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Roe Revisited: A Call for the Reappraisal of the Theory of Personality Development and Career Choice
JOURNAL OF VOCATIONAL BEHAVIOR ARTICLE NO.
51, 283–294 (1997)
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ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION Roe Revisited: A Call for the Reappraisal of the Theory of Personality Development and Career Choice Michael T. Brown, Joyce L. Lum, and Kim Voyle University of California, Santa Barbara The general conclusion of the profession is that Roe’s (1956, 1957; Roe & Lunneborg, 1990) theory of personality development and career choice lacks empirical support for certain key proposals. The present work argues that such an opinion is premature. Misconception of the theory has led to inappropriate empirical tests of the hypothesis concerning parent–child interactions and career-choice behavior, and has resulted in wrongful conclusions about the relationship. A valid approach to characterizing and testing the theory is articulated, evidence supporting an accurate protrayal of Roe’s theory is presented, and a call is issued to the profession to reappraise the status of Roe’s theory. Future empirical, theoretical, and counseling directions for the theory are articulated. q 1997 Academic Press
Recent evaluations of the influence of Roe’s (1956; Roe & Lunneborg, 1990) theory of career choice on vocational research and practice have deemed it as ‘‘faded’’ (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994; Osipow & Fitzgerald, 1996) and recent editions of texts on career development theories have omitted chapters devoted to the theory (i.e., Osipow & Fitzgerald, 1996; Brown & Brooks, 1996). In addition, research investigating the theory’s most maligned feature, the hypothesized relations between parent–child relationships and career choice, has provided extremely limited empirical support for it (cf. Osipow, 1983) and the issue no longer occupies the attention of vocational psychologists. The present state of research on Roe’s theory and of the theory itself is unfortunate because it is due, in part, to a broad misunderstanding of Roe’s proposals, a misunderstanding that necessitates the theory’s reappraisal. THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF ROE’S THEORY
The aspect of Roe’s theory that most appears to have been misunderstood concerns the relations she proposed between early childhood experiences, Address correspondence and reprint requests to Michael T. Brown, Counseling/Clinical/School Psychology (CCSP) Program, Graduate School of Education, University of California—Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California 93106-9490. E-mail: [email protected]. 283 0001-8791/97 $25.00 Copyright q 1997 by Academic Press All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
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focusing on the child-rearing practices of parents, and subsequent vocational behavior. A number of studies have investigated the presumed links between early child-rearing experiences and occupational choice and have failed to find support for a causal or correlational role for child-rearing on vocational choice (cf. Osipow, 1983; Roe & Lunneborg, 1990). However, contrary to the conceptions of many scientists, Roe did not prescribe a direct influence of early childhood experiences on later vocationalchoice behavior. Strangely, career theory textbook writers have correctly described Roe’s proposals but, to the disservice of the theory, have failed to accurately evaluate research purporting to test them (cf. Osipow, 1983; Osipow & Fitzgerald, 1996; Zunker, 1990). Apparently, even Roe herself was discouraged by the results of the research examining a direct link between parent–child relations and occupational choice (cf. Roe & Lunneborg, 1990; Roe & Siegelman, 1964), though it should be noted that Roe believed that her proposals regarding the relation of needs to career behavior had not been invalidated by extant research (cf. Roe & Lunneborg, 1990). When examined closely, it can be discerned that Roe posited an indirect role for early child-rearing experiences in shaping later career behavior, one mediated by the structure of psychological needs that develop due to the pattern of frustrations and satisfactions experienced in childhood (Osipow & Fitzgerald, 1996; Roe, 1956, 1957, 1972; Roe & Lunneborg, 1990; Roe & Siegelman, 1964). For example, Roe (Roe & Lunneborg, 1990; cf. Roe, 1957) stated: The pattern of development of interests, attitudes, and other personality variables with relatively little or nonspecific genetic control is primarily determined by individual experiences, through which involuntary attention becomes channeled in particular directions. . . . These directions are first determined by the pattern of early satisfactions and frustrations. . . . The modes and degrees of need satisfaction determine which needs will become the strongest motivators . . . the eventual pattern . . . in terms of attention-directedness, is the major determinant of interests. . . . The intensity of these needs and their satisfaction (perhaps particularly as they have remained unconscious) and their organization are the major determinants of the degree of motivation that reaches expression in accomplishment (pp. 74–78).
Figure 1 displays the theoretically erroneous and accurate depictions of Roe’s proposals. Examination of the theoretically accurate depiction of Roe’s proposals reveals: that parent–child relations influence the development of psychological needs and their hierarchical ordering (viz., the need structure); that needs can be dichotomized as reflecting an orientation toward or not toward people; that the needs structure directly influences career behavior; and that career behavior can be dichotomized as reflecting an orientation toward or not toward people. We maintain the following: (1) that parent–child interactions can be shown to influence need structure; (2) that need structure can be shown to
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FIG. 1. Erroneous and theoretically accurate illustrations of Roe’s hypothesis regarding the influence of parent–child relations on later career behavior.
