Deci,

2000). From a developmental

perspective, then, the period of young adulthood should be a time

when identity issues are resolved sufficiently to allow a person to make significant progress on two

major tasks: The first is establishing and strengthening bonds with people who will accom

pany him

on his life journey, and the second is becoming a productive worker. LOVE Making connections with

others in adulthood

—

establishing intimacy with a mate, making friends, reworking family ties

—

has

been studied from many perspectives. One promising d

evelopmental approach examines the impact

of attachment style, which is assumed to have its roots in infancy and childhood, on the formation of

adult relationships. Adult Attachment Theory Attachment theory has enjoyed a prominent place in

the child develo

pment literature since the groundbreaking work of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth

(see Chapter 4). Following an explosion of studies on childhood attachment, researchers began to

train their sights on attachment theorists’ suggestion that early bonds with c

aregivers could have a

bearing on relationship building throughout the life span (Ainsworth, 1989; Bowlby, 1980). Today,

attachment theory provides a useful framework for conceptualizing adult intimacy. The abundance of

research in this area makes it the m

ost empirically grounded theory available for explaining the

formation and nature of close interpersonal relationships throughout adulthood. As we saw in

Chapter 4, the process of attaching to a caregiver in infancy is considered species

-

typical. According

to Bowlby (1969/1982, 1973, 1980), the attachment bonds of infancy serve survival needs. Infant

behaviors, such as distress at separation, ensure proximity to the caregiver, who acts as a secure

base for exploration, a safe haven in case of threat, and a

preferred provider of emotional warmth

and affect regulation. How the attachment process unfolds is a function of the caregiving

relationship. Depending on the caregiver’s sensitivity and responsiveness, an infant becomes

CHAPTER 12 Socioemotional and Vocational Development in Young Adulthood

What is required for a happy, well-adjusted adult life? For Sigmund Freud, both love and work are

powerful methods by which we “strive to gain happiness and keep suffering away” (Freud,

1930/1989, p. 732). Love, he felt, may bring us closer to the goal of happiness than anything else we

do. The disadvantage of love, of course, is that “we are never so defenseless . . . never so helplessly

unhappy as when we have lost our loved object or its love” (p. 733). Work, from Freud’s perspective,

not only helps justify our existence in society, providing the worker with a “secure place . . . in the

human community,” but it also can be a source of special satisfaction if it is “freely chosen—if, that is

. . . it makes possible the use of existing inclinations” (p. 732). For Erikson (e.g., 1950/1963), both

intimacy (love) and generativity (work) are arenas for expressing and developing the self, dominating

the concerns of adults in their young and middle years. True intimacy and generativity require

achieving an adult identity and are part of its further enrichment and evolution. “Intimacy is a quality

of interpersonal relating through which partners share personal thoughts, feelings, and other

important aspects of themselves with each other” (McAdams, 2000, p. 118). True intimacy is marked

by openness, affection, and trust. Generativity is a motive or need that can be filled through one’s

vocation or avocations, through child rearing, or through community service. It includes productivity

and creativity (Erikson, 1950/1963). Generativity is also a trait that people can be described as

having when they are contributing members of society. “It is about generating: creating and

producing things, people, and outcomes that are aimed at benefiting, in some sense, the next

generation, and even the next” (McAdams, Hart, & Maruna, 1998). For most adults, achieving

generativity is central to their belief in the meaningfulness of their lives. Erikson considered young

adults to be especially driven by needs for intimacy, middle adults by needs for generativity. Modern

research suggests that both are powerful influences on behavior throughout adulthood, although

intimacy needs may predominate early and generativity needs later. More recent conceptions of how

adults achieve happiness or mental health or “wellness” are quite consistent with the importance that

Freud and Erikson placed on love and work. Close relationships with lovers, friends, and family, as

well as the opportunity to make productive use of one’s time and talents, figure prominently in nearly

all modern theorizing about what people need to be happy and well-adjusted (e.g., Ryan & Deci,

2000). From a developmental perspective, then, the period of young adulthood should be a time

when identity issues are resolved sufficiently to allow a person to make significant progress on two

major tasks: The first is establishing and strengthening bonds with people who will accompany him

on his life journey, and the second is becoming a productive worker. LOVE Making connections with

others in adulthood—establishing intimacy with a mate, making friends, reworking family ties—has

been studied from many perspectives. One promising developmental approach examines the impact

of attachment style, which is assumed to have its roots in infancy and childhood, on the formation of

adult relationships. Adult Attachment Theory Attachment theory has enjoyed a prominent place in

the child development literature since the groundbreaking work of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth

(see Chapter 4). Following an explosion of studies on childhood attachment, researchers began to

train their sights on attachment theorists’ suggestion that early bonds with caregivers could have a

bearing on relationship building throughout the life span (Ainsworth, 1989; Bowlby, 1980). Today,

attachment theory provides a useful framework for conceptualizing adult intimacy. The abundance of

research in this area makes it the most empirically grounded theory available for explaining the

formation and nature of close interpersonal relationships throughout adulthood. As we saw in

Chapter 4, the process of attaching to a caregiver in infancy is considered species-typical. According

to Bowlby (1969/1982, 1973, 1980), the attachment bonds of infancy serve survival needs. Infant

behaviors, such as distress at separation, ensure proximity to the caregiver, who acts as a secure

base for exploration, a safe haven in case of threat, and a preferred provider of emotional warmth

and affect regulation. How the attachment process unfolds is a function of the caregiving

relationship. Depending on the caregiver’s sensitivity and responsiveness, an infant becomes