SOCIAL SKILLS OF AND SOCIAL ENVIRONMENTS PRODUCED BY DIFFERENT HOLLAND TYPES - A SOCIAL-PERSPECTIVE ON PERSON-ENVIRONMENT FIT MODELS

A critical aspect of the environment in person-environment models is t he nature and density of the social interactions of the members who po pulate the environment. Because social types solve problems through so cial mechanisms, it was hypothesized that they would have greatest ski lls in social coping and that the further the Euclidean distance (in H olland's hexagon) from social, the lower the skill level in these soci al skills, but that there would be no differences among Holland types in skill level for problem-focused social skills. On the basis of an a ssessment of vocational interests and self-reported social skills of 1 34 undergraduates, this hypothesis was corroborated. Chemistry laborat ory groups were qualitatively studied to describe the social interacti on environment of persons with relative deficits in the social-coping skills. These chemists interacted often, enjoyed and benefited from th e interactions, but constrained their social interactions to minimize the dependence on social-coping social skills.