Holland’s Personality Theory

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An offshoot of Parsons’ trait and factor theory and redesignated “person -environment (P-E) fit” (Rounds & Tracey, 1990), Holland’s theory “sees people as choosing work environments that are congruent with their personality types” (Brown & Brooks, 1990b, p. 6). Developed in 1959, Holland’s theory underwent revisions in 1966, 1973, and 1985. Holland saw his theory as structural or typological in that it attempted to organize a sea of information about people and jobs; interactive because careers and social behaviors were the outcomes of people and environments acting on each other; and a fulfillment model because as people seek employment, they are also attempting to reach goals that will utilitize their talents, skills, and interests (Holland, 1985a). Spokane (1996) stated that “modern trait position as represented by Holland’s theory has evolved into an enriched person-environment interaction model that reflects the inclusion of identity, information retieval and processing, and behavioral repertoires as essential components in the transactions individuals make with their environments” (p. 35).

Holland’s (1985a) assumptions were based on the idea that interests are one part of what is commonly called personality, therefore, vocational interests also describe an individual’s personality. Within personality, individuals have traits which might be described as preferences for school subjects, recreational activities, and/or work. Holland’s typology, i.e., study of types, contended that six basic personality types exist and all individuals, to some extent, resemble one of these types. The closer the fit between the individual and the type, the more likely the individual is to manifest behaviors and traits associated with that type.

Holland’s (1985a) assumptions include:

1. Most persons can be categorized as one of six types: realistic (R), investigative (I), artistic (A), social (S), enterprising (E), or conventional (C). A type is a model against which we can measure the real person. Each type is the product of a characteristic interaction between a variety of cultural and personal forces, including peers, parents, social class, culture, and the physical environment.

2. There are six kinds of environments: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional. Each environment is dominated by a given type of personality and each environment is typified by physical settings posing special problems and stresses.

3. People search for environments that will let them exercise their skills and abilities, express their attitudes and values, and take on agreeable problems and roles. The person’s search for environments is varied in many ways, at different levels of consciousness, and over a long period of time.

4. A person’s behavior is determined by an interaction between personality and the characteristics of environment. If we know a person’s personality pattern and environment pattern, we can then forecast outcomes such as choice of vocation, job changes, vocational achievement, personal competence, and educational and social behavior.

While Holland (1966) originally set forth that an individual could be characterized as being a single personality type, he has since revised his theory (1973; 1985a) to suggest that while one personality type does dominate, personality patterns provide better descriptions of individuals. For example, while a person’s personality probably contains aspects of all six personality types (R, I, A, S, E, C), personality patterns, or subtypes, may be developed on the basis of the three prevalent types found within the individual’s interest profile. Thus, subtype SAE describes a person having social, artistic, and enterprising characteristics dominating the interest profile of that particular individual. Just as personalities can be characterized, environments, particularly work environments, can be characterized along the same lines by using the Holland typology.

In revision of his theory, Holland (1985a) introduced five key concepts in addition to his four basic assumptions:

1. Consistency: By using the hexagon to graphically represent the relationships between the personality types, Holland has defined the degree of personality consistency. The closer the types appear on the hexagon, i.e., when the first two letters of the subtype are adjacent on the hexagon, the more consistent the person is thought to be. Low consistency is separation of the first two code letters by two intervening letters.

2. Differentiation: Some people and environments more closely resemble a single type, thereby showing less resemblance to other types. Some others may more equally resemble several types. Those personality types resembling several types equally are said to be poorly differentiated while those closely resembling a single type are said to be highly differentiated.

3. Identity: Holland considered this construct necessary to support the formulations of personality types and environments. An individual having identity is said to have clear and stable goals, interests, and talents established.

4. Congruence: This is an example of the old idiom, Birds of a feather flock together, meaning persons tend to be happier and perform better in an environment providing the type of reward that is important to that person. For example, a Conventional personality type who enjoys working in a Conventional environment would be said to be a perfect fit , likewise, the least congruence occurs when persons and their environments are at opposite points of the hexagon, i.e., a Realistic personality type working in a Social environment.

5. Calculus: The hexagon not only presents a graphic representation of consistency between person and environment, but also the internal relationships of Holland’s theory, in that “the distances between the types or environments are inversely proportional to the theoretical relationships between them” (1985, p. 5).

