Personality and Satisfaction with Occupational Choice: Role of Environment as a Mediator

Abstract

It was predicted that occupational satisfaction was jointly a function of S's personality and the extent to which certain personality-derived requirements were present in his job environment. Four personality systems differing in information-processing style and relation to people as measured by the Interpersonal Topical Inventory (ITI) were studied. 95 supervisors completed the ITI and rated 20 aspects of their job environments as they actually were and as they would be ideally. Satisfaction with present job was also rated. Job-environment items were separated into those dealing with security, structure, self-expression, autonomy, esteem, and social contact. Satisfaction among concrete-dependent Ss was related to the size of the actual-ideal discrepancy on security and structure; among concrete-independent Ss to the discrepancy on self-expression; among abstract-dependent Ss to the discrepancy on social contact, esteem, autonomy, and self-expression. No relationships were found for abstract-independent Ss.