influence career choice; and (3) that (1) and (2) can be true without parent– child relations having any significant, direct relation to career choice. Consequently, while scholars (i.e., Osipow, 1983), including Roe (cf. Roe & Lunneborg, 1990, pp. 80–87), appear to view the absence of consistent findings linking parent–child relations directly to career choice behavior as indicating a fatal lack of theoretical support, we do not agree. Because Roe postulates that parent–child relations indirectly influence career choice behavior, through influence on the need structure, the lack of evidence supporting a direct relation is not theoretically inconsistent. The reason Roe and others failed to notice the misconstruction of her proposals is due to a number of conceptual ambiguities in her theory (cf. Osipow & Fitzgerald, 1996). Most pertinent to the present discussion are the two ways Roe describes and uses the concepts of orientation toward persons and not toward persons. In some instances, the orientations are presented as personality descriptions. For example, Roe (Roe, 1957, p. 213) stated that patterns of psychic energy, in terms of attention-directness (viz., needs), determine the field or fields in which persons will choose to apply themselves. She ventured further that the earliest subdivision of attention-directedness, and one having significance for the whole life-pattern of the individual, is that referring to persons, either toward or not toward them (Roe, 1957, p. 215). Consider, also, that just after describing the types of parent–child inter-
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actions that produce different patterns of need satisfactions and frustrations, Roe (Roe & Lunneborg, 1990) stated: ‘‘I then hypothesized that there are two basic orientations, either toward or not toward persons; that these orientations are related to early childhood experiences; and that they can be related in turn to occupational choice.’’ (p. 78) The implication of Roe’s statements is that early childhood experiences shape basic personality orientations, as reflected in the developed patterns of needs, that these patterns can be classified as reflecting orientations of toward or not toward people, and that these orientations affect an adult’s whole life-pattern (see Roe, 1957, p. 217, and Roe & Siegelman, 1964). However, Roe also used the orientation toward persons and not toward persons a second way, namely, as descriptions of two major classes of occupations. For example, in discussions of her occupational classification system, she described one dimension of the system as ‘‘level’’ and a second dimension as ‘‘Thing-Versus-Persons’’ (cf. Roe, 1956, 1957; Roe & Klos, 1972; Roe & Siegelman, 1964). In her view, occupational categorizations could be arranged on the basis of the interpersonal interactions involved or required (see Roe & Klos, 1972, p. 71). It is clear that Roe viewed both needs and occupational choices as classifiable in terms of orientation toward or not toward people (see Roe & Klos, 1972, p. 71, and Roe, 1957, p. 216), and this perspective is reflected in the theoretically accurate depiction of Roe’s theory in Fig. 1. The lack of a clear understanding regarding Roe’s proposals (cf. Osipow & Fitzgerald, 1996) may be partly traceable to confusion concerning when she is referring to needs and when she is referring to occupations in her discussions concerning person orientations. The distinction in the use of the person and nonperson orientations is critical to an accurate perception of the theory. It appears that many investigators either accepted the view that Roe was referring to types of occupational choices or chose to operationalize orientation as vocational choice types in studies of the link between parent–child interactions and occupational choice. Thus, they tended to investigate whether persons who had selected or had entered fields classified as toward or not toward persons reported differential child-rearing experiences. As indicated earlier, such research has been largely unsupportive of her theory (cf. Appleton & Hansen, 1969; Brunkan, 1965; Grigg, 1959; Hagen, 1960; Switzer, Grigg, Miller, & Young, 1962; Utton, 1962). For example, Grigg (1959) discovered that women graduate nursing students and women graduate students in chemistry, physics, and mathematics did not differ in their child– parent interaction recollections. Contrary to theory-based expectations, Switzer et al. (1962) reported that their sample of ministerial and theological students scored lower on the overdemanding scales of their research instruments and reported more rejecting experiences by their parents than did students majoring in chemistry. Also, Appleton and Hansen (1969) discovered that students classified as vocationally oriented toward either persons or non-
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persons on the basis of their majors differed in nurturance need but not in measured aspects of the parent–child relationship. Notwithstanding the cited studies, most investigators now understand that occupational attainments are determined by a variety of factors other than personality, resulting in a variety of personality types in one field (see also Osipow, 1983, pp. 23 & 28). Consequently, the person orientation of occupational selections and attainments reflects processes distal from personality development and the effects of child-rearing that Roe viewed as central to that development. If, however, Roe’s theory is interpreted as positing a personality orientation toward or not toward people, research shows that this orientation has some detectable relation to early childhood experiences. For example, Byers, Forrest, and Zaccaria (1968) discovered several significant associations between early family relations and psychological need structure in their sample of ministerial students and ministers. Kinnane and Pable (1962) uncovered relations between family cohesiveness and orientation toward people. Kriger (1972) found that women’s achievement needs were related to perceptions of treatment received by parents. Also consistent with Roe’s theory, research in the area of personality development suggests that parenting styles influence the attachment styles of infants (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978) and children (Cohn, Patterson, & Christopoulos, 1991; Cohn, Cowan, Cowan, & Pearson, 1992). Researchers have established three general styles of attachment in children: secure (parent is consistently responsive to the child; the child feels free to explore and return to his/her parent), anxious/ambivalent (parent has inconsistent responses or is unavailable; the child is cautious or fearful of separating from his/her parent), and avoidant (the parent is rejecting of child’s attempt for contact; child avoids parent as a source of comfort). These styles of attachment have been shown to influence adult attachment needs and their approach to interpersonal relationships at work (Shaver & Brennan, 1992; Hazan & Shaver, 1990). Investigations from the perspective of Roe’s theory would illuminate the findings reviewed above, the theory suggesting the mechanism by which the psychological needs developed from the different attachment styles and pointing to predictions about what need patterns result from attachment and parenting styles. In addition, some research indicates that certain occupational preferences and selections are classifiable in terms of person orientation and that those preferences and selections can be differentiated on measures of interpersonal needs, just as Roe posited. For example, Utton (1962) discovered that social values were systematically related to the person-orientation of occupational attainments. Levine (1963) showed that persons with a high degree of ‘‘human orientation’’ in their measured approaches to solving interpersonal problems evidenced a high likelihood of being found in occupations demanding social interaction. Hill (1974) showed that lower needs for interpersonal activity characterized those masters in business administration (MBA)
