ACCENTUATION EFFECTS OF DISSIMILAR ACADEMIC DEPARTMENTS - AN APPLICATION AND EXPLORATION OF HOLLANDS-THEORY

This longitudinal study of college students found accentuation of init ial group differences among academic subenvironments for Artistic abil ities of both male and female students and for Enterprising abilities of male students. It also showed that male and female students in Arti stic subenvironments-for whom Artistic abilities and interests were ea ch of the two gender groups' initially prominent characteristic-increa sed still further in score on the Artistic abilities and interest scal e over four years of college; and parallel results were found for male students in Enterprising subenvironments in terms of Enterprising abi lities and interests. Moreover, both male and female students initiall y high on Artistic and Enterprising abilities and interests ''gained'' more on these attributes if they entered congruent academic subenviro nments (Artistic and Enterprising subenvironments, respectively) than if they entered any of the other subenvironments. Whereas these findin gs support Holland's theory, other data (primarily for Investigative a nd Social abilities and interests of students) were either less suppor tive or unsupportive of Holland's theory. Some implications of these r esults are discussed.