The Seven Deadly Sins at Work, Part 3

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The Seven Deadly Sins at Work
Part 3 of 3
By Andrew D. Carson, Ph.D.

Continued from:

Part 1, including Introduction, Extent of Belief in Sin, and History and Folk Psychology
Part 2, including Description of the Seven Deadly Sins Applied to Work

Relation of Sin to Other Constructs

Interests, personality, and psychopathology. Sins as conceptualized above bear similarities to both personality traits (with affective components related to psychopathology) and interests (with conative, or components related to the will). At their extremes, dimensions of sin take on features of psychopathology, particularly those involving personality disorders. But the sins also, at less extreme ranges, would take on features of basic interests. For example, consistently high levels of wrath might translate into antisocial personality disorder. Modest levels of wrath might translate into basic interests associated with aggressive activities.

Abilities. There is no evidence to suggest a relationship between intelligence or abilities and likelihood of falling victim to sin. Traditional accounts of the sins similarly order them in terms of risk or seriousness, with sloth and pride being classified as the most serious, but there is no reason to suppose that more intelligent individuals might be at any less (or greater) risk for any one sin. The variance of individual differences in abilities is likely to be high across all of the sins.

Vocational identity. Holland, Daiger, and Power (1980) defined vocational identity as "the possession of a clear and stable picture of one's goals, interests, personality, and talents" (p. 1). Originally predicted to lead to untroubled decision-making and confidence in making good vocational decisions, the construct has been found (see Holland, 1997) to correlate positively with nearly all desirable vocational outcomes and negatively with nearly all undesirable ones. The question is, why? Given that the primary way that envy can poison one's relationships with others at work is by the desire to possess as one's one that which belongs to someone else, the solution to avoiding jealousy and envy may be to have a very clear understanding of one's one goals, interests, personality, and talents--that is, to have a strong vocational identity--and thereby understand one's ability to make a unique contribution to the work at hand. Thus, one could say that vocational identity is such a good predictor of vocational outcomes because it relates directly to the degree to which one of the seven deadly sins--envy--is likely to affect work performance and career decisions.

Occupational stereotypes. It seems likely that the stereotypes associated with occupations may include features related to the prevalence of particular sins (and virtues) among members of the occupation. For example, bouncers in bars and professional football players might be thought be thought to be prone to excess wrath, while surgeons, Hollywood movie stars, and professors might be perceived as being more likely to exhibit too much pride. However, although stereotypes of occupations may not reflect reality, it may often be the case that occupational stereotypes do provide reasonable indicators of the typical levels of sin and virtue present in the occupation.

Occupational and career choice. Individuals choose occupations and set career goals for a variety of reasons, some of which they can clearly articulate and some of which they cannot. Sinfulness as conceptualized in this essay can influence such choices, but the individual may not be aware of the degree of such influence. However, reflection of the individual on the basis of his or her occupational choice, particularly when conducted in the context of information provided by other individuals who know the individual, may identify some of the virtues or vices that impinge on the choice. In most cases, though, it will be a matter of degree, and it may be difficult to determine whether the choice is made on the basis of a virtue or a vice.

For example, consider that an individual may love excellent food and high cuisine. Such an individual may seek to enter a career as a chef, but one temptation he or she would face in such a career is that of excess consumption of food. At moderate levels of consumption, such love would be a virtue, and greatly aid the individual in the required study and work. However, carried too far, such love could result in obesity, health problems, and other issues. Individuals pursuing such a career would therefore need to examine the likelihood that they would be able to partake only moderately of the sorts of foods that they would prepare for so many hours per day. Sinful tendencies may therefore be viewed as a risk factor to be considered in the process of choosing an occupation or career direction.

Work adjustment. Occupations offer profiles of virtues or vices just as do individuals. Some work environments, and some work settings, may be relatively more tolerant of some vices than are other environments. For example, it was said of the corporate environment of Enron that its human resources department sought to hire highly intelligent workers with great confidence in their abilities. Enron may have selected individuals likely to exhibit the sin of pride, and then it may have fostered more extreme levels of that sin--and resulting arrogance and self-deception--by reinforcing beliefs of the omnipotence of its workers and corporate leadership. Many dotcoms--before the tech bubble burst--may have similarly both selected for and inculcated unreasonable levels of pride in their staffs. In such organizations, one could achieve high levels of congruence or fit between a worker and the environment while at the same time creating truly dangerous levels of the sin of pride among the organization's workers.