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students going into accounting and systems analysis as opposed to those intending to do marketing, manufacturing, or personnel work. Hill (1980) reported that ‘‘person orientation’’ appropriately differentiated between those female business students preferring the personnel major and those preferring the finance specialization. Finally, Kriger (1972) observed that the field and level of women’s occupational attainments were related to their achievement needs. As is apparent, there is support for Roe’s idea that child-rearing experiences affect the development of those interpersonal needs and that the influence of child-rearing experiences on career-choice behavior is mediated by measured interpersonal needs. Thus, empirical support for some of Roe’s key proposals is found when those proposals are accurately understood and investigated. THE CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE OF ROE’S THEORY
Roe’s work was truly original when it was first published about 40 years ago but in the interim the thinking of others has elaborated upon or extended beyond some of the thoughts she articulated. For example, Wrenn (1992) wrote that Roe had come to view Holland’s scheme for classifying occupations as having certain advantages over her own. Also, though Roe was first to identify orientation toward persons and not toward persons as a primary dimension underlying differences among occupations (Jones, 1965; Prediger, 1982; Roe & Klos, 1972), subsequent research has demonstrated that the primary dimension for distinguishing among occupations is ‘‘working with people versus working with things’’ (Prediger, 1982; Roe & Lunneborg, 1990; Rounds & Tracey, 1993; Tracey & Rounds, 1996). A second useful dimension for distinguishing among occupations is an orientation toward ‘‘data-versus-ideas’’ (Prediger, 1982; Tracey & Rounds, 1996). In addition, although the Theory of Work Adjustment (Dawis & Lofquist, 1984; Lofquist & Dawis, 1991) is essentially a theory of after-choice adjustment behavior, Roe’s position that people’s need structures affect their vocational choice behaviors is incorporated and more greatly elaborated upon in the Theory of Work Adjustment. Notwithstanding the extensions and elaborations, it may prove worthwhile for counseling psychologists and other career-development professionals to reexamine Roe’s assertions regarding the relations between child-rearing and career choice for four reasons. First, to the degree that Roe’s proposals have been misconstrued, reappraisal is warranted, if only for the sake of historical accuracy. Second, one of the theory’s most significant contributions concerned the roles of parents in shaping the childhood experiences of children, thereby shaping children’s psychological needs and resultant need-satisfying behaviors such as vocational interests and choices (Osipow & Fitzgerald, 1996; Roe & Lunneborg, 1990). The reanalysis and extension of Roe’s proposals might lead to an advance in our study and understanding of early influences underlying career choice, entry, and adjustment. Third, Roe’s proposition that needs that are routinely satisfied fail to motivate behavior has implications
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for the structuring of benefits and compensation systems in organizations and in the Theory of Work Adjustment. Roe argued that lower order needs require a greater level of satisfaction before the person can become motivated by higher order needs. An extension of Work Adjustment Theory to include Roe’s proposal’s suggests that lower order needs (e.g., comfort and safety) require more effort to satisfy on the part of employers than higher order needs (e.g., achievement and autonomy). This synthesis of Dawis and Lofquist’s theory and Roe’s theory has implications for work adjustment. For example, the Work Adjustment variable, flexibility, might vary as a function of both the magnitude of the need experienced and its position in a hierarchy. Relatedly, further examination and investigation of Roe’s theory may contribute in useful ways to the elaboration of need theories like the Theory of Work Adjustment. Although it has spanned well over 300 articles relating needs to work-adjustment processes (Tinsley, 1993), Work Adjustment Theory says little about how needs are developed or how knowledge of that developmental process might inform the manner in which reinforcer systems operate or can be constructed in the workplace. Roe’s (Roe, 1956; Roe & Lunneborg, 1990) proposal that individuals’ interests and attitudes develop in response to early patterns of need satisfactions and frustrations has implications for adjustment behavior within the organizational context, behavior that is the central focus of the Theory of Work Adjustment. For example, Roe argued that parents provide a social–psychological–physiological context in which need patterns develop, and that higher order needs (in Maslow’s schema) do not motivate behavior until lower order needs have been satisfied. Work Adjustment Theory argues that organizations operate on individuals as need satisfiers. Therefore, organizations may affect individuals in the same way that Roe proposed parents do. This suggests that organizations do more than satisfy needs; they also influence the development of the need structure, determining the hierarchical level of needs that motivate employees. Roe’s theory has the potential to clarify the complexity with which people respond to the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of needs, issues which the Theory of Work Adjustment describes but does not explain clearly. Fourth, Roe attributed a great deal of significance to both the needs and their structural arrangement as described by Maslow’s (1954) theory. However, most work relating needs to career-choice behavior is atheoretical (cf. Osipow & Fitzgerald, 1996) and fails to examine needs using the Maslowian framework (Maslow, 1954) inherent in Roe’s theory. Though we could find no research directly relating the specific needs identified by Maslow to vocational choice or adjustment behavior, a few useful approximations exist and concern the Maslowian needs of safety, belongingness, and love. In one early study, Blum (1961) found support for the hypothesis that desires for security (safety) would be significantly and positively related to choices of highly secure occupations. Byers et al. (1968) uncovered some significant relations between parenting styles and needs for affiliation, autonomy, and nurturance (belong-
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ingness and love) among theological students and ministers as compared to a norm sample. Blum (1975) found that persons in business fields of work and education expressed lower needs for security than persons in education fields. Also, women applying to nontraditional occupations have been found to possess lower affiliation needs and to view being married and having children as less important than women applying to traditional occupations (Trigg & Perlman, 1976). More recently, Lowman and Leeman (1988) showed that social needs, particularly needs for inclusion and affection (belongingness and love), were highly correlated with Holland’s (1985) social occupational interests. Relative to engineers who made the transition into technical management, engineers concentrating on technology were found to express lower affiliation and dominance needs, lower enterprising interests, and higher investigative interests (Sedge, 1985). NEW PERSPECTIVE AND EMPIRICAL DIRECTIONS
