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The Encounter with Poverty-Its Effect on Vocational Psychology

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Much of what we know about the stages through which an individual passes as he prepares to find his place in the world of work might appropriately be labeled "The Vocational Development of Middle Class Males." How much of the knowledge is peculiar to this one particular group and how much can be generalized to large fractions of the human population constitutes a theoretical and practical problem of considerable importance.

The Encounter With Poverty-Its Effect On Vocational Psychology

Enough forays into the unknown territory have been made to suggest that different groups in the population may indeed differ considerably in their vocational development. Interest testing of girls and women has shown, for example, that the concept of a "career" is a much less important factor in the organization of their choices and rejections than it is for their brothers and male classmates. A comprehensive theory of vocational development in females parallel to that being evolved by Super and his associates at Columbia (1963) for males has yet to be presented. McArthur's studies (1954) of upper class boys have shown that in the relationship between interests and career the upper class differs markedly from the middle class. Clark (1961) has demonstrated that differentiated interest patterns do develop in men who work at the skilled and semi skilled level plumbers, electricians, mechanics, and the like but we know little as yet about the career patterns characterizing persons in these occupations over long periods of time. About the occupational thinking of the groups below such workers in the class status pyramid, the traditional "hewers of wood and drawers of water" as well as the chronically unemployed, we as yet know very little.



The various anti poverty programs are now making it possible for psychologists and vocational educators to gain some of this much needed knowledge. Progress here does not depend entirely on formal research undertakings, although these are to be encouraged wherever possible. Just the kind of familiarity with the way other people think, that comes from interviewing them, working on group projects together, and participating in the happenings of their everyday lives, can generate new concepts, new research approaches, new theoretical ideas. The involvement of thousands of intelligent young persons in the life of the poor as VISTA volunteers, community youth leaders, or job Corps counselors can hardly fail to affect profoundly the research and theoretical formulations of the next decade or two.

Important Research Questions

Certain questions can be singled out for special mention, questions to which research of the past has never given satisfactory answers. One of these is the motivational question: Why do people work? In the middle class society most thoroughly explored, it is clear that income alone is not the answer. While we glibly say, "A person has to eat!" when anyone asks us about our motives, we know that it is not actually hunger or the threat of hunger that is driving us, and some understanding of the full complexity of the motivational fabric into which the work we do is woven has been obtained for selected occupational groups. But how general are such motives? To what extent are they developed through circumstances peculiar to a minority of human beings in a single period of history?

Psychologists have tended to assume that there is something pathological about non work, that a healthy, normal person would not be "lazy." Thus we look for personality conflicts and difficulties to explain underachievement in school, "goldbricking" on the job, and willingness to live indefinitely on welfare checks. It may well be that our basic assumption is wrong. It may be that not to work at tasks set up by somebody else is a natural human reaction, and that only persons conditioned to it through appropriate course of training from early childhood on find holding down a job really congenial. At this juncture in history we need perhaps to consider this alternative hypothesis. Will a belief in the sanctity of work be of any use to us when technological progress has released mankind from the necessity of unremitting toil? This is an example of the kind of basic question that involvement in anti poverty programs may stimulate us to ask. A thorough study of non workers may point the way to a deeper understanding than we have heretofore achieved of what it is that an individual human being is basically motivated to do and to seek in a situation where work is not required of him.

Another set of research questions revolves around the concept of identity. How does a person develop a clear sense of who he is? What kinds of experience must he undergo to achieve identity? In the middle class males we have studied most extensively, career development is a fundamental component of identity development. When a man can say, "I am an architect," or even, "I am studying to be an architect," he indicates that his thinking about himself and his place in life is now organized around a strong central core, one that exercises an integrating influence on all the other aspects of life that surround it.

But how general is this phenomenon of identity formation through career choice? Are there other processes that can be substituted for this one, other organizing concepts that may serve the same purpose the concept of a professional role serves for middle class boys? Does a worker in a low prestige occupation define his identity in occupational terms? Does inability to break into the labor force at all leave a young person handicapped in identity development, or does he find some other core concept around which to organize his perceptions and ideas about himself? When technological progress eliminates an occupation suddenly and completely, how is the identity of a worker in this occupation affected? If, with or without help, he shifts to an entirely different sort of work, does his identity then change? Things that are happening to people in this period of rapid change furnish us with many kinds of natural experiments to be utilized in furthering our knowledge of personality development.

A third variety of questions stimulated by association with the poor has to do with the ways in which work and human relationships are linked together. In this research domain, work can be either the dependent or the independent variable. If we are interested in work variables as effects, we can inquire into the ways in which family instability affects work motivation or occupational choice. Or we may ask how mothers' attitudes are related to sons' aspirations. Does the son of a family deserted by the father identify with some other male figure or does identification fail to occur in such cases? If, on the other hand, we view work variables as causes, we might ask such questions as: How does prolonged unemployment affect husband wife relationships? When a ghetto youth gets a job and moves to another area, how are his relationships to family members and former friends changed?

It is evident as we consider all these kinds of research questions brought to the fore by experience in anti poverty programs that such questions are important for both theoretical and practical reasons. Theories of vocational development, as well as more general theories of personality development, would be broadened and enriched by knowledge of these kinds. At the same time, practical efforts to deal with school dropouts, slums, unwanted leisure, family disintegration, and a host of other social problems really require that we have such knowledge to build on. Perhaps it is not possible on the basis of what we now know to design a "great society." But if we can in this first round of attempts to do so find out some essential things about personal development and social institutions, the next round may be far more efficacious than this one has been.

A Final Word

Psychologists, who have in the past designated their special fields as vocational development, counseling, or rehabilitation, along with many educational, clinical, and social psychologists, are now in the process of creating a new specialty focusing on the conservation of human resources. Just what the new specialization will be called or what its detailed structure will be like is not really the important consideration right now. What we can do is to set our course in this direction and to invest our energies in the tasks of elaborating ideas and inventing techniques for the new undertaking. If the psychologists' encounter with poverty accomplishes nothing more than to turn their efforts in this direction, it will have been well worthwhile.
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