For better, or for worse? Making a career pivot to pursue a calling

Management scholarship is rife with accounts of people pivoting from steady jobs and “good” careers into occupations that align with their callings. In my dissertation, I investigate callings, and the career pivots that people make to pursue them, through a two-study, mixed-methods investigation. In the first study, a quantitative meta-analysis, my co-authors and I clarify the beneficial and detrimental outcomes associated with viewing work as a calling across 201 studies in the literature. We find that callings, on the whole, are highly beneficial, and suggest that a “calling mindset”—the extent to which people believe work should be a calling—can further strengthen these benefits. Given the highly positive view of callings that emerged within the meta-analysis, my second dissertation study, a solo-authored qualitative study, explores how people can leave unfulfilling occupations to pursue their callings—in a role transition that I refer to as a “career pivot.” Drawing on 201 interviews, conducted in three waves over 18-months, as well as archival and observational data gathered over 3.5 years, I find that career pivots are radical, unconventional career transitions—often requiring some degree of “starting over,” and an accompanying loss of status and/or security. Due to these characteristics of career pivots, successful completion of the underlying psychological role movement hinges upon whether an individual can construct a compelling “career pivot self-narrative.” Thus, I use the longitudinal data to examine how self-narratives evolve across the stages of a career pivot, and eventually become enduring, thereby facilitating the pivot’s completion. My examination reveals several elements of the self-narrative, including its exposition, inciting incident, and rising action, evolve between the early and middle stages of a career pivot. Subsequently, in the late stage of a career pivot—when people are working in their new occupations—if their new occupational identity is validated and work is experienced as a calling, the self-narrative becomes enduring, and the career pivot is complete. My dissertation advances research and theory on callings and role transitions

The Harmful Impact of Weight Stigma on Eating Pathology and Health Behaviors among White and Latinx Adolescents

Western body image ideals and concern about the negative effects of obesity have contributed to widespread weight stigma in the United States. People with larger bodies are often perceived by others as lazy, unsuccessful, unmotivated, less intelligent, slow, unhealthy, and unattractive (Puhl & Heuer, 2009). A growing body of research has documented that experiences of weight-based victimization tend to lead to exercise avoidance, binge eating, and further weight gain rather than weight loss. The current study extends this line of research with a sample of primarily White and Latinx adolescents from high schools in central California (N = 365). Participants completed a battery of measures one day during class. Results indicated that among participants who perceived themselves to be overweight, experiences of weight teasing were associated with exercise avoidance, but not binge eating. Lower internalized weight bias was not found to be protective against the effects of weight teasing. Weight-stigmatizing attitudes were found to be a distinct construct from ideal body internalization. Among the Latinx participants (n = 163), there was some support for the idea that lower levels of orientation to U.S. mainstream culture (and higher orientation to Latinx culture) was associated with less internalization of Western body image ideals. Levels of acculturation were not found to be related to weight-stigmatizing attitudes. Implications for eating disorders and obesity prevention programs are discussed. More research is needed on ways that weight-based victimization intersects with other forms of bias and discrimination, and on community and policy level interventions

Calling and the good life: a meta-analysis and theoretical extension

While a positive view of calling has been pervasive since its introduction into the literature over two decades ago, research remains unsettled about its unequivocal contribution to various aspects of the “good life,” an optimal way of living well via worthwhile endeavors. Further, scholars have identified two conceptual types of calling, marked by internal versus external foci; yet their differential impact on outcomes indicative of the good life, such as eudaimonic and hedonic well-being, is unknown. Through a meta-analysis of 201 studies, we provide the first systematic review focused on these two fundamental theoretical tensions in the calling literature: how strongly related callings are to outcomes in the domains of work and life, and which type of calling (internally- vs. externally-focused) more strongly predicts these outcomes, if either. We find that callings more strongly relate to outcomes indicative of the good life than recently argued. We further find that callings are more strongly linked to work than life outcomes, and to eudaimonic than hedonic outcomes. The two types of calling converge with each other in being associated with many similar outcomes, yet show some divergence: internally-focused callings are more positively related to hedonic outcomes and less positively related to eudaimonic outcomes, relative to externally-focused callings, thus supporting a view of callings as hierarchically-structured with a higher-order calling factor composed of two correlated, yet distinct, lower-order calling types. Integrating our metaanalytic findings with relevant literatures, we propose a theoretical model that addresses psychological and social need fulfillment through which different types of callings contribute to the good life

Upset and Unfocused: ADHD symptoms and cognitive abilities as moderators for working memory performance under varying levels of emotional load

Background: ADHD symptoms are prevalent among college students and frequently cause executive function (EF) impairments. While EF impairments are well studied in this population, the interaction between emotional arousal/mood, working memory (WM), ADHD symptoms and cognitive abilities (CA) still remains unclear. Methods: 50 undergraduate participants’ ADHD symptoms and EF were assessed through cognitive assessments and behavioral questionnaires before they completed WM tasks under varying levels of laboratory-induced emotional load. Results: Participants with high ADHD symptoms and/or low CA struggled with the experimental WM task. Under emotional load, those with hyperactive-impulsive ADHD symptoms struggled with self-regulatory aspects of EF: producing more intrusions and recognition errors. The CA groups’ deficits were tied closer to recall ability – with and without added load. Conclusion: These findings further support that there are many reasons for WM challenges and that there is no single assessment that can identify the underlying cause of these struggles.Individual Studies Program, University of Marylan

