Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. So
Speaker 1: today I'm really excited to have Amy Resneski on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Doctor Resneski is a professor of organizational behavior at the
Speaker 1: Yale School of Management. Her research focuses on how people
Speaker 1: make meaning of their work in difficult contexts, such as
Speaker 1: stigmatized occupations, virtual work or absence of work, and the
Speaker 1: experience of work as a job, career, or calling. Her
Speaker 1: current research involves studying how employees shape their interactions and
Speaker 1: relationship with others in the workplace to change both their
Speaker 1: work at any and the meaning of the job. Amy,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for chattling with me today. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for having me. I'm excited to talk with you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've always had trouble saying the word contexts with there
Speaker 1: am I the only one in the world that is
Speaker 1: trouble saying that word. I'm sure, sure you can't be sure.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you can't be It's maybe why we should
Speaker 1: study one context at a time. Yeah, yeah, oh that's
Speaker 1: a good point. Actually. Okay, So look, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for there's so much to discuss, and I always
Speaker 1: like to kind of start with the most like sort
Speaker 1: of general framework leading question. So I was wondering, how
Speaker 1: you define the word meaning. Oh, that's a great question.
Speaker 1: And it was this, this question, I believe it or not,
Speaker 1: though I've been studying meaning for a very long time,
Speaker 1: was the source of a long conversation I had with
Speaker 1: the doctoral student yesterday. So it turns out there are
Speaker 1: a few different ways to define meaning. So, you know,
Speaker 1: the way that I think about it has more to
Speaker 1: do with the nature of the association that someone makes
Speaker 1: with an entity, and that, you know, I realize even
Speaker 1: in saying that, how incredibly abstract that sounds, and I
Speaker 1: almost feel like I need to apologize for that. But
Speaker 1: the reason that I assign that meaning, if you will,
Speaker 1: to the word meaning is because the way that this
Speaker 1: has often been sort of talked about or thought about
Speaker 1: in the literature essentially confuses meaningfulness with meaning. So meaningfulness is,
Speaker 1: you know, the amount of purpose or significance or something
Speaker 1: like how much you know? Is something freighted with? Right?
Speaker 1: Is how meaningful is it to you? But the meaning
Speaker 1: of that thing? You know, what is it that makes
Speaker 1: it meaningful? Or what is it that makes it not meaningful?
Speaker 1: Everything has a meaning, and the meaning is essentially the content.
Speaker 1: You know, what is the association or what you know,
Speaker 1: what's sort of attached to a relationship, to a job,
Speaker 1: to a client, or you know, what have you that
Speaker 1: dictates for us what the meaning of that entity is.
Speaker 1: And so I've been very interested in differentiating between these
Speaker 1: two things. Though it sounds subtle, it's actually not, you know,
Speaker 1: mean meaningfulness is about sort of how much and meaning
Speaker 1: is you know, of what type? You know, our work
Speaker 1: can be very meaningful to us because it's a way
Speaker 1: to support our families and educate our children and launch
Speaker 1: them into the world. Perhaps it might also be that
Speaker 1: our work is very meaningful, but it is freightd with
Speaker 1: totally different kinds of meaning that have more to do with,
Speaker 1: you know, serving the world and what have you. So
Speaker 1: the difference is between the kinds of meaning people assigned
Speaker 1: to their work is really interesting to me. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: this distinction between meaning and meaningfulness is a new one
Speaker 1: to me. It's very interesting. It's not very existentialist philosophy
Speaker 1: of you in the sense that I would say that
Speaker 1: nothing has any inherent meaning whatsoever, but there really is
Speaker 1: only that meaningfulness aspect. So I think that is an
Speaker 1: interesting perspective. But now I'm thinking of all these examples
Speaker 1: as you bring up this definition of sure you can
Speaker 1: have something, you can have a negative meaning, right like
Speaker 1: and not beneficial meaning to or you know, like like
Speaker 1: you know, every time you see the name of that
Speaker 1: ex boyfriend or whatever, it has meaning but it makes
Speaker 1: you shudder. Yeah, not you in particularly, but just an
Speaker 1: example that my head. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: I think I think we all have that x somewhere
Speaker 1: back in our industry. But you know, I think that's
Speaker 1: exactly right. And I think for that reason, you know,
Speaker 1: part of what I think is powerful about thinking about
Speaker 1: meaning this way is it's not then necessarily freighted with
Speaker 1: positive meaning, but it allows us to understand a full
Speaker 1: spectrum of human experience, right with you know, in my case,
Speaker 1: with the domain of work, which is where my interest is.
