5

VOCATIONAL INTERESTS AND WORK OUTCOMES

Christopher D. Nye, Sarena Bhatia, and Joshua J. Prasad

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

Theory in the vocational psychology literature suggests that vocational interests should be related to individual attitudes and behaviors at work. If individuals like the work that they are doing, they should be more engaged (both mentally and physically) in their work. For this reason, early researchers suggested that vocational interests would be “one of the great, if not the greatest, contributions to applied psychology” (Strong, 1943, p. vii). Despite this early enthusiasm and the theoretical relationships between interests, work attitudes, and behavior, the research on these topics has been mixed. For example, many studies fail to find strong relationships between vocational interests and job satisfaction (Tinsley, 2000). In addition, although past research suggested that the relationship between interests and work performance is negligible (Hunter & Hunter, 1984), recent work has found much stronger relations between these constructs (Nye, Su, Rounds, & Drasgow, 2012, 2017; Van Iddekinge, Roth, Putka, & Lanivich, 2011). However, the validity of interests for predicting job performance appears to only apply to some aspects of performance (e.g., task performance and organizational citizenship behavior [OCB]) while the findings related to other performance outcomes are still unclear (e.g., counterproductive work behavior [CWB]).

In this chapter, we discuss the theoretical and empirical links between interests and work outcomes as well as the potential mechanisms for these relationships. The goal is to combine the vocational psychology literature on interests with the substantial literatures on job satisfaction, job performance, and career success from industrial and organizational psychology research. Below, we first discuss the importance of congruence in vocational interest theories before discussing the relationships between interests and work outcomes.

The Importance of Congruence

One of the most influential and long-lasting theories on the relationships between interests and work outcomes is Holland’s (1959, 1997) theory of vocational choice. Holland’s theory makes a number of predictions about the relationships between interests, attitudes, and behaviors at work. However, a key element of these predictions is the extent of person-environment fit. In contrast to the personality literature, where a few traits have been shown to predict performance across a broad range of jobs (conscientiousness and neuroticism; Barrick & Mount, 1991; Hogan & Holland, 2003), there is not a specific interest type that is relevant to all jobs. Instead, the work activities performed on each job are associated with different interest factors and it is the match (Holland used the term “congruence”) between an individual’s interests and the activities performed on his or her job that should affect attitudes and behavior. This emphasis on congruence is consistent with the broader P-E fit literature in psychology and Holland’s early work on congruence was the basis for organizational theories of person-environment fit like Schneider’s (1987) Attraction-Selection-Attrition (ASA) model.

Holland’s (1963) original conceptualization of congruence focused on matching the first-letter code of the person to the occupation. However, in his subsequent work, Holland (1997) also recognized that both persons and occupations are complex and rarely homogenous. In other words, an individual may have multiple interests that vary in strength but influence behavior simultaneously. In addition, most jobs require individuals to perform a wide range of tasks and activities that rarely fall under the same broad RIASEC type. As a result, although comparing the dominant interest type associated with both the person and occupation is informative, it creates a narrow and incomplete view of the individual and his or her behavioral tendencies. Therefore, subsequent work has focused on comparing profiles of interests and work activities to calculate congruence (see Brown & Gore, 1994 for a discussion).

Broadly speaking, congruence indices provide a way to quantify the similarity between a person and his or her environment (Camp & Chartrand, 1992). However, given the importance of congruence for the study of interests, a broad range of congruence indices have been proposed. Table 5.1 describes several of these indices, how they are calculated, the number of interest dimensions included in the profile, and their impact (i.e., citation count) in the literature. Based on Holland’s theory of congruence, we would expect congruence indices to be most important for predicting employees’ attitudes and behaviors at work. In addition, given the diversity of tasks performed on the job, we would also expect congruence indices to be better predictors of work outcomes than simply matching first-letter codes and recent research has provided support for this prediction (Nye et al., 2017).

Despite the widespread use of Holland’s theory, recent research has questioned the utility of congruence for predicting behavior. In particular, Tinsley (2000) has been one of the most vocal opponents of congruence, suggesting that congruence indices for vocational interests “appear to be the exception to the generally positive performance of P-E fit models” (p. 154). This statement was largely based on the seemingly contradictory findings related to the validity of congruence in the vocational interest literature. For example, despite strong correlations between P-E fit indices and job satisfaction in other areas of psychology (e.g., Kristof-Brown, Zimmerman, & Johnson, 2005), research on the validity of interest congruence for predicting this outcome has been relatively disappointing (e.g., Assouline & Meir, 1987; Tranberg, Slane, & Ekeberg, 1993). Based on evidence like this, Holland (1996) also noted that “despite the usefulness of the congruency hypothesis, there are some empirical anomalies that require resolution. The most striking anomaly is the general inefficiency of the congruency hypothesis” (p. 401).

Tinsley (2000) and others (Cronbach, 1958; Edwards, 1993) have noted other conceptual and statistical limitations of congruence indices more generally. Although these limitations have a number of implications for the study of interest congruence, the most salient consequence in the context of the present chapter is that the mathematical conceptualization of congruence indices can place limits on their validity (Edwards, 1994) and influence conclusions about the relationships between interests and work outcomes. Recently, Nye, Prasad, Bradburn, and Elizondo (2018) demonstrated the potential effects of these limitations on vocational interest research. Building on previous research (Edwards, 1993), these authors proposed using polynomial regression to operationalize interest congruence and showed that using this approach resulted in validities that were three to four times higher than with congruence indices for predicting both academic performance and job satisfaction. These results suggest that the polynomial regression approach may be a useful alternative to traditional congruence indices.

Regardless of how congruence is operationalized, Holland’s model suggests that individuals who are congruent with the occupation that they are in will be more satisfied and successful on the job. For example, interest fit should predict work outcomes like job choice, motivation, job knowledge, job performance, and job satisfaction. Next, we review the validity evidence for vocational interests predicting each of these criteria with a particular emphasis on findings related to congruence indices. We divide this review into the proximal and distal work outcomes of vocational interests. The purpose behind dividing outcomes in this way is to provide a clearer explanation of the theoretical relationships between vocational interests and work outcomes and the psychological mechanisms underlying these relationships. In doing so, we hope to integrate Holland’s model of vocational preferences with the industrial and organizational psychology literature on each of these outcomes to identify areas where future research in the organizational literature is needed.

