The relationships among gender, gender identity factors and career-decision-situation-specified personality traits

Date of Completion

January 2001

Keywords

Education, Guidance and Counseling|Psychology, Personality

Degree

Ph.D.

Abstract

The present study investigated the relationships among gender, gender identity factors, and career-decision-situation-specified personality traits classified by second order personality trait dimensions. Gender or gender identity influences one's career decision through the relationships between gender or gender identity and personality traits (Gottfredson, 1981). These relationships are regulated by higher-order dimensions of personality traits (Lubinski, Tellegen, & Butcher, 1981) and by the situations (Bem, Martyna, & Watson, 1975). Gender identity is recently regarded as the integration of various gender-related factors (Spence, 1996). ^ Seventy-nine of 86 university students in the Northeastern America completed the survey questionnaires comprising the masculinity and femininity subscales of the Personality Attributes Questionnaire Short Form, the Feminine Expectation Scale, the Masculine Expectation Scale , the male-valued and female-valued sub-scales of the recreational activities area of the Sex Role Behavioral Scale - Short Form, Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale Short From, the career subjective distress factor of the Coping with Career Indecision, the discouraged from choosing nontraditional careers subscale of the Career Barriers Inventory-Revised, and demographic questions. ^ The research questions focused on the reasonability of measuring various gender identity factors to appraise gender identity, the reasonability of classifying career-decision-situation-specified personality traits into the higher-order personality dimensions suggested by Tellegen (1985), and the relationships among gender, gender identity factors, and career-decision-situation-specified personality traits. ^ A correlation matrix, a principal component analysis, and multiple regression analyses were used to analyze the obtained data. The results revealed that gender identity was the integration of various gender identity factors and that career-decision-situation-specified personality traits could be classified into the higher order personality dimensions suggested by Tellegen (1985). The result also indicated that masculine personality traits were associated positively with career-decision-situation-specified self-efficacy, reflecting positive emotionality dimension of Tellegen's model (1985) and negatively with career-decision-situation-specified distress, reflecting negative emotionality dimension. Feminine personality traits and feminine role attitudes were associated with career-decision-situation-specified discouragement from choosing nontraditional careers reflecting constraint dimension. In addition, additional effects of masculine role attitudes, feminine role attitudes, masculine behavioral interests, and feminine behavioral interests to the effects of gender, masculine personality traits, and feminine personality traits on career-decision-situation-specified personality traits were not significant. ^

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