We conclude that the research evidence provides stronger support for Roe’s theory than the profession, and even Roe, has believed. Though not conclusive, the little available evidence clearly supports the hypotheses that parent– child interactions affect personality orientations, variously measured, and that these orientations are associated with certain types of vocational choices. New directions for research are suggested, therefore. We see considerable potential in the further mining of Roe’s proposals regarding the manner in which need structures develop. Resting on Maslow’s theory, proposals that the dependability of need satisfaction and the position on the need hierarchy affect the likelihood that a need will become a motivator have been unexplored as relates to predicting career behavior. The needdevelopment articulations of Roe offer important contributions to the enhancement of need theories like the Theory of Work Adjustment. We urge future tests of Roe’s theory concerning child-rearing, need structures, and vocational behavior using methodologies such as structural equation modeling. Such tests could determine the specific circumstances under which parent–child interactions have direct influences on vocational choices and indirect influences via psychological needs. Tests of Roe’s theory would assume a different character if the causal chain depicted second in Fig. 1 were investigated. As the illustration suggests, patterns of needs are more proximal to patterns of adult career behavior than are influences due to parent– child relations, so the relations between needs and indices of adult career behavior should be stronger than that between parent–child relations and adult career behavior. Further, it should be possible to test: (1) whether patterns of needs are classifiable as toward or not toward persons and (2) whether that dichotomy is associated with similarly classified adult career behavior. In addition, we would like to see research concerning Roe’s theory move beyond the correlational and toward the causal. Roe’s theory delineates that parent–child interactions shape needs structures and that needs structures
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determine career choice; experimental studies of this causal chain have yet to appear in the literature. Further research is needed to test Roe’s theory concerning the relations between parent–child interactions and the resulting need structure of the individual. The latter study is critically important, given that Roe’s theory makes contradictory predictions. For example, Roe postulates that loving, but overprotecting, parents place great emphasis on the child’s immediate need gratification, thus keeping lower level needs in the foreground (Roe, 1957, p. 214), and producing children oriented toward persons. Consider, though, that according to another argument of Roe, needs routinely satisfied do not become unconscious motivators. She based this expectation on Maslow (1954), who stated: what it amounts to is that a mother loving her child well produces in the child (by her rewards, reinforcements, repetition, exercise, etc.) a reduction of the strength of love need through later life, a lowered probability of, e.g., kissing, a lesser amount of clinging to her, etc. The best way to teach a child to go seeking in all directions for affection and to have a constant craving for it is to partially deny him love. (pp. 112–113)
On the basis of the argument, one might expect the above-described childrearing context to produce children having an orientation in which relationships with persons was not an important motivator. Roe (Roe & Lunneborg, 1990) called for more studies of individual differences in Maslowian needs and of the need satisfactions found in different occupations and in different occupational settings. Important issues deserving attention include: whether needs at different levels of Maslow’s need hierarchy are differentially predictive of occupational classification; whether persons characterized by an orientation toward persons versus not toward have different patterns of Maslowian needs; and whether higher order needs for which even minimum satisfaction is rarely achieved will become effectively expunged while lower order will become dominating and restricting motivators of choice and adjustment behavior. Relatedly, it is interesting that a factor analysis of the Minnesota Importance Questionnaire (MIQ; Gay, Weiss, Hendel, Dawis, & Lofquist, 1971) has yielded factors seemingly indicative of several levels of Maslow’s need hierarchy. In ascending order, the Maslowian needs are: physiological, safety, belongingness and love, respect and self-esteem, information, understanding, beauty, and self-actualization. According to Lofquist and Dawis (1978), the MIQ factors are: comfort and safety (physiological and safety), altruism (belongingness and love), achievement (respect and self-esteem), autonomy and aggrandizement (self-actualization). A number of important questions merit investigation. Are the MIQ and Maslowian dimensions similar? Do the MIQ factors arrange themselves in the hierarchical pattern proposed by Maslow?
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What are the implications of that ordering of factors for assessment and for the prediction of choice or adjustment behavior? Roe stated repeatedly (cf. Roe, 1957, 1972; Roe & Lunneborg, 1990) that her theory was misconstrued to apply only to career-choice behavior and not to other occupational and nonoccupational behavior. Therefore, we suggest that need structures should be investigated in relation to a wider range of vocational behaviors, perhaps especially those associated with vocational satisfaction. Such research might begin to address the frequent criticism that Roe’s theory lacks application to vocational therapy (cf. Osipow, 1983; Roe & Lunneborg, 1990). Information about the relation of need structures to career choice satisfaction could be very useful to career- and life-planning specialists. Many unanswered methodological and conceptual questions remain concerning Roe’s theory; the answers will most certainly affect the future status of the theory. Many of these concerns have been identified by other scholars (Brown, 1990; Osipow, 1983). For example, at what point in the development of a child would one expect the role of parent–child relations (or remembered interactions) to be most vocationally relevant? Does the number of parents or parent-figures change the effect of parent–child interactions on vocational choice? What should be measured, actual or perceived parent–child interactions? If perceptions are measured, should they be those of the parent or the vocational decision-maker? We echo Osipow’s (1983) sentiments that without a major revision, Roe’s theory will not likely have a growing impact on the field. Nevertheless, we believe Roe’s (Roe & Lunneborg, 1990) theory presents very interesting and potentially fruitful areas of inquiry that have not yet been investigated adequately. Roe’s proposals have suffered from misinterpretations and faulty analyses, resulting in theoretically ambiguous results. In this paper, we have suggested clarifications of Roe’s theory and have argued that current research actually supports, rather than refutes, some of her key proposals. We believe that the reconceptualization we have proposed will lead to a more accurate understanding of the role of need-development in career behavior, an understanding that is foundational to the formation of effective career-counseling strategies. Therefore, we call for a reappraisal of her theory by the profession. REFERENCES Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Appleton, G. M., & Hansen, J. C. (1969). Parent–child relations, need–nurturance, and vocational orientation. Personnel and Guidance Journal, 47, 794–799. Blum, S. H. (1961). The desire for security: An element in the vocational choice of college men. Journal of Educational Psychology, 52, 317–321. Blum, S. H. (1975). The desire for security in vocational choice: A comparison of men and women. Journal of Psychology, 91, 277–281. Brown, D. (1990). Summary, comparison, and critique of the major theories. In D. Brown & L. Brooks (Eds.), Career choice and development (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey–Bass.