Proximal Work Outcomes

Occupational Choice

One of the most salient proximal outcomes of vocational interests is occupation or academic major choice. In fact, Holland’s (1997) model of vocational interests is a model of vocational preferences. According to Holland, a person’s dominant interests will determine “the primary direction of his or her vocational choice” (1997, p. 36). In other words, an individual’s first-letter RIASEC code will determine the type of occupation he or she will choose. However, as described above, most occupations can require individuals to perform a wide range of tasks and these tasks rarely fall under the same broad RIASEC type. Therefore, a single occupation may involve activities that are associated with multiple interest types and individuals will choose occupations based on the full range of activities. For example, an individual may be interested in Realistic occupations (i.e., his or her first-letter code) but may have secondary or tertiary interests in Investigative or Conventional activities. Therefore, the first-letter code may provide information about the general occupational category a person is interested in but a broader profile of interests will provide more detailed information about the specific occupation that he or she may choose. Consequently, Holland emphasized using profiles of interests and congruence indices to predict occupational choice.

Based on Holland’s theory, the link between vocational interests and occupational choice has been fundamental to the development and use of many interest measures (e.g., Donnay, Morris, Schaubhut, & Thompson, 2005; Kuder, 1977; Spokane & Decker, 1999). The assumption here is that the interests of individuals within an occupation will be somewhat homogeneous (e.g., all police officers have similar interests; Holland, 1997). This assumption is consistent with Schneider’s (1987) ASA model and past studies evaluating this model have provided empirical support for the homogeneity assumption in the context of employee personality (King et al., 2016; Schneider, Smith, Taylor, & Fleenor, 2007). However, some people have questioned the belief that the interest profile within an occupation will be homogeneous (e.g., Zytowski & Hay, 1984). For example, Dolliver and Nelson (1975) noted that work tasks vary substantially even within occupations, which can result in the within-occupation variability of interests. More recently, Nye, Perlus, and Rounds (2018) examined the homogeneity of interests in two separate datasets and found that the extent of homogeneity varied substantially across occupations.

Despite evidence contradicting the homogeneity assumption, there is still substantial evidence that interests are related to occupational choice. For example, Holland, Fritzsche, and Powell (1994) found that between 48% and 76% of individuals in a particular academic major or occupation had similar interest profiles. In a qualitative review of the literature, Fouad (1999) concluded that between 50% and 70% of individuals within an occupation or major will share the same interest profile, though these numbers do appear to be moderated by age such that homogeneity is higher for older individuals (Holland et al., 1994). In the context of these findings, it is worth noting that the meta-analytic corrected correlation between person-job (P-J) fit (not including interests) and job choice is a very disappointing -.06 (Chapman, Uggerslev, Carroll, Piasentin, & Jones, 2005). With this in mind, past findings on the homogeneity of interests within an occupation seem promising in light of the much lower effect of P-J fit.

The past studies cited above indicate that, in many cases, a large proportion of individuals within a particular occupation will share the same interests. However, there are clearly moderators of this relationship given that, in some cases, fewer than 50% of an occupational sample share the same interest profile (Nye et al., 2018). There are a number of potential reasons for this variation. First, this variation could reflect the complexity of job choices. There are many reasons why an individual may or may not choose a particular occupation. For example, there are a number of other factors to consider that have nothing to do with interest but yet may still influence decisions including pay, availability, benefits, and proximity to family, among other considerations. Other factors like the quality of the labor market or the barriers to entering a particular field may also influence homogeneity within an occupation because they could limit an individual’s options and result in him or her settling for a less desirable job (McKee-Ryan & Harvey, 2011). All of these factors could limit the homogeneity within a particular occupation. With these factors in mind, it is important to note that correlations between interest fit and acceptance intentions (i.e., whether the individual would accept the job if offered) are much higher than for actual job choices both for interest fit (r ranged from .36 to .40 for composites of interests; Tracey & Hopkins, 2001) and for P-J fit more broadly (ρ = .45; Chapman et al., 2005). In an earlier study on occupational intentions in both academia and at work, Lent, Brown, and Hackett (1994) found a meta-analytic correlation of .60 between interests and intentions. In other words, it appears that individuals are attracted to occupations that they are interested in but the actual decision to choose a particular occupation may be more complicated.

Another potential reason for the variation in homogeneity across occupations could be within-occupation variability in work tasks. As described above, Holland (1997) recognized the inherent variation within occupations and suggested using broader profiles of interests to reflect this variability. However, despite evidence linking interests to occupational choices, congruence is less successful at predicting narrower choices (Lowman & Carson, 2013). To address this issue, Meir (1989) suggested using “specialty congruence” (i.e., congruence with a specific specialty within an occupation) instead of the broader conceptualization of congruence with respect to an occupation and proposed that the validity of specialty congruence for predicting job choice would be higher than for occupational congruence. Other studies have not found support for this prediction. Borges, Savickas, and Jones (2004) examined whether different medical specialties could be differentiated based on their RIASEC codes. They found that different medical specialties had the same interest profiles and that most medical students could fit equally well in several different specialties. These results seem to call into question Meir’s (1989) proposal to focus on specialty congruence. Given these differences, more research is needed to examine the utility of specialty congruence for predicting job choice.

Finally, time may also moderate the homogeneity assumption. Both Holland’s (1997) theory and Schneider’s (1987) ASA model suggest that, although individuals are attracted to jobs that they are interested in, fit perceptions will sometimes be inaccurate and the individual may realize that he or she does not fit a particular occupation only after working in that field for some time. The aforementioned theories predict that these individuals will leave the job to find a better fit. However, this is a process that plays out over time and we would predict that a particular sample from a single occupation would be more homogenous the longer employees are on the job. Although Nye, Perlus, & Rounds (2018) did not find support for this prediction, other research has found that homogeneity is moderated by age such that homogeneity is higher for older individuals (Holland et al., 1994). Unfortunately, there is not a lot of research examining congruence over time. A notable exception is recent work by Wille, Tracey, Feys, and De Fruyt (2014). These authors found that congruence was relatively stable over time, but did not control for the consistency of the environment over time as well.

Motivation

Another direct outcome of interest in one’s work is motivation. Motivation is defined as the set of internal processes that directs, energizes, and sustains behavior over time (Kanfer, 1990). Although interest is often defined as a motivational variable (Renninger & Hidi, 2016), the bulk of the research investigating the link between interests and motivation have been conducted in the educational literature, particularly on the topic of student learning. A substantial amount of organizational research has examined the relationship between personality and motivation but interests have largely been excluded from this discussion (Kanfer, Chen, & Pritchard, 2008). This is evident in the fact that there is almost no mention of interests in several recent reviews of the work motivation literature (e.g., Latham & Pinder, 2005; Schmidt, Beck, & Gillespie, 2013), despite the fact that interests are conceptualized as antecedents of motivation (Renninger & Hidi, 2016).