Engineering Students in a Global World: Lehigh University\u27s Global Citizenship Program

As the world grows smaller and companies become increasingly international, engineering students with a global education will be in high demand. Given the constraints of the typical undergraduate engineering curriculum, it can be extremely challenging for engineering students to participate in activities designed to promote global awareness. Lehigh University’s answer to this challenge is the Global Citizenship Program (GCP), a “backpack” program designed to be accessible to any student on campus. The “backpack” metaphor means that all students should be able to assemble their own particular mix of additional courses and experiences in order to develop a global perspective that deepens their core disciplinary training. The GCP at Lehigh provides focus and structure to engineering students, providing opportunities for study abroad and organizing their humanities and social science electives into a coherent package of curricular and co-curricular experiences that maximizes the educational potential of these few non-engineering opportunities

Transancestral mapping and genetic load in systemic lupus erythematosus

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease with marked gender and ethnic disparities. We report a large transancestral association study of SLE using Immunochip genotype data from 27,574 individuals of European (EA), African (AA) and Hispanic Amerindian (HA) ancestry. We identify 58 distinct non-HLA regions in EA, 9 in AA and 16 in HA (B50% of these regions have multiple independent associations); these include 24 novel SLE regions (Po5 10 8), refined association signals in established regions, extended associations to additional ancestries, and a disentangled complex HLA multigenic effect. The risk allele count (genetic load) exhibits an accelerating pattern of SLE risk, leading us to posit a cumulative hit hypothesis for autoimmune disease. Comparing results across the three ancestries identifies both ancestry-dependent and ancestry-independent contributions to SLE risk. Our results are consistent with the unique and complex histories of the populations sampled, and collectively help clarify the genetic architecture and ethnic disparities in SL

Socializing One Health: an innovative strategy to investigate social and behavioral risks of emerging viral threats

In an effort to strengthen global capacity to prevent, detect, and control infectious diseases in animals and people, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) PREDICT project funded development of regional, national, and local One Health capacities for early disease detection, rapid response, disease control, and risk reduction. From the outset, the EPT approach was inclusive of social science research methods designed to understand the contexts and behaviors of communities living and working at human-animal-environment interfaces considered high-risk for virus emergence. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, PREDICT behavioral research aimed to identify and assess a range of socio-cultural behaviors that could be influential in zoonotic disease emergence, amplification, and transmission. This broad approach to behavioral risk characterization enabled us to identify and characterize human activities that could be linked to the transmission dynamics of new and emerging viruses. This paper provides a discussion of implementation of a social science approach within a zoonotic surveillance framework. We conducted in-depth ethnographic interviews and focus groups to better understand the individual- and community-level knowledge, attitudes, and practices that potentially put participants at risk for zoonotic disease transmission from the animals they live and work with, across 6 interface domains. When we asked highly-exposed individuals (ie. bushmeat hunters, wildlife or guano farmers) about the risk they perceived in their occupational activities, most did not perceive it to be risky, whether because it was normalized by years (or generations) of doing such an activity, or due to lack of information about potential risks. Integrating the social sciences allows investigations of the specific human activities that are hypothesized to drive disease emergence, amplification, and transmission, in order to better substantiate behavioral disease drivers, along with the social dimensions of infection and transmission dynamics. Understanding these dynamics is critical to achieving health security--the protection from threats to health-- which requires investments in both collective and individual health security. Involving behavioral sciences into zoonotic disease surveillance allowed us to push toward fuller community integration and engagement and toward dialogue and implementation of recommendations for disease prevention and improved health security

Only time will tell: Conducting longitudinal research on careers

Longitudinal research is key to the advancement of our understanding of careers, yet it is also a particularly challenging endeavor for scholars. In this chapter, we draw on our experiences as longitudinal researchers to discuss the challenges, and merits, of conducting longitudinal research on careers. We begin by defining what longitudinal research is, and is not. We then describe the contributions that longitudinal research can make to the careers literature, above and beyond other research designs like cross-sectional studies. We conclude by offering a “Top 10" list of practical tips for conducting and publishing longitudinal research on careers. Throughout this chapter, we provide examples of reviewers’ comments on our own longitudinal research and discuss the strategies that we used to address these comments, so that other scholars may benefit from our acquired knowledge. As an end goal, we hope that this chapter stimulates longitudinal research on careers, and helps scholars weather its challenges to truly reap its upsides

Voice Assistants and Expectations of Instant Help

People use voice assistant technology (which has a salient male or female gender), no technology, or an ungendered technology, and rate expectations of instant help from a male or female subordinate in a workplace scenario

Antecedents of organizational identification: a review and agenda for future research

Research on the antecedents of organizational identi!cation (OI), individuals’ sense of oneness with the organization, has developed over time with four major categories: organizational characteristics, managerial policies and practices, interpersonal interactions, and personal attributes. OI research has "ourished due to the exploration of antecedents under these four research categories, but it is not well integrated across them. The current lack of integration hinders understanding of the factors that can contribute to OI and how these might jointly shape OI development. To address this important unresolved issue, we seek to provide a comprehensive review of research on the antecedents of OI. In our review, we !rst summarize the existing research that re"ects each of the four major research categories. We then suggest several avenues for future research, including exploration of the longitudinal dynamics between the antecedents and how the antecedents will operate in the context of key emerging work trends: remote work and digital transformation