One of the reasons why person-environment congruence may not be a better overall predictor of quality of outcomes in the vocational literature is the fact that simple indicators of fit do not take into account the relative levels of virtue and vice to which workers must accommodate in order to achieve maximal fit to the organization. Accommodating to sin (that is, its extremes, positively or negatively) would not, in the model of healthy adjustment proposed in this essay, result in sustainable happiness, or positive growth, or quality of performance over the long-term.

The reader may be thinking of cases in which this would not be true. For example, for-profit companies seek profits. Would not greed be a desirable trait in most companies? As the sequelae of the collapse of Enron and other major for-profit companies demonstrates, such an approach in the long-term (or even the medium-term) harms the company, its leaders, its owners, and its employees. Greed is not good because it is too extreme; it separates man from man and company from society.

To take another example, military organizations seek to train soldiers to be able to achieve victory in battle. One would imagine that wrath would be considered an admirable quality in the military. However, the organized military must also prepare its personnel to endure long periods in which fighting is not appropriate, and out of control soldiers can cause more harm than good in most situations in which they find themselves. Soldiers must be able to follow orders, including orders to cease fire and stand down.

Leisure and work. It is likely that in general, work serves as a moderating force against the extreme tendencies of human character and action that lead to sin. This is because in the realm of work, extreme sin tends to (ultimately) result in poor performance. However, leisure activities are much less likely to similarly restrain such inclinations. Leisure can give full play to sin, because the results for the individual are (usually) of less consequence. Of course, it is the essence of many leisure activities that a degree of moderation must be retained over one's behavior. But in general leisure and recreation impose less of the burden of moderation on individuals and their desires. One can usually find a leisure outlet for every desire if one looks hard enough.

Sloth is particularly at home in leisure activity. Leisure need not be passive to be slothful. It need only occupy one's time, thoughts, and energies, and distract one from the worthy work to be done, love to be enjoyed, and friendships to be built and sustained.

However, it is interesting to note how much of rule-bound play appears to be attractive precisely because it sets limits on the extremes of action in which one may or may not engage. Such is true even in more aggressive sports, provided there are referees present, or at least providing that the individual players may call fouls. Games tend to have rules and boundaries around which the players agree, or one would not have the game at all. In fact, in some ways one might argue that the sort of relevance for sin might be demonstrated more easily in rule-bound leisure activities than in the workplace.

Guilt. Sin and guilt are complementary concepts in the Christian tradition. It is assumed that most individuals, when realizing that they have sinned and therefore fallen short of what they are capable, will experience guilt. Some major theories of personality psychology seek to translate these basic constructs into a scientific footing. For example, Sigmund Freud's structural theory of the ego, id, and superego identified the superego as the psychic component responsible for internalization of external authority, capable of eliciting feelings of guilt when its rules were violated.

Guilt is rarely if ever considered from a vocational perspective. This is somewhat surprising, because there are some important elements of vocational behavior that are presumably driven by, if not guilt, the its psychological equivalent. For example, what inspires the whistleblower to come forward and point fingers at guilty parties, but a combination of indignation at seeing a violation of trust and a desire to avoid the sense of guilt that continued silence would cause? Jobs frequently demand that workers carry out actions that they would otherwise find abhorrent. Jobs in the military and the police force may require taking lives. Many jobs require individuals to engage in deception or lying. Any job that requires the worker to violate some code of behavior in which the worker finds value may inspire guilt. Several defense mechanisms may allow the worker to avoid or put aside such guilt. Rationalization, repression, denial, and othe defenses may be used to avoid the pang of guilt. However, chronic guilt--even if repressed--may have negative consequences on the worker by leading to stress and its consequences, such as high blood pressure and other health problems. Extreme feelings of guilt may also lead to mental illness, and perhaps especially to depression.

However, this is all speculative at this point; it would take empirical measures of sin and correlational studies to chart out such relationships with more precision. Until then, we will be restricted to narrative and other qualitative methods.

Applications to Career Interventions

The foregoing discussion suggests a number of possible interventions to support the career development of individuals. Unless otherwise indicated, the following discussion assumes that the client is a Christian, but the essay concludes with a discussion of applications to work with non-Christians.