Although the empirical links between vocational interests and work motivation have not been thoroughly examined, the two constructs are conceptually related. For example, the definition of motivation provided above makes clear that motivation has three potential processes that influence behavior: direction, effort, and persistence. Both theory and research suggest that vocational interests can affect all three of these motivational processes (Renninger & Hidi, 2016). First, interests motivate individuals to focus their attention and their behaviors on specific tasks and activities. In fact, interest and attention are so closely linked that many definitions of interest include aspects of attentional focus. Savickas (1999) suggested that “interest denotes awareness of and attention to some environmental person, object, or activity” (p. 24). In some of the earliest definitions of interest, Herbart (1891) noted that interest defines the object of our attention and Kitson (1925) defined interest as “being engaged, engrossed, or entirely taken up with some activity because of its recognized worth” (p. 25). As these definitions make clear, individuals who are interested in certain tasks and activities will direct their attention to those activities. The link between interest and occupational choice described above provides one example of the role of interests in directing attention. Individuals are attracted to occupations that match their interests and will focus their attention on tasks and activities associated with those occupations.

Another stream of research in the educational literature has tended to focus on the effects of interest on attention and learning (Ainley, Hidi, & Berndorff, 2002; Anderson, 1982; Schiefele, 1999). These studies have found that interesting tasks require fewer attentional resources (McDaniel, Waddill, Finstad, & Bourg, 2000) and can facilitate learning by focusing attention on task-relevant behaviors (e.g., Ainley et al., 2002). Although similar research has not yet been conducted in the organizational literature, the research in the educational literature suggests that employees who are interested in the work that they do will be more likely to focus attention on work tasks, which will decrease the amount of attentional resources allocated to off-task demands (McDaniel et al., 2000). This increased focus on task demands is likely to lead to improved performance (Beal, Weiss, Barros, & MacDermid, 2005; Kanfer & Ackerman, 1989).

Because interests focus attention on job-relevant task demands, interests may also increase effort (Kanfer & Ackerman, 1989). The effect of interest on effort was recognized early on in the interest literature (Dewey, 1913) and more recent works have continued to suggest a strong link between these variables (Renninger & Hidi, 2016; Silvia, 2006). Again, much of the research on this topic has been conducted in the educational literature (Ainley et al., 2002; Renninger & Hidi, 2016). For example, Krapp (1999) detailed a study that examined the effects of interest on the amount of effort students put into classes during a semester. Results indicated that interest was correlated .52 with the amount of time spent studying. In addition, research in the organizational literature has also provided some empirical support for this link. For example, Van Iddekinge et al. (2011) found a positive association between a composite of interests and peer and supervisor ratings of effort (multiple R = .22). However, more research is needed to explore these relationships.

Finally, interests are also related to persistence on a task. This includes persistence in both the short-term and the long-term. In the short term, individuals will be more likely to persist to solve a difficult problem or to learn difficult material when they are interested in the topic (Silvia, 2006). In the long-term, individuals are more likely to persist in jobs that are consistent with their interests (Nye et al., 2017; Van Iddekinge et al., 2011).

It is worth noting that the bulk of the educational research on learning and motivation has focused on situational interest, which is slightly different from the trait perspective on vocational interests that we focus on here. The trait perspective views interests as relatively stable individual preferences. In contrast, the situational perspective views interest as a psychological state that reflects an individual’s momentary reaction to people, objects, or tasks in his or her environment (Renninger & Hidi, 2016). Readers are referred to the chapter by Renninger and Hidi (this volume), which provides a more detailed discussion of these issues. However, studies focusing on situational interests generally do not examine the concept of congruence in the context of the RIASEC model and do not calculate the congruence indices that are typically used in the trait literature. As such, although the findings in the situational interest literature do imply a relationship between trait interests and motivation (Silvia, 2006), more research is needed examine these relationships, particularly in the context of congruence.

Job Knowledge

Given the influence of interests on occupational choice, and their ability to direct attention and focus effort on relevant job-related tasks, vocational interests should also be related to both declarative and procedural job knowledge. Cattell’s (1971) investment hypothesis suggests a mechanism for these relationships. Cattell suggested that individuals are born with a certain level of fluid intelligence, which reflects their capacity for learning and maximal performance. An individual will develop knowledge and skills in a particular area (i.e., Cattell’s crystalized intelligence) by investing his or her time and fluid intelligence in tasks and activities that are associated with that domain. In the context of work, individuals would develop job knowledge by investing their time and intellectual resources in job-relevant tasks (or in activities related to those tasks). For example, a mechanic would develop mechanical knowledge and skills by spending time actually working on cars, either on the job or in their free-time. Fluid intelligence will set the upper bound on how much knowledge an individual can obtain and how quickly it is learned. On the other hand, Cattell (1971, 1987) suggested that one’s interests would define which activities and tasks he or she invests in. As described above, there is empirical support for the idea that interests direct attention and effort toward certain occupational activities (Fouad, 1999). Therefore, the amount of declarative (knowledge of facts, details, and content) and procedural (knowledge and skills that facilitate actually doing the work) job knowledge that can be gained by a mechanic, for example, will be determined by his or her fluid intelligence. However, the choice to pursue a job as a mechanic and/or spend time on the weekends fixing cars will be determined by his or her interests.

Based on Cattell’s (1971, 1987) theory, we would expect to find a relationship between interests and job knowledge. Although Cattell suggested a compelling mechanism for this relationship, he was certainly not the first to suggest a relationship between interest and knowledge acquisition. For example, Dewey (1913) suggested that “if we can secure interest in a given set of facts or ideas, we may be perfectly sure that the pupil will direct his (sic) energies toward mastering them” (p. 1). Although this relationship was suggested over a century ago, empirical research on this relationship is relatively scarce. For example, in their review and meta-analysis of the relationship between interests, personality, and job knowledge, Ackerman and Heggestad (1997) were limited to providing a qualitative review of the literature on the relationships between interests and job knowledge because an insufficient number of studies were available for a meta-analysis. Nevertheless, a few studies have examined this relationship. Alexander, Murphy, Woods, Duhon, and Parker (1997) examined the relationship between interests and domain-specific knowledge (i.e., knowledge about a particular major) in a sample of 329 undergraduate students. They found that pre-entry interests were significantly correlated with pre-entry domain knowledge. However, the effect was small and interests and domain knowledge assessed again after one semester in the major were not significantly correlated. In contrast, Reeve and Hakel (2000) showed that there were substantial relationships between vocational interests and domain-specific knowledge, with correlations ranging from .27 to .42 for Realistic, Investigative, and Artistic interests. However, correlations between Conventional interests and relevant domain-specific knowledge were nonsignificant and in the opposite direction of what was expected (r = -.04). Note that both of these studies only examined the correlations between a single RIASEC interest type and job knowledge. However, as described above, jobs may be more complex and, therefore, a single interest type may not predict all forms of domain-specific knowledge particularly well. More recently, Van Iddekinge, Putka, and Campbell (2011) used regression analyses to create a composite of all six interest types for predicting technical and interpersonal job knowledge. The adjusted multiple R’s for these models were .31 and .25, respectively.