Speaker 1: But it gives you, i think, more of a line
Speaker 1: of sight right across the full spectrum of how people
Speaker 1: come to think about and experience this domain of their lives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that does make a lot of sense to me.
Speaker 1: So your research has identified four mean sources of meaning.
Speaker 1: Would you mind just unpacking those four a little bit? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to so the way that we have, you know,
Speaker 1: come to think about this, So I should say in
Speaker 1: the work that I've done, I'm not proposing these as
Speaker 1: the four sort of sources of meaning of work, but rather,
Speaker 1: together with colleagues of mind. So this is Brent Rosso
Speaker 1: and Catherine Decas, we were very interested in thinking about
Speaker 1: and understanding what did the literature have to say from
Speaker 1: you know, back when people first started writing about these
Speaker 1: questions up to the presence about what the meaning of
Speaker 1: work is, where the meaning of work comes from, and
Speaker 1: so on and so in terms of the sources of
Speaker 1: the meaning of work, that feels important to say because
Speaker 1: it's not like it's a grand theory that I've proposed
Speaker 1: with them, but rather, you know, this is us, you know,
Speaker 1: almost sort of like we're being the messengers of the literature,
Speaker 1: Like what what have we had to say as a
Speaker 1: field or as a set of fields about this. So
Speaker 1: the first source of that being the self, and you know,
Speaker 1: how do the selves with the selfs, values, motivations, beliefs
Speaker 1: and so on, connect with the work in a way
Speaker 1: that freates it with particular kinds of meaning. Others in
Speaker 1: the workplace, so you know, these are coworkers, sort of leaders, managers,
Speaker 1: the groups and communities that we are a part of
Speaker 1: sort of through our work, including you know, family. The
Speaker 1: role of family and informing the kind of meaning we
Speaker 1: make of our work is something that we're beginning to
Speaker 1: understand more about. A third being the work context. And
Speaker 1: you know, by this this is everything about you know,
Speaker 1: how is the job that you're doing designed, what's the
Speaker 1: mission of the organization that you're a part of, you know,
Speaker 1: what's happening kind of in the national culture around you,
Speaker 1: and so on kind of where is that work located in,
Speaker 1: what does it consist of? And then finally in this
Speaker 1: fourth category is actually i think in some sense very interesting,
Speaker 1: but it's one that we don't know a ton about,
Speaker 1: and that is spirituality and spiritual life. So it turns
Speaker 1: out that you know, an awful lot of people think
Speaker 1: about the meaning of their work in spiritual terms. That
Speaker 1: what they're doing is, you know, in some sense, an
Speaker 1: offering to a way that they think about their spiritual
Speaker 1: lives or entities that they believe in. But it's something
Speaker 1: that organizational scholars and organizational psychologists have by and large
Speaker 1: really shied away from understanding. But they're potentially really big
Speaker 1: opportunities there. Oh, I completely agree. And you know, the
Speaker 1: spiritual dimension, like Piedmont and some others have found, it,
Speaker 1: really is a bit orthogonal to the Big Five. It
Speaker 1: can't be reduced to any of the Big five personality traits.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like there is this fundamental need
Speaker 1: that may manifest itself in religion, but it could also
Speaker 1: manifest it self in the workplace. So that's a particular
Speaker 1: topic I'm really interested in. So I'm really glad that
Speaker 1: you added that. I mean, it's kind of hard to
Speaker 1: deny that that's a source of meaning for many people, right, absolutely, yes,
Speaker 1: And I think you know, if you think about psychology
Speaker 1: and if you think about organizational behavior, you know, so
Speaker 1: I sort of sit at the intersection of those, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it for lack of a better way to
Speaker 1: put it. I think it can make researchers feel uncomfortable, like,
Speaker 1: what is this? How do we measure it? How do
Speaker 1: we you know, assess this? And so there is work
Speaker 1: on it, but I think not in proportion to the
Speaker 1: degree to which this is important to a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are out there working for sure. You know,
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to bring this up, but I just
Speaker 1: thought of it and linkage to that. So I've been
Speaker 1: reading a lot of Maslow's writings about the workplace. He
Speaker 1: spent the summer of nineteen sixty two at this nonlinear
Speaker 1: dynamic systems company and observed things, and he was really
Speaker 1: excited by practical applications of his theory of self actualization.
