COUNSELING

THEORIES

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Holland’s theory
Careers are determined by an interaction between our personality and the environment in John Holland's Theory of Career Choice. We want jobs with people like us.

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John Holland's Theory of Career Choice (RIASEC) maintains that in choosing a career, people prefer jobs where they can be around others who are like them. They search for environments
that will let them use their skills and abilities, and express their attitudes and values, while taking on enjoyable problems and roles. Behaviour is determined by an interaction between
personality and environment. 

Holland’s theory is centred on the notion that most people fit into one of six personality types:

 Realistic
 Investigative
 Artistic
 Social
 Enterprising
 Conventional.

Realistic

Description of interest area Some key skills Some occupations with Realistic Subjects you could study to
components give you the skills

Likes to work mainly with hands,
making, fixing, assembling or
building things, using and operating
equipment, tools or machines. Often
likes to work outdoors
Using and operating tools, equipment and Pilot, farmer, horticulturalist, builder, English, Maths, Science,
machinery, designing, building, repairing, engineer, armed services personnel, Workshop, Technology,
maintaining, working manually, measuring, mechanic, upholsterer, electrician, Computing, Business Studies,
working in detail, driving, moving, caring for computer technologist, park ranger, Agriculture, Horticulture,
animals, working with plants sportsperson Physical Education

Investigative

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 Description of interest area Some key skills Some occupations with Investigative Subjects you could
components study to give you
the skills

Likes to discover and research Thinking analytically and logically, computing, Science, research, medical and health English, Maths,
ideas, observe, investigate and communicating by writing and speaking, occupations, chemist, marine scientist, forestry Science,
experiment, ask questions and designing, formulating, calculating, diagnosing, technician, medical or agricultural laboratory Computing,
solve problems experimenting, investigating technician, zoologist, dentist, doctor Technology

Artistic

Description of interest area Some key skills Some occupations with Artistic components Subjects you could study to
give you the skills

Likes to use words, art, music or Expressing artistically or physically, Artist, illustrator, photographer, signwriter, English, Social Studies, Music,
drama to communicate, perform, or speaking, writing, singing, performing, composer, singer, instrument player, dancer, Drama, Art, Graphic Design,
express themselves, create and designing, presenting, planning, actor, reporter, writer, editor, advertiser, Computing, Business Studies,
design things composing, playing, dancing hairdresser, fashion designer Languages

Social

Description of interest area Some key skills Some occupations with Social Subjects you could study to give
components you the skills

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 Likes to work with people to teach, train Communicating orally or in writing, caring Teacher, nurse, nurse aide, English, Social Studies, Maths,
and inform, help, treat, heal and cure, and supporting, training, meeting, greeting, counsellor, police officer, social Science, Health, Physical
serve and greet, concerned for the assisting, teaching, informing, worker, salesperson, customer Education, Art, Computing,
wellbeing and welfare of others interviewing, coaching service officer, waiter, secretary Business Studies, Languages

Enterprising

Description of interest area Some key skills Some occupations with Enterprising Subjects you could study to give you the
components skills

Likes meeting people, leading, Selling, promoting and persuading, Salesperson, lawyer, politician, English, Maths, Business Studies,
talking to and influencing others, developing ideas, public speaking, accountant, business owner, Accounting, Economics, Social Studies,
encouraging others, working in managing, organising, leading and executive or manager, travel agent, Drama, Computing, Text Information
business captaining, computing, planning music or sports promoter Management, Languages

Conventional

Description of interest area Some key skills Some occupations with Subjects you could study to
Conventional components give you the skills

Likes working indoors and at tasks that Computing and keyboarding, recording and Secretary, receptionist, office English, Maths, Business
involve organising and being accurate, keeping records, paying attention to detail, worker, librarian, bank clerk, Studies, Accounting,
following procedures, working with data meeting and greeting, doing calculations, computer operator, stores and Economics, Computing, Text
or numbers, planning work and events handling money, organising, arranging, working dispatch clerk Information Management

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 independently

Holland asserts that people of the same personality type working together in a job create an environment that fits and rewards their type.