In summary, occupational choice, motivation, and job knowledge will be direct outcomes of vocational interests. Individuals will be attracted to occupations that match their interests, will be more motivated to engage in work activities that are consistent with their interests, and will also increase their knowledge related to the tasks and activities associated with those interests. Although much of this research has been conducted in the educational literature and focused on educational outcomes (e.g., learning), these proximal outcomes of interest have direct implications for understanding workplace behaviors and attitudes. In the next section, we discuss the more distal outcomes of vocational interests. In many cases, the relationships between interests and these distal outcomes will be mediated through the proximal outcomes described above.

Distal Work Outcomes

Job Performance

As noted above, Holland (1997) predicted that interests would be related to performance both at work and in school. This prediction is also consistent with theories of work performance. The most widely cited model of performance in the organizational literature was proposed by Campbell (1990). Despite being several decades old, this model is still widely used. Campbell’s model suggests that declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, and motivation are direct antecedents of performance. Consistent with Holland’s prediction, Campbell suggested that cognitive ability, personality, and interests were all distal predictors of performance, mediated through the more proximal predictors of knowledge and motivation. As described above, theory and research in the vocational interest literature suggests that interests are related to declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, and motivation. Therefore, one would expect interests to be related to performance as well.

Despite this theoretical relationship, interests have largely been ignored as predictors of performance in the industrial and organizational psychology literature over the past several decades. One reason could be that early results relating interests to performance were relatively disappointing. For example, in an early meta-analysis, Hunter and Hunter (1984) suggested that vocational interests were only weak predictors of performance on the job, with a meta-analytic corrected correlation of only .10. This finding was cited by subsequent studies as an indication that interests did not contribute to the prediction of performance, particularly after controlling for cognitive ability (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998).

Although Hunter and Hunter’s (1984) meta-analysis has been widely cited in the employee selection literature, their findings on the relationship between interests and performance had several limitations (Nye et al., 2012). A full discussion of these limitations is beyond the scope of this chapter, but one of the most striking limitations is that their results were based on only three studies. To address these limitations, two recent studies reexamined the relationship between interests and performance. First, Van Iddekinge, Roth et al. (2011) examined correlations between interests and a number of performance criteria. These authors focused on correlations from interest scales that matched the job tasks and found that interests were moderate predictors of performance criteria. They also examined the multiple R’s from composites of interest scores and found that those composites were better predictors of performance (corrected composite-level validity estimate was .37) than the matching interest scales. However, the validity of the regression composites was significantly reduced when the shrunken Rs were calculated (corrected composite level validity was .18).

Nye et al. (2012) conducted a separate meta-analysis that also showed that interests were moderate predictors of job performance. In contrast to Van Iddekinge, Roth et al. (2011), these authors also examined many of the congruence indices shown in Table 5.1 and the prediction of academic performance. Using a regression-based approach to meta-analysis, they found that interests were important predictors of both work (ρ^ = .20)¹ and academic performance (ρ^ = .23). In addition, they found that congruence indices were much better predictors of performance (ρ^ = .36) than interest scores alone. This finding was significant due to the importance of congruence in Holland’s model and in his prediction that interests should be related to performance. However, this finding also contradicted the study by Van Iddekinge, Roth et al. (2011), which found that congruence indices were only modestly related to job performance (ρ = .15). To address these contradictory findings, Nye et al. (2017) conducted an updated and more comprehensive meta-analysis and found that congruence indices were significantly better predictors of job performance than interest scores alone. Again, using a regression-based approach to meta-analysis, Nye et al. found that the baseline correlations for predicting performance (before considering moderators) were .32 for congruence indices and .16 for interest scores alone. In other words, it appears that including more information about an individual’s profile of interests provided better prediction of performance.

These findings are consistent with Holland’s (1997) predictions about the outcomes of interest congruence and indicate that interests are relevant predictors of job performance. However, the findings from these two meta-analyses indicated that interests were not equally related to all types of performance. Another contribution of Campbell’s (1990) model is the idea that job performance is multidimensional. In the previous meta-analyses described above, the authors examined the prediction of performance more broadly by including task performance, training performance, OCB, CWB, and turnover. In the most comprehensive and recent meta-analysis (Nye et al., 2017), results indicated that the validity of interest congruence was about equal for task performance (ρ^ = .27), training performance (ρ^ = .26), and turnover (ρ^ = .26). However, interests were much better predictors of OCB (ρ^ = .36). In other words, it appears that interests not only influence how an individual performs their specific job tasks, but also the additional peripheral tasks that may not be directly related to technical performance.

TABLE 5.1 Frequently Used Congruence Indices

The finding that interests are most strongly related to OCB is important given the proposed mechanisms for the link between interests and performance described in Campbell’s model. Although this finding is consistent with past work suggesting that noncognitive characteristics should be better predictors of OCB than cognitive ability (Borman, Penner, Allen, & Motowidlo, 2001), past research on the antecedents of OCB have generally focused on personality traits and the role of prosocial behavior in predicting these behaviors (e.g., De Dreu & Nauta, 2009; Joireman, Kamdar, Daniels, & Duell, 2006). Other research has focused on OCB as a social exchange whereby employees may use OCB as a resource to reciprocate the actions of others (Cortina & Luchman, 2013). In other words, the motivation to engage in OCB is different from the types of motivation that play a central role in task performance. It appears that individuals may be more motivated by the social aspects of OCB than by the technical aspects of the job. If this is the case, then why do interests predict OCB so well? We propose that one possible mediating mechanism could be the enjoyment and intrinsic motivation that comes from performing a task that one enjoys. Interest includes elements of enjoyment (Savickas, 1999). In other words, interest in a particular task leads to a certain level of enjoyment when performing that task. As a result, interest (specifically the enjoyment of the task) in work tasks may provide a form of intrinsic motivation to engage in those tasks. Therefore, individuals who are interested in the work that they do may be more willing to put forth extra effort on a task or to volunteer for activities that benefit the organization, which are both aspects of OCB (Cortina & Luchman, 2013). Of course, the mediating mechanisms between interests and OCB have not been examined so this link is purely speculation.