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Roe, A. (1957). Early determinants of vocational choice. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 4, 212–217. Roe, A. (1972). Perspectives on vocational development. In J. M. Whiteley & A. Resnikoff (Eds.), Perspectives on vocational development. Washington, DC: American Personnel and Guidance Assoc. Roe, A., & Klos, D. (1972). Classification of occupations. In J. M. Whiteley & A. Resnikoff (Eds.), Perspectives on vocational development. Washington, DC: American Personnel and Guidance Assoc. Roe, A., & Lunneborg, P. W. (1990). Personality development and career choice. In D. Brown & L. Brooks (Eds.), Career choice and development (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Roe, A., & Siegelman, M. (1964). The origin of interests. The APGA inquiry series, No. 1, Washington, DC: American Personnel and Guidance Assoc. Rounds, J., & Tracey, T. J. (1993). Prediger’s dimensional representation of Holland’s RIASEC circumplex. Journal of Applied Psychology, 64, 132–143. Sedge, S. K. (1985). A comparison of engineers pursuing alternative career paths. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 27, 56–70. Shaver, P. R., & Brennan, K. A. (1992). Attachment styles and the ‘‘big five’’ personality traits: Their connections with each other and with romantic relationship outcomes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18, 536–545. Switzer, D. K., Grigg, A. E., Miller, J. B., & Young, R. K. (1962). Early experiences and occupational choice: A test of Roe’s hypothesis. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 9, 45–48. Tinsley, H. E. A. (1993). Special issue on the theory of work adjustment. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 43, 1–4. Tracey, T. J. G., & Rounds, J. (1996). The spherical representation of vocational interests. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 48, 3–41. Trigg, L. J., & Perlman, D. (1976). Social influences on women’s pursuit of a nontraditional career. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 1, 138–150. Utton, A. C. (1962). Recalled parent–child relations as determinants of vocational choice. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 9, 49–53. Wrenn, R. L. (1992). Anne Roe (1904–1991): Obituary. American Psychologist, 47, 1052–1053. Zunker, V. G. (1990). Career counseling: Applied concepts of life planning (3rd ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole. Received: April 25, 1995
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ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION Roe Revisited: A Call for the Reappraisal of the Theory of Personality Development and Career Choice Michael T. Brown, Joyce L. Lum, and Kim Voyle University of California, Santa Barbara The general conclusion of the profession is that Roe’s (1956, 1957; Roe & Lunneborg, 1990) theory of personality development and career choice lacks empirical support for certain key proposals. The present work argues that such an opinion is premature. Misconception of the theory has led to inappropriate empirical tests of the hypothesis concerning parent–child interactions and career-choice behavior, and has resulted in wrongful conclusions about the relationship. A valid approach to characterizing and testing the theory is articulated, evidence supporting an accurate protrayal of Roe’s theory is presented, and a call is issued to the profession to reappraise the status of Roe’s theory. Future empirical, theoretical, and counseling directions for the theory are articulated. q 1997 Academic Press
Recent evaluations of the influence of Roe’s (1956; Roe & Lunneborg, 1990) theory of career choice on vocational research and practice have deemed it as ‘‘faded’’ (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994; Osipow & Fitzgerald, 1996) and recent editions of texts on career development theories have omitted chapters devoted to the theory (i.e., Osipow & Fitzgerald, 1996; Brown & Brooks, 1996). In addition, research investigating the theory’s most maligned feature, the hypothesized relations between parent–child relationships and career choice, has provided extremely limited empirical support for it (cf. Osipow, 1983) and the issue no longer occupies the attention of vocational psychologists. The present state of research on Roe’s theory and of the theory itself is unfortunate because it is due, in part, to a broad misunderstanding of Roe’s proposals, a misunderstanding that necessitates the theory’s reappraisal. THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF ROE’S THEORY
The aspect of Roe’s theory that most appears to have been misunderstood concerns the relations she proposed between early childhood experiences, Address correspondence and reprint requests to Michael T. Brown, Counseling/Clinical/School Psychology (CCSP) Program, Graduate School of Education, University of California—Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California 93106-9490. E-mail: [email protected]. 283 0001-8791/97 $25.00 Copyright q 1997 by Academic Press All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
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focusing on the child-rearing practices of parents, and subsequent vocational behavior. A number of studies have investigated the presumed links between early child-rearing experiences and occupational choice and have failed to find support for a causal or correlational role for child-rearing on vocational choice (cf. Osipow, 1983; Roe & Lunneborg, 1990). However, contrary to the conceptions of many scientists, Roe did not prescribe a direct influence of early childhood experiences on later vocationalchoice behavior. Strangely, career theory textbook writers have correctly described Roe’s proposals but, to the disservice of the theory, have failed to accurately evaluate research purporting to test them (cf. Osipow, 1983; Osipow & Fitzgerald, 1996; Zunker, 1990). Apparently, even Roe herself was discouraged by the results of the research examining a direct link between parent–child relations and occupational choice (cf. Roe & Lunneborg, 1990; Roe & Siegelman, 1964), though it should be noted that Roe believed that her proposals regarding the relation of needs to career behavior had not been invalidated by extant research (cf. Roe & Lunneborg, 1990). When examined closely, it can be discerned that Roe posited an indirect role for early child-rearing experiences in shaping later career behavior, one mediated by the structure of psychological needs that develop due to the pattern of frustrations and satisfactions experienced in childhood (Osipow & Fitzgerald, 1996; Roe, 1956, 1957, 1972; Roe & Lunneborg, 1990; Roe & Siegelman, 1964). For example, Roe (Roe & Lunneborg, 1990; cf. Roe, 1957) stated: The pattern of development of interests, attitudes, and other personality variables with relatively little or nonspecific genetic control is primarily determined by individual experiences, through which involuntary attention becomes channeled in particular directions. . . . These directions are first determined by the pattern of early satisfactions and frustrations. . . . The modes and degrees of need satisfaction determine which needs will become the strongest motivators . . . the eventual pattern . . . in terms of attention-directedness, is the major determinant of interests. . . . The intensity of these needs and their satisfaction (perhaps particularly as they have remained unconscious) and their organization are the major determinants of the degree of motivation that reaches expression in accomplishment (pp. 74–78).