Speaker 1: But at the time, you know, they had Douglas McGregor
Speaker 1: had this theory X and Y yes, and the Y
Speaker 1: is maybe winkaging to your calling, you know, dimension and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about. But while he was there, he formulated
Speaker 1: a theory that like no one talks about or knows about,
Speaker 1: called theory Z, which I've been trying to expand on,
Speaker 1: which is all about the spiritual dimension. And he wrote
Speaker 1: in his journals that summer instincty two about what what
Speaker 1: theories look like in the workplace. So I'll share that
Speaker 1: to you. I'm going to share that with you someday. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: please do please. It's a really exciting stuff, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great, And I think it's very little known, right
Speaker 1: that there's this He kept going up by exactly that's right.
Speaker 1: Well McGregor stopped at why But it was Maslow that
Speaker 1: decided to come up with the theory z Yeah yeah, okay, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: does that make more sense? Yeah, I feel I feel
Speaker 1: less negligent, ye, right, but in not knowing that. But
Speaker 1: it's interesting, and so he related that to McGregor as
Speaker 1: opposed to to his own correct work on It's okay
Speaker 1: interesting well because and then at the very end of
Speaker 1: his life, like the last couple of years, he positive
Speaker 1: that self actualation wasn't the top, it was actually self transcendence.
Speaker 1: So okay, yeah, this is certainly you know, in this
Speaker 1: review with Brent Rosso and Catherine Dekas, this is something
Speaker 1: that we talk about sort of the ways in which
Speaker 1: work helps and allows us to transcend the self, which
Speaker 1: is certainly one of the mechanisms that, whether it's implicit
Speaker 1: or explicit, we see sort of in the literature about
Speaker 1: how it is people write about the ways in which
Speaker 1: work becomes meaningful for people. Yeah, you know, the calling,
Speaker 1: even the word calling. And you've done a lot of
Speaker 1: work on distinguishing job career and calling orientations in the workplace.
Speaker 1: But the whole notion of calling you has religious connotations.
Speaker 1: Now it's not used, you know, so much to have
Speaker 1: those connotations. But you know, this seems like the spiritual
Speaker 1: level of meaning. It feels connected to calling. Yes, I agree,
Speaker 1: and I think you know, this idea of you know,
Speaker 1: you're doing the work for something, you know, beyond the
Speaker 1: self is core to that. And I think you know,
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right that originally this was absolutely rooted in
Speaker 1: religious tradition and so on. You know, the thought that calling,
Speaker 1: you know, vocare vocation, calling from God to do and
Speaker 1: so on, I think has largely become secularized, but it
Speaker 1: has retained the sense of, you know that it's a
Speaker 1: deep sort of focus of one's life and so on,
Speaker 1: often a source of great joy, though not necessarily depending
Speaker 1: on what side of the literature or on on this,
Speaker 1: but that always in there is this sense of the
Speaker 1: work that you're doing being a contribution to the greater
Speaker 1: good or to the world, sort of beyond the self, right,
Speaker 1: And I think there's so much transcendence in that, And
Speaker 1: it's been so interesting for me to do research, you know,
Speaker 1: with people who do very different kinds of work, all
Speaker 1: of whom if they see that work primarily as a calling,
Speaker 1: they can articulate very clearly exactly how this work has
Speaker 1: an impact far beyond the self in ways that are
Speaker 1: deeply meaningful for them. Yeah, so I want to push
Speaker 1: back on the notion of beyond the self, and I
Speaker 1: really want to unpack what that phrase even really means,
Speaker 1: because like everyone uses that phrase in the literature. Like
Speaker 1: Bill Damon was on the podcast a little while ago
Speaker 1: as well, and he's like, purpose must be beyond the self.
