THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN SELF-DEFEATING PERSONALITY-CHARACTERISTICS, CAREER INDECISION, AND VOCATIONAL IDENTITY

Research on Schill's Self-Defeating Personality Scale (SDPS; Schill, 1 990) has focused primarily on interpersonal relationships and less on self-defeating behavior in other contexts. The SDPS was correlated wit h the Career Decision Scale (CDS; Osipow, Carney, Winer, Yanico, & Kos chier, 1976), My Vocational Situation (MVS; Holland, Daiger, & Power, 1980), and the Career Factors Inventory (CFI; Chartrand, Robbins, Morr ill, & Boggs, 1990). Participants with more self-defeating characteris tics were more career indecisive, had less vocational identity, and we re more indecisive in general. Women with higher scores on the Self-De feating Personality Scale had significantly greater career choice anxi ety and less need for self-knowledge, although men with higher scores did not. The effect of depression contributed substantially to the hig her scores for career indecision and vocational identity among men wit h more self-defeating characteristics, and it accounted entirely for l ack of desire for self-knowledge among women with more self-defeating characteristics. However, a general characteristic of indecisiveness i n persons with more self-defeating characteristics was present and was independent of depressive affect. The differential effects among the CFI subscales support claims that the scale is factorally pure.