Figure 1 displays the theoretically erroneous and accurate depictions of Roe’s proposals. Examination of the theoretically accurate depiction of Roe’s proposals reveals: that parent–child relations influence the development of psychological needs and their hierarchical ordering (viz., the need structure); that needs can be dichotomized as reflecting an orientation toward or not toward people; that the needs structure directly influences career behavior; and that career behavior can be dichotomized as reflecting an orientation toward or not toward people. We maintain the following: (1) that parent–child interactions can be shown to influence need structure; (2) that need structure can be shown to
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FIG. 1. Erroneous and theoretically accurate illustrations of Roe’s hypothesis regarding the influence of parent–child relations on later career behavior.
influence career choice; and (3) that (1) and (2) can be true without parent– child relations having any significant, direct relation to career choice. Consequently, while scholars (i.e., Osipow, 1983), including Roe (cf. Roe & Lunneborg, 1990, pp. 80–87), appear to view the absence of consistent findings linking parent–child relations directly to career choice behavior as indicating a fatal lack of theoretical support, we do not agree. Because Roe postulates that parent–child relations indirectly influence career choice behavior, through influence on the need structure, the lack of evidence supporting a direct relation is not theoretically inconsistent. The reason Roe and others failed to notice the misconstruction of her proposals is due to a number of conceptual ambiguities in her theory (cf. Osipow & Fitzgerald, 1996). Most pertinent to the present discussion are the two ways Roe describes and uses the concepts of orientation toward persons and not toward persons. In some instances, the orientations are presented as personality descriptions. For example, Roe (Roe, 1957, p. 213) stated that patterns of psychic energy, in terms of attention-directness (viz., needs), determine the field or fields in which persons will choose to apply themselves. She ventured further that the earliest subdivision of attention-directedness, and one having significance for the whole life-pattern of the individual, is that referring to persons, either toward or not toward them (Roe, 1957, p. 215). Consider, also, that just after describing the types of parent–child inter-
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actions that produce different patterns of need satisfactions and frustrations, Roe (Roe & Lunneborg, 1990) stated: ‘‘I then hypothesized that there are two basic orientations, either toward or not toward persons; that these orientations are related to early childhood experiences; and that they can be related in turn to occupational choice.’’ (p. 78) The implication of Roe’s statements is that early childhood experiences shape basic personality orientations, as reflected in the developed patterns of needs, that these patterns can be classified as reflecting orientations of toward or not toward people, and that these orientations affect an adult’s whole life-pattern (see Roe, 1957, p. 217, and Roe & Siegelman, 1964). However, Roe also used the orientation toward persons and not toward persons a second way, namely, as descriptions of two major classes of occupations. For example, in discussions of her occupational classification system, she described one dimension of the system as ‘‘level’’ and a second dimension as ‘‘Thing-Versus-Persons’’ (cf. Roe, 1956, 1957; Roe & Klos, 1972; Roe & Siegelman, 1964). In her view, occupational categorizations could be arranged on the basis of the interpersonal interactions involved or required (see Roe & Klos, 1972, p. 71). It is clear that Roe viewed both needs and occupational choices as classifiable in terms of orientation toward or not toward people (see Roe & Klos, 1972, p. 71, and Roe, 1957, p. 216), and this perspective is reflected in the theoretically accurate depiction of Roe’s theory in Fig. 1. The lack of a clear understanding regarding Roe’s proposals (cf. Osipow & Fitzgerald, 1996) may be partly traceable to confusion concerning when she is referring to needs and when she is referring to occupations in her discussions concerning person orientations. The distinction in the use of the person and nonperson orientations is critical to an accurate perception of the theory. It appears that many investigators either accepted the view that Roe was referring to types of occupational choices or chose to operationalize orientation as vocational choice types in studies of the link between parent–child interactions and occupational choice. Thus, they tended to investigate whether persons who had selected or had entered fields classified as toward or not toward persons reported differential child-rearing experiences. As indicated earlier, such research has been largely unsupportive of her theory (cf. Appleton & Hansen, 1969; Brunkan, 1965; Grigg, 1959; Hagen, 1960; Switzer, Grigg, Miller, & Young, 1962; Utton, 1962). For example, Grigg (1959) discovered that women graduate nursing students and women graduate students in chemistry, physics, and mathematics did not differ in their child– parent interaction recollections. Contrary to theory-based expectations, Switzer et al. (1962) reported that their sample of ministerial and theological students scored lower on the overdemanding scales of their research instruments and reported more rejecting experiences by their parents than did students majoring in chemistry. Also, Appleton and Hansen (1969) discovered that students classified as vocationally oriented toward either persons or non-
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persons on the basis of their majors differed in nurturance need but not in measured aspects of the parent–child relationship. Notwithstanding the cited studies, most investigators now understand that occupational attainments are determined by a variety of factors other than personality, resulting in a variety of personality types in one field (see also Osipow, 1983, pp. 23 & 28). Consequently, the person orientation of occupational selections and attainments reflects processes distal from personality development and the effects of child-rearing that Roe viewed as central to that development. If, however, Roe’s theory is interpreted as positing a personality orientation toward or not toward people, research shows that this orientation has some detectable relation to early childhood experiences. For example, Byers, Forrest, and Zaccaria (1968) discovered several significant associations between early family relations and psychological need structure in their sample of ministerial students and ministers. Kinnane and Pable (1962) uncovered relations between family cohesiveness and orientation toward people. Kriger (1972) found that women’s achievement needs were related to perceptions of treatment received by parents. Also consistent with Roe’s theory, research in the area of personality development suggests that parenting styles influence the attachment styles of infants (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978) and children (Cohn, Patterson, & Christopoulos, 1991; Cohn, Cowan, Cowan, & Pearson, 1992). Researchers have established three general styles of attachment in children: secure (parent is consistently responsive to the child; the child feels free to explore and return to his/her parent), anxious/ambivalent (parent has inconsistent responses or is unavailable; the child is cautious or fearful of separating from his/her parent), and avoidant (the parent is rejecting of child’s attempt for contact; child avoids parent as a source of comfort). These styles of attachment have been shown to influence adult attachment needs and their approach to interpersonal relationships at work (Shaver & Brennan, 1992; Hazan & Shaver, 1990). Investigations from the perspective of Roe’s theory would illuminate the findings reviewed above, the theory suggesting the mechanism by which the psychological needs developed from the different attachment styles and pointing to predictions about what need patterns result from attachment and parenting styles. In addition, some research indicates that certain occupational preferences and selections are classifiable in terms of person orientation and that those preferences and selections can be differentiated on measures of interpersonal needs, just as Roe posited. For example, Utton (1962) discovered that social values were systematically related to the person-orientation of occupational attainments. Levine (1963) showed that persons with a high degree of ‘‘human orientation’’ in their measured approaches to solving interpersonal problems evidenced a high likelihood of being found in occupations demanding social interaction. Hill (1974) showed that lower needs for interpersonal activity characterized those masters in business administration (MBA)