Speaker 1: I was like, ah, like, let's talk about what that
Speaker 1: phrase beyond the self means, because you know, the idea
Speaker 1: of even like Benedict the Anthropologist had this notion that
Speaker 1: many people are aware of called synergy, where she said
Speaker 1: the healthiest culture she studied there was no separation between
Speaker 1: self and the world. So just by being themselves, which
Speaker 1: was that they were helping the world, and when they
Speaker 1: helped the world, they actually benefit this self. So those
Speaker 1: kind of dichotomies break down. I feel like when we
Speaker 1: talk about real self actualizing people, that doesn't even make sense,
Speaker 1: Like self verst world dichotomy. It's one and the same
Speaker 1: in a sense. So it's not like it's beyond the self.
Speaker 1: It's that you know, you're helping the world and that's
Speaker 1: benefiting yourself as well because you happen to be a
Speaker 1: good person. Mm hmmm hmm. Some makes sense, I mean,
Speaker 1: it does, it does, and I think it's a nice
Speaker 1: point that you're making, and I think an important one
Speaker 1: because in writing this review, you know that you referenced
Speaker 1: sort of around these sources of meaning. One of the
Speaker 1: things that we found that you know, in reading through
Speaker 1: all this work and the aggregate was quite frankly sort
Speaker 1: of dismaying to us, was how much, I mean, part
Speaker 1: of it is not surprising rights sort of by definition
Speaker 1: it would have to be this way, but how much
Speaker 1: of this work was very sort of self referential that
Speaker 1: you know, things became meaningful because there was something about
Speaker 1: you know, the self or the self beliefs or the
Speaker 1: selfs values or you know, what have you that saw
Speaker 1: you know, this work in a particular way as opposed
Speaker 1: to and much less about how does the work sort
Speaker 1: of connect sort of more broadly to things that are
Speaker 1: outside of you know, individual belief systems, or individual motivations
Speaker 1: or you know, what have you now? And I think
Speaker 1: we could do a lot better as a field in
Speaker 1: terms of thinking about and sort of building bridges to
Speaker 1: doing work in ways that the self in some sense,
Speaker 1: like you said, you know, sort of disappears, comes to
Speaker 1: merge right with the other, right, or with the world
Speaker 1: more broadly in a way that allows people to feel
Speaker 1: I think fully, you know, more fully integrated. Right. And
Speaker 1: I guess the way that I see the word in
Speaker 1: the whole world, well, I'm glad, I'm glad I used it.
Speaker 1: So I mean the way I see that. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I teach a lot of students, and the way I
Speaker 1: see this as a struggle, you know, for some of them,
Speaker 1: is this idea of trying to think about work. You know.
Speaker 1: They all want to go out and do work that
Speaker 1: they will find meaningful, you know, for a variety of
Speaker 1: different reasons. And you know, to again sort of connect
Speaker 1: with a lot of different kinds of meanings depending on
Speaker 1: who you know, who it is. But this idea of
Speaker 1: you know, how do you examine that or how do
Speaker 1: you interrogate what it means to find sort of work
Speaker 1: of that nature that, you know. The advice I think
Speaker 1: as a society that we tend to give people is
Speaker 1: look inside, look inside. If that fails, look even deeper inside,
Speaker 1: look even deeper inside into your hobbies and what you
Speaker 1: do in your free time and so on, which is
Speaker 1: a very different way of directing people to think about
Speaker 1: it then to direct them out right and to have
Speaker 1: them think about, well, you know, sort of forget yourself
Speaker 1: for a little while, right, what kinds of you know,
Speaker 1: opportunities or problems or crises or communities feel like they
Speaker 1: are working on something, or working towards something, or trying
Speaker 1: to accomplish something that to you seems incredibly worthwhile and
Speaker 1: worth struggling for and worth sacrificing for, which is very
Speaker 1: much not about focus on the self, right, but though
Speaker 1: the impact on the self is obviously going to be profound,
Speaker 1: right of being involved in work like that. Ah yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's a good distinction between focusing on the self,
Speaker 1: which is not the focus, but still the self being. So,
Speaker 1: as Maslow once said in a quote, the self transcend
Speaker 1: it self without realizing it. So, you know, so that's
Speaker 1: what happens with self actualized people. So you know, you
Speaker 1: get interjected something from the world that resonates with yourself
Speaker 1: in the deep way. But the point there is that
Speaker 1: there still is that self concordance, as Ken Sheldon would
Speaker 1: refer to it. So I've been thinking of, you know,
Speaker 1: not all we shouldn't encourage people to pick. I would
Speaker 1: argue they should choose their calling wisely. Not just having
Speaker 1: a calling is important, right, it's what is that calling
Speaker 1: and how does it suit you? Because a lot of people,
Speaker 1: I feel like, feel pressures to take on causes that
Speaker 1: they don't actually at a deep self level, really resonate with.