Within this theory there are six basic types of work environment, which correlate directly to the personality types. Holland emphasises that people who choose to work in
an environment similar to their personality type are more likely to be successful and satisfied. This idea is important as it shows Holland’s theory can be flexible,
incorporating combination types.

Holland’s theory takes a problem-solving and cognitive approach to career planning. His model has been very influential in career counselling. It has been employed
through popular assessment tools such as the Self-Directed Search, Vocational Preference Inventory and the Strong Interest Inventory.

There is much research to support Holland’s typology. However it is not without criticism, the most common being the prevalence of females to score in three personality
types (artistic, social and conventional). According to Holland this is because society channels women into female-dominated occupations.

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Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is an introspective self-report questionnaire indicating differing psychological preferences in how people
perceive the world and make decisions.[1][2][3] The test attempts to assign four categories: introversion or extraversion, sensing or intuition, thinking or feeling,
judging or perceiving. One letter from each category is taken to produce a four-letter test result, like "INFJ" or "ENFP".

Most of the research supporting the MBTI's validity has been produced by the Center for Applications of Psychological Type, an organization run by the Myers-
Briggs Foundation, and published in the center's own journal, the Journal of Psychological Type, raising questions of independence, bias, and conflict of interest.
[4] Independent sources have called the test "little more than a Chinese fortune cookie",[5] "pretty much meaningless",[6] "one of the worst personality tests in
existence,"[7] and "the fad that won't die".[8]

Though the MBTI resembles some psychological theories, it has been criticized as pseudoscience[9] and is not widely endorsed by academic researchers in the
field.[10] The indicator exhibits significant scientific (psychometric) deficiencies, notably including poor validity (i.e. not measuring what it purports to measure,
not having predictive power or not having items that can be generalized), poor reliability (giving different results for the same person on different occasions),
measuring categories that are not independent (some dichotomous traits have been noted to correlate with each other), and not being comprehensive (due to
missing neuroticism).[11][12][13][14][15] The four scales used in the MBTI have some correlation with four of the Big Five personality traits, which are a more
commonly accepted framework.[16]

The original versions of the MBTI were constructed by two Americans, Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers.[17] The MBTI is based on
the conceptual theory proposed by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung,[18] who had speculated that people experience the world using four principal psychological
functions—sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking—and that one of these four functions is dominant for a person most of the time. [19] The four categories are
Introversion/Extraversion, Sensing/Intuition, Thinking/Feeling, Judging/Perceiving. Each person is said to have one preferred quality from each category, producing
16 unique types.

Katharine Cook Briggs began her research into personality in 1917. Upon meeting her future son-in-law, she observed marked differences between his personality
and that of other family members. Briggs embarked on a project of reading biographies, and subsequently developed a typology wherein she proposed four
temperaments: meditative (or thoughtful), spontaneous, executive, and social.[20][21]

After the English translation of Jung's book Psychological Types was published in 1923 (first published in German in 1921), she recognized that Jung's theory was
similar to, but went far beyond, her own.[1]:22 Briggs's four types were later identified as corresponding to the IXXXs, EXXPs, EXTJs and EXFJs.[clarification
needed][20][21] Her first publications were two articles describing Jung's theory, in the journal New Republic in 1926 ("Meet Yourself Using the Personality Paint
Box") and 1928 ("Up From Barbarism"). After extensively studying the work of Jung, Briggs and her daughter extended their interest in human behavior into efforts
to turn the theory of psychological types to practical use.[2][20]

Briggs's daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers, joined her mother's typological research and progressively took it over entirely. Myers graduated first in her class
from Swarthmore College in 1919[1]:xx and wrote a mystery novel, Murder Yet to Come, using typological ideas in 1929, which won the National Detective
Murder Mystery Contest that year. However, neither Myers nor Briggs was formally educated in the discipline of psychology, and both were self-taught in the field
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of psychometric testing.[1]:xiii Myers therefore apprenticed herself to Edward N. Hay, who was then personnel manager for a large Philadelphia bank and went on
to start one of the first successful personnel consulting firms in the United States. From Hay, Myers learned rudimentary test construction, scoring, validation, and
statistical methods.[1]:xiii, xx

