Secondary propositions in the selection theory of interests, essay in VocationalPsychology.com

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The Selection of Interests:
Part 3
by Andrew D. Carson, Ph.D.

Secondary Propositions: Self and Environment

Proposition four: Interests arise, in part, through autopoiesis. Thus far, the role of the individual in determining his or her own interests has been left unspecified. This author agrees with Holland (1985a, p. 16) that children are involved in the determination of the "direction" of their developing interests, and that they are not merely passive spectators witnessing the environmental shaping of what they will come to care about. Individuals are assumed to contribute to the "self-organization" (or autopoiesis, see Mahoney, 1991, p. 391) of their interests through an enactment process (see Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1993). It is precisely through such an involved, iterative relationship between the emerging individual and his or her environment that he or she may come to care more about certain kinds of interests than others, and thus may serve, to some extent at least, to influence that very process of the selection of interests. Wilson's (1978/1979) discussion of the role of self and will within a sociobiological model of development of the mind reaches a similar conclusion, that "the self is the leading actor in this neural drama" (p. 77). Holland's (1985a) inclusion of a "vocational identity" construct to some extent lends itself to such an interpretation of the process through which the individual helps to create his or her own interests.

Proposition five: Interests also fall into two main groups: 1) selected interests, arising from selection of potential interests that have genetic correlates; and 2) "acted" interests, which are more effortful than selected ones, and which arise from self-presentational activity, with individuals high in self-monitoring being more adroit in generating and sustaining such acted interests. Wilson (1978/1979) raises the question of how adults in modern societies can adapt to the myriad of occupational roles open to them, roles for which evolution could not have precisely prepared them. He cites Goffman's (1974) discussion of the difficulty of defining exactly what the true "self" really is, and concludes that "daily life is a compromised blend of of posturing for the sake of role-playing and of varying degrees of self-revelation" (Wilson, p. 96). Indeed, at first glance the fact that people "obviously" learn how to adjust to their jobs (or schools), to learn how to be interested in what is available there, would appear to represent a serious blow to the selection theory. Even if learning contributes less to interests than was once assumed, it clearly exists and affects interests. It is possible to learn how to act as if one were indeed interested in something, either to fool others, or to fool oneself. The former avenue -- to fool others -- is easier to do if one is a high self-monitor (Carson & Mowsesian, 1993b; Snyder, 1987), and the latter -- to fool oneself -- is harder to do if one is high in the personality trait private self-consciousness (Fenigstein, Scheier, & Buss, 1975; Carson & Mowsesian). Some authors (see Ansbacher & Ansbacher, 1956, ch. 3; Vaihinger, 1925) have described this "as if" capability as the hallmark of humanity and as being what permits humans to lift their behavior above the animal level.

However, while acting from within one's selected interests represents an automatic and effortless task, presenting the image of a good-fitting student, worker, or colleague in the absence of the underlying "selected" or "true fit" is an effortful one, and one that is difficult to sustain over long periods of time. Here one may make an analogy to Hasher and Zacks' (1979) discussion of automatic and effortful processes in memory, long familiar to cognitive psychologists. In a similar vein, Helmreich and Wilhelm (1987) described a common situation in organizations, which they dubbed "the honeymoon effect." They found it was much more difficult to predict job satisfaction and quality of performance of newly hired individuals during their first six months on the job, because the new hires tended to be able and willing to put up a convincing "front." However, following the honeymoon, the true degree of fit emerged, and those not fitting in experienced difficulties. Carson and Mowsesian (1993a) have already applied this notion of the honeymoon effect to account for data seemingly inconsistent with Holland's (1985a) theory, but the notion of the honeymoon effect would not be inconsistent with the selection theory of interests given the assumption of the existence of learned, effortful interests. The characterization of interests arising from a genetic substrate as being effortless is similar to Roe and Lunneborg's (1991, pp. 74-75) discussion of the role of genes in the development of interests, in which genes serve to channel involuntary, automatic, and effortless attention in particular directions.

Proposition six: Stressful life-events and other random processes can lead to changes in interests, although the resulting pattern of interests will still be constrained by underlying genetic potential. The selection theory of interests suggests that when interests are selected, they usually will be selected during critical periods, presumably during childhood or early adolescence. Why then, some might argue, do measured or expressed interests continue to fluctuate in adolescence or adulthood? The answer is that interests tend to remain fairly stable through adulthood, given research conducted with the Strong Interest Inventory (Hansen & Campbell, 1985) and other instruments (e.g., Navy Vocational Interest Inventory, Lau & Abrahams, 1971). Strong (1951) reported Pearson-r correlations of scores on the Strong Vocational Interest Blank averaging .75 over a 22 year period, with one fourth of the respondents having correlations of .90 or higher, and one individual having a correlation of .994 between the original and retest scale scores. Some short-term but temporarily stable alternations of interests might occur due to the (temporary) establishment of acted, effortful interests.

Larger and enduring apparent changes of interest, as well as small, seemingly random fluctuations of interests, however, are more problematic for the selection theory, and require a more substantial elaboration. Roe and Siegelman (1964) argued that chance factors must be a very important part of the selection of an occupation. Anecdotal evidence abounds (particularly in autobiographies) that suggests it is always possible for an individual to "discover" a new direction in life, and that such a change may occur at any point in life. Such "changes of heart" often are described as being precipitated by stressful life events, counseling, or other major turning points in adult life (see Levinson, 1978, ch. 19). Does such a change necessarily reflect new learning?

It does not, but it does require a somewhat novel conceptualization of the nature of interests. This author borrows the basis for a conceptual model from work conducted in the area of artificial neural networks, specifically, Boltzman machines (see Chester, 1993, pp. 95-98). The present discussion shall follow the same sorts of metaphors used to describe Boltzman machines rather than delving into their mathematics. Consider a ball rolling along a hilly terrain, as represented in Figure 1. The terrain itself has both local minima, e.g., a, and a global minimum, b. The ball will come to rest within a potential well, which may or may not be the deepest such well in the terrain. Jolts of energy may serve to knock the ball out of one well and into another, possibly deeper well. Random effects might serve to jostle the ball back and forth between wells not separated by a steep gradient. Now, consider the ball to represent the current focus of an individual's interests, and the terrain to represent the current terrain of an individual's (genetically determined) potential interests. Potential interests would represent the deeper wells. Normal life stresses might represent minor, effectively random jostling effects, which over time would serve to knock the ball into and around at least a local minimum interest well. However, major life events might serve to knock the ball into a much deeper interest well, although there is no guarantee of this. In reference to selection theory and the notion of critical periods, perhaps during a critical period, the level of energy required to move out of local minima is less than afterwards (in other words, the incoming jolts are amplified, made "noisier" or "hotter." This would serve to effectively fix the interest in a relatively deep well while continuing to allow for minor jostling random effects within that well.

Figure 1. A Boltzman diagram representing actual and potential interests. L = Local minimum potential interest, G = Global minimum potential interest. The diagram represents the analogy of a ball coming to rest in an interest potential well, which may or may not be the deepest such well available. Jolts of applied energy can knock the ball out of the local well, perhaps allowing it to find the global minimum in the terrain.

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