Listen to Your Heart? Calling and Receptivity to Career Advice

Abstract

This study explores calling in the context of career decision making. Specifically, the authors examine receptivity to advice that discourages individuals from pursuing a professional path in their calling’s domain. The authors hypothesize that people with a strong calling will be more likely to ignore negative career advice. In Study 1, a four-wave, 7-year longitudinal study following 450 amateur musicians across career stages, the regression analyses showed that those with a stronger calling toward music reported being more willing to ignore the discouraging career-related advice of a trusted mentor. These results held over time, such that an early calling predicted the degree to which young people were willing to ignore career advice equally strongly 6 weeks, 3½ years, and 7 years later. In Study 2, the authors replicated these findings in a cross-sectional study of 131 business students. The authors discuss the implications for research on calling, as well as for counseling strong-calling individuals.

Follow your heart or your head? A longitudinal study of the facilitating role of calling and ability in the pursuit of a challenging career.

“…Participants experiencing a stronger early calling toward the music domain perceived their music abilities as being greater several years later, which ultimately led to a higher likelihood of pursuing a career in this challenging domain -regardless of their actual ability level. Calling thus appears to affect people's cognitions, such that its very nature may lead people to prioritize their own perceptions, even over objective external information about their abilities (c.f., Dobrow & Tosti-Kharas, 2012; see also recent consumer research indicating subjective knowledge plays a more important role than objective knowledge in decision-making, here, risky investment decisions, Hadar, Sood, & Fox, 2013). Further, that people are generally unable to improve their self-assessments, even when motivated to do so (Ehrlinger et al, 2008), underscores the potential persistence of the calling-perceived-ability link in leading to career behaviors.…”

“…This combination creates the psychological conditions for people to focus on their own beliefs about and experiences in the calling domain (e.g., their passion and desire to engage in the domain) and to deemphasize outside career information (e.g., extremity of the competition, few available positions; Dobrow & Tosti-Kharas, 2012). We therefore posit that stronger callings will encourage self-enhancement processes in the form of higher perceived ability in music over time.…”

“…However, scholars have recently begun to consider that callings might be a "double-edged sword" -that is, callings can have both positive and negative implications, including that those with strong callings may be exploited by management (Bunderson & Thompson, 2009), may experience tension between personal and social identities in challenging occupations (Kreiner, Hollensbe, & Sheep, 2006), may suffer strain in their personal and professional relationships as a result of their high degree of focus on work (Cardador & Caza, 2012), and are more likely to ignore potentially useful but discouraging career advice (Dobrow & Tosti-Kharas, 2012).…”

Duchowość i religijność a wybór zawodu przez młodych ludzi

“…Są one niezbędne do podejmowania różnych wyzwań życiowych i zawodowych ludzi, pomyślanych jako podążanie za osiągnięciem zadowolenia z pracy i zrównoważonego rozwoju w karierze zawodowej (por. Giacalone, Jurkiewicz, 2003;Steger, Frazier, 2005;Robert, Young i Kelly, 2006;Park, 2012;Koenig, 2009a,b;Crane, 2009;Astin i współpracownicy, 2011a,b;Dik, Duffy, 2009;Duffy, Dik, i Steger, 2011;Dobrow, Tosti-Kharas, 2012;Tix i współpracownicy, 2013;Duffy i współpracownicy 2014).…”

“…Robert, Young i Kelly, 2006;Duffy , Sedlacek, 2007a,b;Dobrow , Tosti-Kharas, 2012;Bowman, Small, 2012;Cardador, Caza, 2012;Bott i współpracownicy, 2015). To prowadzi do wstępnej konkluzji, że analizowany w niniejszym artykule problem badawczy nie wynika wyłącznie z normatywnych przekonań autora, lecz ma dogłębne uzasadnienie naukowe w potrzebie poszukiwania całościowego wyjaśnienia pochodzenia zasobów i deficytów jednostki w kontekście wyboru zawodu i rozwoju kariery zawodowej.…”