In contrast to OCB, Nye et al. (2017) found that the relationship between interest congruence and CWB was the lowest of any of the performance dimensions (ρ^ = -.19). In other words, individuals interested in their work were less likely to engage in CWB, but the effect was not substantial. As with OCB, the mediating mechanisms between interest congruence and CWB may be different from those for task performance. Although a lack of motivation is associated with increases in CWB (Thau & Mitchell, 2010), neither declarative knowledge nor procedural knowledge are conceptually related to this outcome. Recently, Iliescu, Ispas, Sulea, and Ilie (2015) proposed a model of the relationship between interests and CWB. They suggested that this relationship would be mediated by self-regulation processes such that a lack of fit would lead to frustration over having to perform tasks that are considered uninteresting. If this frustration is not resolved, individuals would engage in CWB as a way of adapting to their situation and reducing the discrepancy between the individual’s desired and actual states. Iliescu et al. tested a mediation model and found support for this hypothesis.

In sum, interests appear to be related to behaviors on the job. Recent evidence suggests that interest congruence can lead to higher task and training performance, more OCBs, and less turnover. However, the relationship with CWB is less clear with some research finding only modest correlations with interests and other mediation studies finding stronger relationships. Therefore, more research is needed to understand the effects of interest (or disinterest) on CWB.

Job Satisfaction

In contrast to models of job performance, job satisfaction is not directly predicted by any of the direct outcomes of vocational interests. Nevertheless, Holland (1997) suggested that a key outcome of vocational interests would be job satisfaction. Individuals working in jobs that they are interested in should be more satisfied with their work. Holland and Gottfredson (1976) elaborated on the mechanism for this relationship and suggested that the mediating effect between interest and job satisfaction is the positive reinforcement that an individual receives in a congruent job. Individuals in jobs that match their interests will be rewarded both formally (through the effects of interest on competence and job performance) and informally (through the enjoyment and positive feelings that come from doing interesting work) on the job. Therefore, congruent individuals are also likely to be more satisfied with their job and a substantial amount of research has focused on the relationship between interests, particularly interest congruence, and job satisfaction. In fact, there have been at least four meta-analyses examining this relationship. Despite the theory supporting this association, the research linking these variables has been quite a bit more modest.

The first meta-analysis examining the relationship between interest congruence and satisfaction was conducted by Assouline and Meir (1987). Their study was conducted to provide a more quantitative approach compared to the qualitative review conducted by Spokane (1985). Although they found that the meta-analytic correlation was .21 (based on 53 correlations), the 95% confidence interval ranged from -.09 to .51. However, this value was only corrected for sampling error and not for range restriction or unreliability. The wide confidence interval for this correlation indicates substantial variability in the relationship. Consequently, the authors also examined potential moderators, the most important of which was the specificity of the interest congruence measure. When studies examined congruence within a specific occupational specialty (i.e., using an appropriate within-occupation measure) the mean corrected (for sampling error) correlation was .42 with a 95% confidence interval that ranged from .20 to .65. However, this correlation was based on only eight studies and a total sample size of 978, which may help to explain the relatively large confidence interval.

Tranberg et al. (1993) conducted an updated meta-analysis of this relationship. Interestingly, they included a little less than half (22) of the total number of correlations analyzed by Assouline and Meir (1987), despite adding six studies published since the first meta-analysis. This was partially explained by their decision to exclude unpublished studies, which could have influenced the results due to publication bias. Nevertheless, they found a slightly lower correlation (r = .17) with a confidence interval that also included zero (ranged from -.07 to .42). Tsabari, Tziner, and Meir (2005) revisited this relationship again but only included studies that were not included in the first two meta-analyses. They found a mean corrected (for several artifacts) correlation of .17 (across 53 correlations) with a 95% confidence interval ranging from -.09 to .42. In other words, they replicated the small effect size found in previous studies with more recent results. However, it is worth noting that these findings were based on only a subset of the results reported in the literature. Instead of including all of the correlations from each primary study included in their meta-analysis, Tsabari et al. (2005) picked a representative correlation from each study that reported multiple correlations for inclusion in their meta-analysis. As the authors pointed out, this approach reduced the total amount of information that was used in their analyses and limits the conclusions that can be drawn from them.

Each of these previous studies indicated that the relationship between interests and job satisfaction was lower than previously thought. However, each of these studies also had several methodological limitations that could have influenced results. For example, none of these three meta-analyses provided a comprehensive review of the literature. Assouline and Meir (1987) examined only studies of Holland’s congruence hypothesis but excluded studies that did not fit within this framework. In addition, subsequent meta-analyses limited their analyses to only published studies (Tranberg et al., 1993) or to only some of the studies/effect sizes available at that time (Tsabari et al., 2005). In addition, the overall meta-analytic effects reported by these studies may be misleading because they included both job satisfaction and satisfaction with an academic major. When Assouline and Meir (1987) did examine correlations separately for occupations and majors, they found that the relationships between interest congruence and satisfaction was stronger for occupational samples (r = .32; i.e., the average correlation for occupations and occupational specialty) than in academia (r = .10). However, the latter was based on only 6 studies compared to 24 studies for the occupational correlation. Similar results were found by Tranberg et al. (1993).

An unpublished doctoral dissertation conducted by Morris (2003) attempted to address these limitations by examining satisfaction only in samples of employed adults and including a more comprehensive review of the literature. Using this approach, Morris found a corrected correlation of .24 across 76 studies. Although the overall effect was larger than in previous meta-analyses, the 95% confidence interval suggested that the effect still varied substantially across studies (ranged from .02 to .45). However, further analyses indicated that when a single large-sample study that accounted for over half of the total sample size was removed, the confidence interval got wider and included zero (ranged from -.05 to .52). In addition, this study also included only representative correlations from each study that reported multiple correlations (rather than all of the correlations within a study), limiting the amount of information used for the analyses.

More recently, Song, Wee, Earl, and Rounds (2016) conducted an updated meta-analysis that attempted to address the methodological limitations of the previous studies. They tested a number of moderators and found an overall corrected correlation between interest congruence and satisfaction of .20 with a 95% confidence interval ranging from .17 to .22. This estimate was based on 108 studies, 94 years of research, and a total sample size of 38,870. As such, this meta-analysis is the most comprehensive to date. Given the meta-analytic relationship identified in this study, the authors concluded that interest fit is moderately related to satisfaction but that this relationship may have been overemphasized in the literature relative to the relationship between interest fit and job performance.

Given the emphasis that Holland’s theory placed on job satisfaction, the relatively low correlation between interest congruence and job satisfaction is surprising. In fact, these findings have been used by some as evidence that congruence indices, and Holland’s hexagonal structure, are problematic (Tinsley, 2000). Although there are certainly limitations to congruence indices (e.g., Edwards, 1993), this claim contradicts recent findings on the relationship between interest congruence and job performance (Nye et al., 2017). Therefore, another possibility may be that interests are simply not strongly related to job satisfaction.

