Predictive Contribution of Personality Traits in Career Decision-Making: A Test of the Social Cognitive Model of Career Self-Management

The current study sought to test hypotheses derived from the social cognitive model of career self-management (CSM; Lent & Brown, 2013) applied to the process of career exploration and decision-making. We examined how well personality traits, contextual factors, and social cognitive predictors, collectively, account for exploration behavior and career decision-making outcomes. Specifically, we determine the relationships between personality traits with career decision self-efficacy, career goals, and decisional criteria in a sample of 302 high school students. The participants completed domain-specific measures of four personality traits (conscientiousness, intellect/openness, extraversion, and neuroticism), social support, self-efficacy, outcome expectations, goals, level of career indecision, and decisional anxiety. The model fit the data well overall, though certain predictors were linked to the criterion variables only indirectly via mediated pathways. The structural equation model analysis suggested, consistent with previous studies, that the contribution of personality on career exploration and decision-making was mediated by sociocognitive mechanisms. Multiple group analysis suggests that neither sex nor the type of institution (state/private) that students attend determines the relationships among the variables of the proposed theoretical model. Limitations, further research, practical implications, and methodological implications for the CSM model are discussed.