Additionally, Holland (1985a) considered self-knowledge to be an important influence on career choice. Self-knowledge is the amount and accuracy of information an individual has about one’s self that will then allow one to make adequate career choices. Other important aspects of career choice include social pressures during childhood and, similar to Roe (1956), experiences with parents.

Many research studies have focused on Holland’s (1985a) concept of congruence finding that types generally aspire to, or already inhabit, fields matching their primary interests. Hecht’s (1980) study of nursing and Henry and Bardo’s (1987) study of premedical students found a majority of students evidencing primary interests that corresponded to theoretical expectations. When non-college-degreed males (Greenless, Damarin, & Walsh, 1988) and females (Mazen, 1989) were studied, they were found in work environments conforming to their predominant interests. Accordingly, positive relationships between congruence level and job satisfaction (Carson & Mowesian, 1993; Elton & Smart, 1988, Gottfredson & Holland, 1990; Rounds 1990) were found in adult workers although Heesacker, Elliott, and Howe (1988) did not find congruence and job satisfaction among sewing machine operators.

Holland and others working with him over the years have been prolific mainly in longitudinal studies with results showing “remarkable stability in the degree to which the theory has appeared to generate empirical support” (Osipow, 1983, p. 88). Holland’s frequent longitudinal studies attempted to assess a variety of personal (1962a, 1963b, 1968), family (1962b), social (1964), and achievement (1963b) correlates pertinent to his theory. Additionally, studies by Gottfredson and Holland (1990) and Meir and Navon (1992) looked at congruence.

Holland has also paid “attention to the development of means to measure personal attributes associated with the constructs of his theory” (Osipow, 1983, p. 299) with numerous revisions of the Vocational Preference Inventory (VPI) which originated in 1953, the Self-Directed Search (SDS) in 1971, the Vocational Exploration and Insight Kit (VEIK) in 1980, My Vocational Situation (MVS) in 1980 (Weinrach & Srebalus, 1990; Holland, 1966; 1973; 1985; Walsh & Osipow, 1983), Position Classification Inventory (PCI) (Gottfredson & Holland, 1991), and Career Attitudes and Strategies Inventory (CASI) (Holland & Gottfredson, 1994). In addition, Holland’s “system was used to organize the profile scores for the SVIB-SCII (Strong Vocational Interest Battery-Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory)” in the revised 1981 version (Campbell & Hansen, 1981, p. 29) to form a “merger of paradigms that can be considered the most significant of all the innovation we have seen thus far” (Borgen, 1986, p. 85). The Holland types are also utilized in the new Strong Interest Inventory (SII) (Harmon, Hansen, Borgan, & Hammer, 1994), the ASVAB workbook (Department of Defense, 1993), and the Bolles Party Game, (Bolles, 1993).

Holland’s work, regarded by Osipow (1983) as having mostly positive results has generated much research over the ensuing years “partly because of its simplicity, the available instrumentation, and the attempts Holland himself has made to relate his work to other systems in vocational development, such as the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and the Strong Vocational Blank” (p. 98). Additionally, Borgen (1986) stated the “amount of research generated by Holland’s approach is unequaled in vocational behavior in the past 15 years” (p. 89). On the other hand, a criticism leveled at Holland’s theory by Sonnenfeld and Kotter (1982) is that while relationships between individuals’ personality traits and the occupations they chose have been established, Holland and his followers have simple and static conceptualizations of the occupational environment and fail to take into account that traits and demands of the workplace can change over time.

Holland (1985b) changed his definition of environment from the number of individuals of a certain type, i.e., a social environment consisting of people with social codes solving problems by interacting socially, inhabiting that environment to environments defined not only by the census of their inhabitants but also to include what the individuals actually did while in the environment. Spokane (1996) states that “Holland’s writing was full of rich material on the interaction of people in environments” (p. 38) belying the static model. Additionally, Betsworth et al. (1994) in exploring the possibility of locating interests on specific genes and activation of genetic influences determined that between 30 and 50 per cent of variance in occupational interests can be attributed to genetic sources, thereby somewhat vindicating the trait and factor theory.

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