Briggs and Myers began creating the indicator during World War II[2] in the belief that a knowledge of personality preferences would help women entering the
industrial workforce for the first time to identify the sort of war-time jobs that would be the "most comfortable and effective" for them. [1]:xiii The Briggs Myers
Type Indicator Handbook was published in 1944. The indicator changed its name to "Myers–Briggs Type Indicator" in 1956.[22] Myers' work attracted the attention
of Henry Chauncey, head of the Educational Testing Service. Under these auspices, the first MBTI Manual was published in 1962. The MBTI received further
support from Donald W. MacKinnon, head of the Institute of Personality and Social Research at the University of California, Berkeley; W. Harold Grant, a
professor at Michigan State University and Auburn University; and Mary H. McCaulley of the University of Florida. The publication of the MBTI was transferred
to Consulting Psychologists Press in 1975, and the Center for Applications of Psychological Type was founded as a research laboratory.[1]:xxi

After Myers' death in May 1980, Mary McCaulley updated the MBTI Manual and the second edition was published in 1985.[23] The third edition appeared in 1998.

Differences from Jung[edit]

Jung's theory of psychological types was not based on controlled scientific studies,[24] but instead on clinical observation, introspection, and anecdote—methods
regarded as inconclusive in the modern field of scientific psychology.[24] Jung's typology theories postulated a sequence of four cognitive functions (thinking,
feeling, sensation, and intuition), each having one of two polar orientations (extraversion or introversion), giving a total of eight dominant functions. The MBTI is
based on these eight hypothetical functions, although with some differences in expression from Jung's model. While the Jungian model offers empirical evidence for
the first three dichotomies, whether the Briggs had evidence for the J-P preference is unclear.[verification needed]

The most notable addition of Myers and Briggs ideas to Jung's original thought is their concept that a given type's fourth letter (J or P) indicates a person's most
preferred extraverted function, which is the dominant function for extraverted types and the auxiliary function for introverted types.[1]:21–22

Jung theorized that the dominant function acts alone in its preferred world: exterior for extraverts and interior for introverts. The remaining three functions, he
suggested, operate in the opposite orientation. Some MBTI practitioners, however, place doubt on this concept as being a category error with next to no empirical
evidence backing it relative to other findings with correlation evidence, yet as a theory it still remains part of Myers and Briggs' extrapolation of their original theory
despite being discounted.[25]

Jung's theory goes as such: if the dominant cognitive function is introverted then the other functions are extraverted and vice versa. The MBTI  Manual summarizes
Jung's work of balance in psychological type as follows: "There are several references in Jung's writing to the three remaining functions having an opposite
attitudinal character. For example, in writing about introverts with thinking dominant ... Jung commented that the counterbalancing functions have an extraverted
character."[23] Using the INTP type as an example, the orientation according to Jung would be as follows:

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Dominant introverted thinking

Auxiliary extraverted intuition

Tertiary intraverted sensing

Inferior extraverted feeling

Format and administration[edit]

The current North American English version of the MBTI Step I includes 93 forced-choice questions (88 are in the European English version). "Forced-choice"
means that a person, if possible, should choose only one of two possible answers to each question. The choices are a mixture of word pairs and short statements.
Choices are not literal opposites, but chosen to reflect opposite preferences on the same dichotomy. Participants may skip questions if they feel they are unable to
choose.

Using psychometric techniques, such as item response theory, the MBTI will then be scored and will attempt to identify the preference, and clarity of preference, in
each dichotomy. After taking the MBTI, participants are usually asked to complete a "Best Fit" exercise (see below) and then given a readout of their Reported
Type, which will usually include a bar graph and number (Preference Clarity Index) to show how clear they were about each preference when they completed the
questionnaire.

During the early development of the MBTI, thousands of items were used. Most were eventually discarded because they did not have high "midpoint
discrimination", meaning the results of that one item did not, on average, move an individual score away from the midpoint. Using only items with high midpoint
discrimination allows the MBTI to have fewer items on it, but still provide as much statistical information as other instruments with many more items with lower
midpoint discrimination.

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