The approach to understanding the role of sin in vocational behavior taken in this essay does not mean that all vocational behavior may be reduced to virtue and sin. But to ignore these constructs, particularly among career clients who are Christian (or Jewish, or Muslim) is to miss an important part of their psychology that does have importance consequences for career choice, work adjustment, and other aspects of their behavior in the realm of work and leisure. Especially for devout Christians, understanding vocational behavior and choices through the lens of sin can be quite important, because they may tend to interpret much of their experience through such a narrative. Moreover, to offer individuals a means of approaching an understanding of their vocational experience and choices through their preexisting understanding of "living rightly" may provide a strong motivation to make the most out of the career intervention. The process of counseling and career intervention may thereby become a means of living better as a whole person.

In the typical situation, the counselor would not broach the issue of the roles of sin and virtue in vocational choice and behavior unless the client had first invited such a discussion. In addition, most secular institutions in which career counseling occurs would not support any degree of proactive interventions to encourage nonbelievers to conceptualize their vocational choices or experience in terms that are generally perceived as being religious. Finally, American constitutional prohibitions against the establishment of religion would prevent, in most circumstances, the delivery of career interventions based in large measure on sin and virtue. That being said, there are many settings in which such an approach would be allowed and in which it may prove effective. This might include private educational institutions, nonprofit service organizations, churches, private practice, and the military (through chaplains). And of course many nations outside the United States do not restrict the government from providing (at least indirectly) education and other human services that have some form of religious content. Finally, in some overtly religious settings it might be perfectly appropriate for the counselor to raise the issue of the role of sin in vocational behavior even when it is not first invited by the potential client; in such a setting, such an intervention might well be considered an appropriate form of advocacy.

Individual counseling. Individual counseling may serve as a secure space within which to explore the degree to which sin has affected the client's career development. It is possible to discuss three levels of incorporation of the concept of sin into individual counseling, ranging from low to high.

At the first level, the counselor may privately conceptualize the client's situation in terms of the language of sin and virtue, but otherwise use standard career counseling methods. The overall strategy for the counselor may be to provide the client with greater insight regarding the nature and origins of his or her career problems that in some way helps the client to move toward more virtuous behavior, and therefore to presumably wiser career decision-making and more successful career outcomes, but the particular intervention tactics deployed by the counselor would not include marshaling the language of sin and virtue. The counselor may at this level provide directives to the client that may in their own right lead to greater understanding on the client's part--via personal discovery--of the source of their difficulties, and the route toward solutions. This is actually not much different from what occurs in the typical career counseling session. This approach should also generally work well with non-Christians.

At the second level, the counselor may provide stories, anecdotes, observations, and humor that begin to build a narrative-type understanding of the nature of sin, virtue, and their relations to the client's career situation. However, explicit theoretical discussion, and even explicit mention of the terms sin, virtue, and the like, continues to be avoided. Such an approach to the problem of sin and virtue in fact bears similarities to Macintyre's (1984) account of how an understanding of virtue developed in its historic context: narrative understanding arose first, followed by theoretical. At any rate, such an approach to counseling may bear similarities to recommendations for the use of metaphor and stories in general in counseling, provided by many authors. This approach is also similar to many psychodynamic or depth oriented approaches to counseling, such as that typically provided by Adlerian counselors, who often emphasize the recounting of stories, anecdotes, and humor in their work. This general approach will be especially effective when used with clients who have had some general exposure to similar stories, as would be the case with clients who had grown up in or who had subsequent exposure to Christian (or Judaism or Islam) services. This approach may work with non-Christians, but the risk is that there does not exist sufficient shared understanding of the basic stories and narrative context needed for the "message" of the stories to be easily understood in ways intended by the counselor.

At the third level, the counselor may work with clients through use of a formal theory of the nature of sin and virtue, such as has been presented in this essay. Such a theory will include terms to specific concepts, and describe the presumed relations between a set of concepts, some of which will matter greatly to the client, e.g., job satisfaction, success on the job. Again, this essay has at least sketched some of these possible relations. The client's ability to acquire a theory through which to understand his or her career has been reported to be one of the factors associated with successful outcome of career counseling. However, a particular client's readiness to accept and thereby benefit from an understanding of this particular career development theory may presume the prior acquisition of at least the tacit knowledge associated with the various narratives described at the second level above. Such understanding may, however, have been acquired from sources outside of counseling. But to launch directly into a discussion of the theory of sin and virtue presented in this essay with a non-Christian client, and particularly one with relatively little exposure to the relevant narrative tradition (that one could acquire, say, through attendance at church services), would increase the likelihood that counseling would prove ineffective.