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students going into accounting and systems analysis as opposed to those intending to do marketing, manufacturing, or personnel work. Hill (1980) reported that ‘‘person orientation’’ appropriately differentiated between those female business students preferring the personnel major and those preferring the finance specialization. Finally, Kriger (1972) observed that the field and level of women’s occupational attainments were related to their achievement needs. As is apparent, there is support for Roe’s idea that child-rearing experiences affect the development of those interpersonal needs and that the influence of child-rearing experiences on career-choice behavior is mediated by measured interpersonal needs. Thus, empirical support for some of Roe’s key proposals is found when those proposals are accurately understood and investigated. THE CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE OF ROE’S THEORY
Roe’s work was truly original when it was first published about 40 years ago but in the interim the thinking of others has elaborated upon or extended beyond some of the thoughts she articulated. For example, Wrenn (1992) wrote that Roe had come to view Holland’s scheme for classifying occupations as having certain advantages over her own. Also, though Roe was first to identify orientation toward persons and not toward persons as a primary dimension underlying differences among occupations (Jones, 1965; Prediger, 1982; Roe & Klos, 1972), subsequent research has demonstrated that the primary dimension for distinguishing among occupations is ‘‘working with people versus working with things’’ (Prediger, 1982; Roe & Lunneborg, 1990; Rounds & Tracey, 1993; Tracey & Rounds, 1996). A second useful dimension for distinguishing among occupations is an orientation toward ‘‘data-versus-ideas’’ (Prediger, 1982; Tracey & Rounds, 1996). In addition, although the Theory of Work Adjustment (Dawis & Lofquist, 1984; Lofquist & Dawis, 1991) is essentially a theory of after-choice adjustment behavior, Roe’s position that people’s need structures affect their vocational choice behaviors is incorporated and more greatly elaborated upon in the Theory of Work Adjustment. Notwithstanding the extensions and elaborations, it may prove worthwhile for counseling psychologists and other career-development professionals to reexamine Roe’s assertions regarding the relations between child-rearing and career choice for four reasons. First, to the degree that Roe’s proposals have been misconstrued, reappraisal is warranted, if only for the sake of historical accuracy. Second, one of the theory’s most significant contributions concerned the roles of parents in shaping the childhood experiences of children, thereby shaping children’s psychological needs and resultant need-satisfying behaviors such as vocational interests and choices (Osipow & Fitzgerald, 1996; Roe & Lunneborg, 1990). The reanalysis and extension of Roe’s proposals might lead to an advance in our study and understanding of early influences underlying career choice, entry, and adjustment. Third, Roe’s proposition that needs that are routinely satisfied fail to motivate behavior has implications
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for the structuring of benefits and compensation systems in organizations and in the Theory of Work Adjustment. Roe argued that lower order needs require a greater level of satisfaction before the person can become motivated by higher order needs. An extension of Work Adjustment Theory to include Roe’s proposal’s suggests that lower order needs (e.g., comfort and safety) require more effort to satisfy on the part of employers than higher order needs (e.g., achievement and autonomy). This synthesis of Dawis and Lofquist’s theory and Roe’s theory has implications for work adjustment. For example, the Work Adjustment variable, flexibility, might vary as a function of both the magnitude of the need experienced and its position in a hierarchy. Relatedly, further examination and investigation of Roe’s theory may contribute in useful ways to the elaboration of need theories like the Theory of Work Adjustment. Although it has spanned well over 300 articles relating needs to work-adjustment processes (Tinsley, 1993), Work Adjustment Theory says little about how needs are developed or how knowledge of that developmental process might inform the manner in which reinforcer systems operate or can be constructed in the workplace. Roe’s (Roe, 1956; Roe & Lunneborg, 1990) proposal that individuals’ interests and attitudes develop in response to early patterns of need satisfactions and frustrations has implications for adjustment behavior within the organizational context, behavior that is the central focus of the Theory of Work Adjustment. For example, Roe argued that parents provide a social–psychological–physiological context in which need patterns develop, and that higher order needs (in Maslow’s schema) do not motivate behavior until lower order needs have been satisfied. Work Adjustment Theory argues that organizations operate on individuals as need satisfiers. Therefore, organizations may affect individuals in the same way that Roe proposed parents do. This suggests that organizations do more than satisfy needs; they also influence the development of the need structure, determining the hierarchical level of needs that motivate employees. Roe’s theory has the potential to clarify the complexity with which people respond to the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of needs, issues which the Theory of Work Adjustment describes but does not explain clearly. Fourth, Roe attributed a great deal of significance to both the needs and their structural arrangement as described by Maslow’s (1954) theory. However, most work relating needs to career-choice behavior is atheoretical (cf. Osipow & Fitzgerald, 1996) and fails to examine needs using the Maslowian framework (Maslow, 1954) inherent in Roe’s theory. Though we could find no research directly relating the specific needs identified by Maslow to vocational choice or adjustment behavior, a few useful approximations exist and concern the Maslowian needs of safety, belongingness, and love. In one early study, Blum (1961) found support for the hypothesis that desires for security (safety) would be significantly and positively related to choices of highly secure occupations. Byers et al. (1968) uncovered some significant relations between parenting styles and needs for affiliation, autonomy, and nurturance (belong-
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ingness and love) among theological students and ministers as compared to a norm sample. Blum (1975) found that persons in business fields of work and education expressed lower needs for security than persons in education fields. Also, women applying to nontraditional occupations have been found to possess lower affiliation needs and to view being married and having children as less important than women applying to traditional occupations (Trigg & Perlman, 1976). More recently, Lowman and Leeman (1988) showed that social needs, particularly needs for inclusion and affection (belongingness and love), were highly correlated with Holland’s (1985) social occupational interests. Relative to engineers who made the transition into technical management, engineers concentrating on technology were found to express lower affiliation and dominance needs, lower enterprising interests, and higher investigative interests (Sedge, 1985). NEW PERSPECTIVE AND EMPIRICAL DIRECTIONS