One reason for the lack of a relationship may stem from the fact that interests do not completely fulfill an individual’s requirements for being satisfied. Many models of job satisfaction tend to focus on discrepancies between the characteristics that a person wants in a job and what the job actually provides. This focus on what a person wants is more closely linked to values than to interests. This distinction was made by Katz (1993) who suggested that values were more closely related to “feelings and judgments about the satisfactions and rewards that may be expected as outcomes” (p. 106) while interests are primarily concerned with the process rather than the outcome. In other words, Katz viewed values as essential to determining satisfaction while interests determine the means by which these values are achieved. For example, some individuals may value making lots of money in their job but their interests will guide them to occupations that will help them to achieve that goal. In this case, these individuals will be satisfied with their jobs if they make lots of money but a job that they are interested in may be one of many ways of accomplishing this goal. In other words, it may be the case that value congruence is a necessity for job satisfaction but interest congruence is not. This places values as a more proximal determinant of job satisfaction while interests are only one of many ways of finding value in work. This view is consistent with the popular value-percept model of job satisfaction (Locke, 1976), which suggests that satisfaction is a function of discrepancies between what an individual wants in his or her job and what the job actually provides multiplied by their importance. Here, the importance of a particular job characteristic is determined by the value the individual places on it.

Indirect evidence for the importance of values relative to interests was provided by Edwards (1996), who compared two different types of person-environment fit. First, he examined the similarities between the values of the individual and the characteristics of the environment that met those values. Edwards also examined the fit between the abilities of the individual and the demands of the job. These two types of fit have been labeled supplies-values (SV) fit and demands-abilities (DA) fit, respectively (French, Caplan, & Harrison, 1982). Edwards (1996) found that SV fit was a much better predictor of job dissatisfaction than DA fit. In other words, an individual’s job satisfaction was more closely linked to whether or not the job had characteristics that matched his or her values than whether the individual had the knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform the job.

Note that interest congruence is most closely associated with the DA conceptualization of P-E fit. As described above, interests are directly related to declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, and motivation. In this way, interests provide individuals with the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) to meet the demands of jobs that are congruent with those interests. Again, this provides indirect evidence that the more proximal outcomes associated with interests may fit well with models of job performance (Nye et al., 2017) but not with models of job satisfaction.

These findings suggest an interesting interpretation of the relationship between interest congruence and job satisfaction. Interest may not necessarily affect job satisfaction unless it is valued by the employee. In fact, individuals may vary in the extent to which they value interesting work. Holland’s (1997) theory implicitly assumes that everybody values interesting work. This may be true to a certain extent but the rank of interesting work among the characteristics that are valued by an individual may vary from person-to-person (Judge & Bretz, 1992). So, even though a person may say that he or she wants to do interesting work, he or she may prioritize other job characteristics above interest when evaluating job satisfaction. However, some have questioned the role of importance in determining satisfaction (Dalal, 2013), suggesting that more research is needed to determine the role that the perceived importance of interesting work plays in the interest–satisfaction correlation.

Career Success

Career success is defined as the psychological and job-related rewards one receives as a result of work experiences (Judge, Cable, Boudreau, & Bretz, 1995; Seibert & Kraimer, 2001). Historically, researchers have been interested in extrinsic measures of career success, such as whether a person earns a promotion or a raise in salary. These measures are generally viewed as indicators of upward mobility (Rasdi, Ismail, Uli, & Noah, 2009). In the late 1970s, an additional conceptualization of career success emerged: intrinsic career success (Van Maanen & Schein, 1979). Intrinsic career success is defined as “an individual’s perception of their own success (e.g. work role, interpersonal success) evaluated against their own personal standards, age, aspirations, and views of significant others” (Nabi, 2003, p. 654). Career or job satisfaction is frequently used as a measure of intrinsic career success because it denotes how happy one is with his or her position and work, separately from external evaluations (Ng, Eby, Sorenson, & Feldman, 2005; Su & Nye, 2017). Extrinsic and intrinsic measures of career success are correlated, possibly because it is hard to fully separate one’s internal evaluation from society’s expectations, and because job satisfaction and job performance are linked (Baruch, 2004; Judge et al., 1995; Ng et al., 2005). However, as described above, past research has indicated that interests are generally not strongly related to intrinsic forms of career success (i.e., job satisfaction; Song et al., 2016). Therefore, in this section, we focus on the research examining the association between interests and forms of extrinsic career success like salary, occupational status, and promotions.

Extrinsic indicators of career success are obviously closely related to job performance. An individual is more likely to earn a higher salary or to be promoted if he or she is performing well in his or her job. However, career success can be conceptualized as occurring over a longer period of time because extrinsic indicators of success often include outcomes that are accumulated over many years (Su & Nye, 2017). For example, an individual’s salary will be based on an accumulation of factors over his or her career including level of performance, amount of time in the job, availability of alternative job offers, and a number of other factors that may reflect effectiveness on the job. Therefore, although job performance is an indicator of short-term effectiveness in employees’ current jobs, extrinsic career success may be more indicative of sustained effectiveness over a longer period of time. In terms of evaluating the relevance of vocational interests for understanding workplace behavior, both short- and long-term effectiveness will be important.

There are two mechanisms through which interests can influence extrinsic career success. The first mechanism is occupational choice. As described above, there is convincing evidence that interests are related to occupational membership (Savickas & Spokane, 1999); individuals are attracted to and likely to stay in jobs that they are interested in (Holland, 1959, 1997; Schneider, 1987). Given that occupations tend to vary on a number of factors such as income, authority, and prestige, job choice may be one possible mediator of the relationship between interests and career success. Strong (1943) recognized this link and developed the Occupational Level interest scale to reflect this variation across occupations. Across five studies, he found a median correlation of .61 between occupational level and income (correlations ranged from .12 to .77).

Other research has also suggested that a broad range of occupations can be represented well by including a higher-order prestige dimension of interests (Tracey & Rounds, 1996). As occupations increase in prestige, they will also provide more extrinsic indicators of career success, such as financial compensation, higher levels of responsibility, and greater authority. Again, this indicates that vocational interests may be related to extrinsic indicators of career success through their impact on occupational membership.