Career coaching. Career coaching represents another one-on-one career intervention in which an exploration of sin, guilt, and virtue on the job might provide a fruitful path of discovery. Career coaching refers to regular work with adult workers who describe work-related problems and goals to a career coach, who then assists them in solving the problems and achieving their goals. Career coaching with Christians might benefit from attention to issues of sin, guilt, and virtue on the job, using methods similar to those outlined above in relation to individual career counseling.

Group counseling. The exploration of the role of sin in relation to problems of career development and work adjustment might be particularly effective in the context of group counseling. Such a setting might in fact come to approximate the beneficial effects reported through integrity groups modeled after the worship services of the early Christian church (Drakeford, 1967).

There are many types of groups through which one may provide career intervention. The most important distinguishing feature is whether the group is primarily a teaching group or an exploration (or therapy) group. Teaching groups tend to be established to provide members with a structured learning experience, in which some specific content needs to be acquired by members of the group, and the group leader may be fairly directing to ensure that such content is shared and mastered within the time constraints of the group. Teaching groups may be a useful means for sharing the theory outlined in this essay, but would provide little in the way of helping participants to tailor such learning to meet the particulars of their own lives and experience in career. However, for purposes of professional development, the teaching group may be an effective means for sharing the implications of the present theory to other career intervention professionals.

Exploration groups provide the better venue for actually helping career clients to understand their career in terms of the related concepts of sin and virtue as presented in this essay. To some degree, such groups could be modeled on the methods proposed for integrity groups (Drakeford, 1967), although the focus of the groups would be directed toward the area of vocational choice and adjustment. The more open-ended the nature of the exploration of the group, the more important it would be to screen participants (through individual session) for evidence of psychopathology that could be exacerbated by participation in a group. The reason for this is that a group experience that hinges on identifying and publicly confessing one's weaknesses is inherently stressful, and could lead to a worsening of conditions among any clients already struggling with some psychological illnesses. Exploration groups could range from relatively brief in overall duration to more or less permanent, with replacement of departing members with new clients. One could even develop marathon groups on the exploration model, but for such groups prior screening for evidence of psychopathology would be particularly important, because marathon groups can provide additional intensity in the participant's experience.

Organizational consulting. Organizational consulting represents another group-oriented approach to career interventions in which the role of sin might be explored. However, explicit reference to sin in such interventions could only be made effectively if the organization was overtly Christian in nature. Organizational consulting can provide the consultant with the opportunity to consider in what ways the organization itself fosters and supports extremes of behavior that translate into sinful tendencies among workers. In a real sense, the organizational consultant working from the theory discussed in this essay seeks to foster virtue in the organization, and becomes an advocate for a particular moral compass through which the members of the organization may become both more successful and happier.

Career assessment. Assessment of a client's relative position on each of the dimensions of sin and virtue described in this paper is currently limited to either interview or behavioral observations. Theoretically, it should be possible to develop a set of psychometric scales to assess these same dimensions. The notion of having a set of seven scales, with negative features associated with extreme scores, and with positive features associated with mid-range scores, should be familiar to practitioners who have made use of various measures of psychopathology, such as the MMPI.

Summary

In this essay, I have outlined a theory of the seven deadly sins and suggested their possible applications to career development and career interventions. The theory links an Aristotelian conceptualization of the Christian tradition of the seven deadly sins (and related virtues) to the concepts of guilt, interests, personality traits, psychopathology, abilities, occupational stereotypes, career choice, work adjustment, and choice of leisure activities. The theory is particularly relevant to career interventions with Christian clients but may generalize in various ways to work with individuals from other religious groups, perhaps particularly to Jews and Muslims. Some career interventions that the theory might inform are individual career counseling, career coaching, group career counseling, organizational consulting, and career assessment.

Bibliography/References

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Links

Adherents.com. Statistics related to religion.

Beliefnet. Website addressing religious issues.

DeadlySins.com. Site dedicated to the seven deadly sins.

Defeat the Seven Deadly Sins. Site supporting book on the seven deadly sins.

New Advent. Includes Catholic encyclopedia.

Continued from:

Part 1, including Introduction, Extent of Belief in Sin, and History and Folk Psychology
Part 2, including Description of the Seven Deadly Sins Applied to Work