We conclude that the research evidence provides stronger support for Roe’s theory than the profession, and even Roe, has believed. Though not conclusive, the little available evidence clearly supports the hypotheses that parent– child interactions affect personality orientations, variously measured, and that these orientations are associated with certain types of vocational choices. New directions for research are suggested, therefore. We see considerable potential in the further mining of Roe’s proposals regarding the manner in which need structures develop. Resting on Maslow’s theory, proposals that the dependability of need satisfaction and the position on the need hierarchy affect the likelihood that a need will become a motivator have been unexplored as relates to predicting career behavior. The needdevelopment articulations of Roe offer important contributions to the enhancement of need theories like the Theory of Work Adjustment. We urge future tests of Roe’s theory concerning child-rearing, need structures, and vocational behavior using methodologies such as structural equation modeling. Such tests could determine the specific circumstances under which parent–child interactions have direct influences on vocational choices and indirect influences via psychological needs. Tests of Roe’s theory would assume a different character if the causal chain depicted second in Fig. 1 were investigated. As the illustration suggests, patterns of needs are more proximal to patterns of adult career behavior than are influences due to parent– child relations, so the relations between needs and indices of adult career behavior should be stronger than that between parent–child relations and adult career behavior. Further, it should be possible to test: (1) whether patterns of needs are classifiable as toward or not toward persons and (2) whether that dichotomy is associated with similarly classified adult career behavior. In addition, we would like to see research concerning Roe’s theory move beyond the correlational and toward the causal. Roe’s theory delineates that parent–child interactions shape needs structures and that needs structures
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determine career choice; experimental studies of this causal chain have yet to appear in the literature. Further research is needed to test Roe’s theory concerning the relations between parent–child interactions and the resulting need structure of the individual. The latter study is critically important, given that Roe’s theory makes contradictory predictions. For example, Roe postulates that loving, but overprotecting, parents place great emphasis on the child’s immediate need gratification, thus keeping lower level needs in the foreground (Roe, 1957, p. 214), and producing children oriented toward persons. Consider, though, that according to another argument of Roe, needs routinely satisfied do not become unconscious motivators. She based this expectation on Maslow (1954), who stated: what it amounts to is that a mother loving her child well produces in the child (by her rewards, reinforcements, repetition, exercise, etc.) a reduction of the strength of love need through later life, a lowered probability of, e.g., kissing, a lesser amount of clinging to her, etc. The best way to teach a child to go seeking in all directions for affection and to have a constant craving for it is to partially deny him love. (pp. 112–113)
On the basis of the argument, one might expect the above-described childrearing context to produce children having an orientation in which relationships with persons was not an important motivator. Roe (Roe & Lunneborg, 1990) called for more studies of individual differences in Maslowian needs and of the need satisfactions found in different occupations and in different occupational settings. Important issues deserving attention include: whether needs at different levels of Maslow’s need hierarchy are differentially predictive of occupational classification; whether persons characterized by an orientation toward persons versus not toward have different patterns of Maslowian needs; and whether higher order needs for which even minimum satisfaction is rarely achieved will become effectively expunged while lower order will become dominating and restricting motivators of choice and adjustment behavior. Relatedly, it is interesting that a factor analysis of the Minnesota Importance Questionnaire (MIQ; Gay, Weiss, Hendel, Dawis, & Lofquist, 1971) has yielded factors seemingly indicative of several levels of Maslow’s need hierarchy. In ascending order, the Maslowian needs are: physiological, safety, belongingness and love, respect and self-esteem, information, understanding, beauty, and self-actualization. According to Lofquist and Dawis (1978), the MIQ factors are: comfort and safety (physiological and safety), altruism (belongingness and love), achievement (respect and self-esteem), autonomy and aggrandizement (self-actualization). A number of important questions merit investigation. Are the MIQ and Maslowian dimensions similar? Do the MIQ factors arrange themselves in the hierarchical pattern proposed by Maslow?
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What are the implications of that ordering of factors for assessment and for the prediction of choice or adjustment behavior? Roe stated repeatedly (cf. Roe, 1957, 1972; Roe & Lunneborg, 1990) that her theory was misconstrued to apply only to career-choice behavior and not to other occupational and nonoccupational behavior. Therefore, we suggest that need structures should be investigated in relation to a wider range of vocational behaviors, perhaps especially those associated with vocational satisfaction. Such research might begin to address the frequent criticism that Roe’s theory lacks application to vocational therapy (cf. Osipow, 1983; Roe & Lunneborg, 1990). Information about the relation of need structures to career choice satisfaction could be very useful to career- and life-planning specialists. Many unanswered methodological and conceptual questions remain concerning Roe’s theory; the answers will most certainly affect the future status of the theory. Many of these concerns have been identified by other scholars (Brown, 1990; Osipow, 1983). For example, at what point in the development of a child would one expect the role of parent–child relations (or remembered interactions) to be most vocationally relevant? Does the number of parents or parent-figures change the effect of parent–child interactions on vocational choice? What should be measured, actual or perceived parent–child interactions? If perceptions are measured, should they be those of the parent or the vocational decision-maker? We echo Osipow’s (1983) sentiments that without a major revision, Roe’s theory will not likely have a growing impact on the field. Nevertheless, we believe Roe’s (Roe & Lunneborg, 1990) theory presents very interesting and potentially fruitful areas of inquiry that have not yet been investigated adequately. Roe’s proposals have suffered from misinterpretations and faulty analyses, resulting in theoretically ambiguous results. In this paper, we have suggested clarifications of Roe’s theory and have argued that current research actually supports, rather than refutes, some of her key proposals. We believe that the reconceptualization we have proposed will lead to a more accurate understanding of the role of need-development in career behavior, an understanding that is foundational to the formation of effective career-counseling strategies. Therefore, we call for a reappraisal of her theory by the profession. REFERENCES Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Appleton, G. M., & Hansen, J. C. (1969). Parent–child relations, need–nurturance, and vocational orientation. Personnel and Guidance Journal, 47, 794–799. Blum, S. H. (1961). The desire for security: An element in the vocational choice of college men. Journal of Educational Psychology, 52, 317–321. Blum, S. H. (1975). The desire for security in vocational choice: A comparison of men and women. Journal of Psychology, 91, 277–281. Brown, D. (1990). Summary, comparison, and critique of the major theories. In D. Brown & L. Brooks (Eds.), Career choice and development (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey–Bass.
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