Interests may also influence career success through their influence on motivation. As described above, interests are related to motivation, which is a proximal predictor of job performance (Nye et al., 2012). As such, interests may influence career success through their indirect effects on performance. Over time, long-term sustained high performance can result in higher income, more authority, and faster promotions. However, the effects of interests on motivation may also have a direct influence on career success through the motivational components of self-efficacy and goal setting. Lent et al. (1994) proposed the Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) that relates interests to career goals, which then influence actions and performance. Specifically, SCCT suggests that interests will focus an individual’s attention on a particular career path by influencing the goals that he or she sets. These goals will help to motivate individuals by guiding and sustaining their energy toward a particular outcome. The well-documented literature linking goals to performance then comes into play to explain how these career success objectives are accomplished (Erez & Kanfer, 1983; Locke & Latham, 1990; Locke & Latham, 2002; Mento, Steel, & Karren, 1987). Interests, through their influence on motivation and career goals, thus influence career success.

Despite the theoretical link between interests and career outcomes, very little research has been conducted on this topic compared to the research on job performance. While very few studies have investigated this link, the studies that have been done mostly support the idea that interest congruence can lead to success. In one of the few studies to look at the relationship between interests and extrinsic career success, Huang and Pearce (2013) utilized data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and O^⋆NET to examine the relationship between the RIASEC types and income. Examining more than 650 occupations, these authors found that interests accounted for over half of the variance in income, with Investigative and Enterprising interests both positively related to this outcome. Realistic and Conventional interests were negatively related to income while the results for Social and Artistic interests were mixed. This study also found that the stronger an individual’s interest in a particular type of work relative to other types (a concept Holland called differentiation), the stronger the relationship with income.

Another study examined the relationship between congruence and income in a sample of over 93,000 college alumni (Neumann, Olitsky, & Robbins, 2009). Here, interest congruence was calculated using Euclidean distances where lower scores indicated higher congruence. In this study, a one standard deviation decrease in the Euclidean distance resulted in a 5.0% increase in income. Interest congruence also offered incremental validity above standardized test scores and years of education, providing compelling evidence for the value of interests in predicting extrinsic career success even beyond other important measures.

Finally, in an unpublished doctoral dissertation, Su (2012) examined the relationship between interests and career success in a sample of nearly 400,000 high school students. She found that interests in high school predicted career success eleven years later, with a multiple correlation of .49 with income when all of the interest types were included in a regression model. In addition, results also indicated that interests predicted career success above and beyond cognitive ability, personality, and other human capital predictors.

Although existing evidence is limited, the studies that do exist indicate that vocational interests are valid predictors of extrinsic career success. Again, these findings differ from the results for intrinsic indicators (i.e., job satisfaction) of career success described above. The key seems to be the psychological mechanisms that mediate these relationships. However, to fully understand the differences between extrinsic and intrinsic indicators of career success, more research is needed to examine the mechanisms proposed here.

Conclusions and Future Directions

Holland’s model of vocational interests suggests that congruence should be related to important work outcomes. As described above, the empirical evidence seems to support this claim for some criteria (e.g., performance, turnover, career success) but not necessarily for others (e.g., job satisfaction). In general, however, these findings support the conclusion that vocational interests can be useful for predicting workplace behavior. This finding is important, not only because of the potential implications for organizational models and theories, but also because vocational interests have been largely ignored over the past several decades in organizational research.

Although a number of organizational studies focusing on vocational interests were published in the 1940s and 1950s, recent decades have seen few interest studies published in organizational journals. The bulk of the research on vocational interests has been published in the educational or counseling literatures. Although a substantial amount of progress has been made in these literatures, this means that the role of interests in many organizational theories has yet to be thoroughly examined. Therefore, below we discuss several potential directions for future research on vocational interests in the organizational literature.

Psychological Mechanisms Underlying the Validity of Interests

One direction for future research is to examine the psychological mechanisms underlying the relationships between interest congruence and important work outcomes. As described above, a good amount of research has examined the relationships between interest and their distal outcomes. For many of these variables, theories help to explain why interests should predict attitudes and behavior. However, very little research has actually tested these psychological mechanisms and their roles as mediators in models of organizational behavior.

The research on vocational interests and job performance provides a compelling example. Although a number of studies have examined this relationship, very few have actually tested the full model with declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, and motivation as mediators. Therefore, it is unclear whether these intervening variables can fully explain the link between interests and performance (full mediation) or whether additional psychological mechanisms may also account for variance in this model. Without this information, the mediating mechanisms of this relationship, and others, can only be speculated.

Examining the full predictive model of interests is important for testing theory and for explaining empirical findings. This is particularly important given that much of the research on the relationships between interests, knowledge acquisition, and motivation has been examined in the context of situational interest and short-term recall of information (Silvia, 2006). As described above, situational interests focus more on momentary interest in a particular topic and are frequently examined in the educational literature as a way of describing variation in interest across learning materials. In contrast, the review presented here focuses primarily on vocational interests, which are more enduring trait-like characteristics that guide preferences. Note that the distinction between situational and vocational interests is not trivial and a number of differences exist between the theoretical and empirical work on these perspectives. In fact, some theories suggest that situational interest is a precursor to the development of vocational interests (e.g., Renninger & Hidi, this volume). Due to the differences between these perspectives, it is unclear whether the relationships identified within a situation will generalize across situations or translate into general preferences. Therefore, more research is needed to evaluate the psychological mechanisms mediating the relationships between interests and attitudes and behavior at work.

Basic Interests

In addition to examining the psychological mechanisms underlying the relationships between vocational interests and workplace behavior, additional research is also needed on the measurement of interests. The origins of modern interest assessments date back to at least 1919 in a seminar conducted by C. S. Yoakum at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. Since that time, a number of interest inventories have been developed and are widely used in the literature. Across these measures, interests have been assessed at three different levels of specificity. At the broadest level, and probably the most common type of interest assessment, are measures that are sometimes referred to as general occupational themes (GOT), which assess the broader RIASEC types. The RIASEC types were developed to describe broad occupational preferences and each interest type is generally associated with a number of occupations. However, narrower dimensions of interest can also be assessed and are referred to as basic interests. Basic interests are more homogeneous dimensions of interest that group together work activities that may be relevant to a number of occupations. These narrow interest dimensions are analogous to trait facets in personality research and a number of basic interest dimensions will underlie each RIASEC type. The narrowest types of interest assessments are occupational scales, which ask individuals about the types of occupations that they would be most interested in. In contrast to GOT and basic interest measures, occupational scales are specific to a single occupation and are unlikely to generalize much beyond that vocation. Some interest inventories, like the Strong Interest Inventory (Donnay et al., 2005), include all three types of scales.

