a conversation with…
Pat Carroll
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How and When Students Revise Career Possible Goals
My research has attempted to answer the questions of how and when people revise their possible selves in the face of social threat or validation. For example, my work explores how and when a psychology student would abandon her dream of becoming a psychologist in response to a faculty member’s suggestion that she does not have the academic credentials to make it in psychology.
What do you say to the young person who struggles in science classes but says s/he is going to be a doctor?
How do you guide students who say they aren’t worried about grades because they are going to get athletic scholarships and be professional sports players?
What about the young person who wants to go to college but is discouraged from that by the adults in his/her life?
Sometimes it seems that helping students develop career and college goals is more art than science. However, Dr. Pat Carroll has some interesting research to share on how students revise career dreams in response to feedback from parents and educators.
One key question that Dr. Carroll asks is “Are people who have been led to revise their goals in the past really better or worse off than those who have not?”
STUDENTS RESPOND TO SPECIFIC IMPLICATIONS ABOUT DEAD-END CAREER CHOICES
Regarding the question of “when” it occurs, our findings showed that students were unlikely to abandon even unrealistic career dreams in response to most types of evaluative threat. That is, we found that students were unlikely to abandon their desired possible selves in response to threatening feedback that their current academic record fell short of the desired standing required to pursue their desired possible self. Rather, students were more likely to abandon desired career selves when evaluators clearly specified the meaning, or ultimate implications, of a discrepancy into the prospect of a vivid undesired self as more likely than the desired self if they continue to pursue their career goal. So, for example, our findings suggest that the student will be more likely to abandon her dream when the faculty member goes beyond merely pointing out that her current qualifications fall short of the desired standing for graduate school admissions to fully specify the ultimate implications of that discrepancy into the explicit prospect of her ending up in a dead-end office job after giving up other viable career options to continue and inevitably fail in the pursuit of the unrealistic dream of becoming a psychologist.
FINDINGS SUGGEST THAT REVISING GOALS MAY BE A PROCESS
Regarding the question of “how” it occurs, our findings suggest that students do not automatically abandon their dreams even when evaluators present fully specified threats to fulfilling their dreams. Rather, they first try to discredit the implications of the threat and, if that proves difficult, they begin to experience doubt. If they are unable to resolve initial doubt by discrediting the threat, they then begin to experience rising anxiety over the threatening prospect of becoming the undesired self if they continue to pursue their dream. Ultimately, the rising anxiety transforms initial self-doubt into the collapse of the positive expectations supporting the desired possible self. As further evidence of the critical intermediate role of anxiety, the initial anxiety is ultimately resolved as soon as people abandon the expectations and commitment to the threatened desired self.
“Possible selves can provide us with greater hope and joy than our present selves,” says Dr. Carroll.
The importance of specifying the exact process by which any psychological process unfolds over time cannot be overstated. To draw an analogy, a complete understanding of how a car operates requires more than the simple understanding that the battery, alternator, starter, and spark plugs somehow work together to translate the turn of a car key into the firing of engine pistons. Rather, a complete understanding of automotive mechanics requires knowledge of the exact sequence by which these devices (battery, starter, alternator, ignition, distributor/distributor caps, cables, and spark plugs) translate the physical act of turning a car key into a running engine. In the same way, a complete understanding of downward self-revision requires more than the simple understanding that self-doubt, anxiety, and expectations work together, in some mysterious way, to translate the effect of threats into declines in commitment to possible selves. Rather, a complete understanding of downward self-revision requires knowledge of the exact sequence by which these intervening variables (self-doubt to anxiety to expectations) translate threats into downward self-revision. To summarize, my work provides a more precise account of exactly how as well as why downward self-revision unfolds over time.
ARE PEOPLE WHO REVISE THEIR CAREER DREAMS REALLY BETTER OR WORSE OFF?
A few additional points are worth mentioning. First, it is important to understand that the negotiation of career dreams is not a rare or unlikely prospect in educational settings. In these times of growing economic and job uncertainty, parents and educators are increasingly inclined to intervene and advise students against giving up more realistic career opportunities to pursue an unrealistic career dream that they are unlikely to achieve. The problem is that these attempts at “good career advice” are happening in a very unsystematic and uncontrolled manner as different educators and parents are relying on their own gut intuitions and experiences to guide attempts to manage a student’s career dreams. This research program attempts to provide firm scientific analyses and evidence currently lacking in attempts to manage the career dreams of others.
Although promising, I would still recommend that educators use these findings with extreme caution until we have more data regarding the long-term consequences of inducing changes in people’s career dreams. Our recent work is already exploring the consequences of these changes to see whether people who have been led to revise their goals in the past are really better or worse off than those who have not.
We are also examining whether students who find their true calling after a few early changes in their career dreams might fare the best of all in the long run. But, until we have a better idea of the consequences of these changes, I would recommend that educators use extreme caution in using these findings to manage the career dreams of students. Realistic or not, these goals are an important part of how people define themselves. Possible selves can provide us with greater hope and joy than our present selves and yet, unlike present selves, they are highly vulnerable to social influence given that they exist only in our mind’s eye as the “best possible guesses” from current evidence of who we could become in the future.
Patrick J. Carroll is an assistant professor of psychology at The Ohio State University Lima campus.
- Address correspondence to Patrick Carroll at the Department of Psychology, 238 Townshend Hall, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210-1222; carroll.279@osu.edu.
- Based on Carroll, P. J., Shepperd, J. A., & Arkin, R. M. (2009). Downward self-revision: Erasing possible selves. Social Cognition, 27(4), 550-578.