Although GOTs are commonly assessed in the interest literature, some have suggested that these assessments may be too broad and heterogeneous and may not reflect the changing nature of work (e.g., Day & Rounds, 1997). Although this framework was useful for describing interests and job classification at a time when employees stayed in a job or at a company for their entire career, these broad interest types are less useful for understanding the current workforce, which is characterized by frequent job/occupation changes and increased overall mobility. As a result, some have suggested assessing basic interests as an alternative to the broader occupational themes represented by the RIASEC (Jackson, 1977; Liao, Armstrong, & Rounds, 2008). Assessing the narrower basic interests can provide both the content specificity and the flexibility required to more accurately select and classify individuals into a broad range of occupations. In this way, basic interest scales may also have an advantage over occupational scales, in that they can be more representative of a broader range of occupations than the occupational scales, which are unique to one and only one occupation.

As with other constructs, a key consideration here is matching the breadth of the predictor and the criterion (Donnay & Borgen, 1996; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1974; Ralston, Borgen, Rottinghaus, & Donnay, 2004). From this perspective, narrower basic interests should be most appropriate for predicting narrower outcomes and occupational scales may predict even narrower outcomes still. However, past research has also indicated that the narrower facets of personality can add incremental validity to the broader Big Five traits when predicting broad criteria like job performance (Dudley, Orvis, Lebiecki, & Cortina, 2006). This finding may be due to the heterogeneity of the Big Five traits. It is possible that the Big Five are simply too broad and heterogeneous for prediction while the narrower facets provide purer estimates of personality constructs that may be related to theoretically relevant outcomes (Paunonen, Rothstein, & Jackson, 1999; Paunonen & Ashton, 2001). The narrow basic interest dimensions or occupational scales may be able to provide incremental validity over the broader RIASEC types for this same reason. In fact, past research has provided support for this prediction and shown that narrow basic interests can outperform the broader RIASEC types for predicting membership in specific occupations and academic majors (Donnay & Borgen, 1996; Ralston et al., 2004).

In addition, in the context of vocational interests, single interest scales are not the focus of prediction studies—interest profiles and their match to the job are more important. As such, matching the breadth of the interest scale to the criterion may be less useful for understanding prediction. Recent research has indicated that a profile of interests and combining multiple interest dimensions will be most useful for predicting work outcomes (Nye et al., 2017; Nye, Prasad et al., 2018). With this in mind, combining basic interests may provide a clearer description of a job and more flexibility for combining different interests to predict important work outcomes.

Interest Congruence

Finally, as noted throughout this chapter, the concept of congruence plays a central role in vocational interest theories. In particular, the most dominant theory of interests (Holland, 1997) emphasizes the importance of congruence for predicting workplace outcomes. Support for the benefits of congruence has been provided by recent meta-analyses indicating that interest congruence is a better predictor of behavior than interest scores alone (Nye et al., 2017). Given the importance of congruence for interest theories and research, more research is needed to improve our understanding of the fit between an individual’s interests and his or her job. This research is particularly important given that recent reviews of the person-environment fit literature have excluded interest congruence from the conversation (Kristof-Brown et al., 2005).

In the context of congruence, a number of topics may be useful to study in future research. First, the vast majority of studies on interest fit have focused on a broad range of congruence indices developed to fit with Holland’s model of interests (e.g., see Table 5.1; Brown & Gore, 1994). Although these indices have proven useful (Nye et al., 2017), some have questioned their utility for vocational interest research (Tinsley, 2000). In addition, the limitations of congruence indices have been widely recognized for a number of years (Cronbach, 1958; Edwards, 1993). Therefore, despite their potential for validity, other approaches to examining interest fit may be more useful.

One particularly relevant limitation of congruence indices is that they often impose unjustified constraints on the relationships between the various components of congruence (i.e., parts of the individual or environment profiles) and the outcomes being studied. Edwards (1993) demonstrated that these constraints could limit the validity of congruence indices and suggested that other methods of operationalizing congruence could provide higher validity than has been observed for traditional indices. For example, using regression to empirically estimate the relationships between an outcomes and each element of the individual and environment profiles can help to address this issue. Van Iddekinge, Roth et al. (2011) examined the use of regression composites that matched the importance of each interest type to the sample being studied. They found that these regression composites provided higher validity for predicting job performance (multiple R = .36) and turnover (R = -.33), among other criteria, than interest scores alone (corrected correlations were .14 and -.15, respectively). However, in some cases, the validity of these regression composites decreased substantially after accounting for shrinkage in the model (shrunken R’s were .18 and -.29 for job performance and turnover, respectively).

Another way to operationalize congruence could be to use polynomial regression. A number of papers have been written advocating the use of polynomial regression as an alternative to congruence indices (Edwards, 1993, 1994). This methodology has a number of advantages over traditional congruence indices. For example, polynomial regression can be used to relax the constraints imposed by congruence indices and increase the validity of congruence as a result (Edwards, 1993). Despite the advantages of this approach, very few studies have used polynomial regression to examine interest fit. As noted above, Nye, Prasad et al. (2018) used polynomial regression to examine the relationships between interests, academic performance, and job satisfaction. They found that polynomial regression resulted in much higher validity than more traditional congruence indices used in the interest literature. In addition, Su (2012) examined polynomial regression in the prediction of career success and again found that polynomial regression improved the prediction of income and occupational prestige. Based on these findings, it appears that polynomial regression may be useful for examining the validity of interests.

In addition to examining the way that congruence is calculated, future research would also benefit from examining the level of congruence. As described above, the concept of interest congruence can be conceptualized at multiple levels. An individual’s interests can match a particular task, a job, or an occupation and the question is which of these conceptualizations is most appropriate. Meir (1989) examined these issues in the context of the interest congruence–job satisfaction relationship and found that interests were more highly correlated with satisfaction when the focus was on congruence with the narrower occupational specialty rather than the broader occupation as a whole. Kristof-Brown et al. (2005) found something similar in the broader P-E fit literature. These authors found that person-job fit generally had higher correlations with outcomes than either person-organization fit or person-group fit. However, few studies have examined this issue in the interest literature and, therefore, more research is needed to examine these possibilities in models of vocational interests.

Summary and Conclusions

In conclusion, vocational interests appear useful for predicting attitudes and behavior at work. Despite these empirical relationships, the influence of interests is often ignored in many organizational theories. Therefore, integrating the broad literature on interests in vocational and educational psychology with theories and research on workplace behavior may provide a fruitful direction for future research. There are still many unanswered questions about the role of interests at work and the goal of the present chapter was to highlight a few of these areas in relation to the predictive validity of interest congruence.

Note

1In the regression-based approach to meta-analysis, meta-analytic correlations are calculated as the predicted scores from a regression model developed using the coded data set. Therefore, we represent these correlations as ρ^. These values should be comparable to corrected correlations calculated using the Hunter and Schmidt (2004) approach.

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