Speaker 1: And I think that's harmful. That's destructive to the person's
Speaker 1: whole being, the totality of they're being. You know, you
Speaker 1: can see a lot of people growing up with like
Speaker 1: parents who for instance, make them feel guilty if they
Speaker 1: don't you know, aren't nice all the time and stuff,
Speaker 1: and you know, and that's not healthy either, right, right,
Speaker 1: I agree. I mean, I think there's a big difference
Speaker 1: between kind of hitching your wag into a cause because
Speaker 1: it feels like it's you know, in the abstract sort
Speaker 1: of a very worthy thing that one could call one's
Speaker 1: calling versus identifying something or being drawn to something or
Speaker 1: discovering something right accidentally through work that you're doing that
Speaker 1: you realize this feels like something I would want to
Speaker 1: do even if I didn't have to write, if I
Speaker 1: didn't have to work, right, And that there's a big difference, right,
Speaker 1: because you can only you know, even if you're doing
Speaker 1: work that you feel matters to the world, you know
Speaker 1: is really important, but doesn't connect with you in that way,
Speaker 1: it's very hard to sustain, you know, an awful lot
Speaker 1: of passion and motivation and investment in that work for
Speaker 1: you know, for that long a time. Yes, And that's
Speaker 1: what I love your research and I love you know
Speaker 1: that seminole paper where you correlate the items with the
Speaker 1: paragraphs you know whether the three profiles job calling, and
Speaker 1: then you correlated correlate items, and one of that items
Speaker 1: was specifically I would continue doing this job even if
Speaker 1: I wasn't getting paid for it. So they're really inherent
Speaker 1: in your notion of calling is not just is calling
Speaker 1: an orientation, but it feels like inherent is the self
Speaker 1: concordance or self resonance on the spot. I just said
Speaker 1: that self resonation. To me, that feels kind of better.
Speaker 1: That don't tell Ken Sheldon, I said that he might
Speaker 1: listen to this podcast. He's going to listen in and
Speaker 1: he's going to know you said it. But I, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that I think that's right. Yeah, no, I do.
Speaker 1: And I think that where we discover that can surprise us, right,
Speaker 1: So I think there's a big distinction. So a source
Speaker 1: of sort of ongoing regret, right for me, I would say,
Speaker 1: is that you know, these three orientations that originally way
Speaker 1: back now I can't believe it's twenty one years ago,
Speaker 1: Paul rosen bry Schwartz that in that work, you know,
Speaker 1: we were really interested in understanding these three different sort
Speaker 1: of orientations, and you know, going all the way back
Speaker 1: to that point, you know, twenty one years ago, we
Speaker 1: were not in the development of that work. I don't
Speaker 1: think that any of us necessarily was drawn, you know,
Speaker 1: toward trying to understand or unpack one of those orientations
Speaker 1: more than the other two. And in the time sort
Speaker 1: of since that paper came out and you know, all
Speaker 1: the other work that's followed, it's been interesting to see
Speaker 1: sort of how much, you know, calling orientations have really
Speaker 1: captured the imagination of both researchers in this area but
Speaker 1: also the lay public. And you know, it's not surprising,
Speaker 1: you know why, But I'm sad right that that we
Speaker 1: don't have as much work or that there's not as
Speaker 1: much focus on understanding these other meanings of work, because
Speaker 1: I think you know their meanings in very much the
Speaker 1: same way that seeing one's work as a calling right
Speaker 1: is a type of meaning right to attach to the work.
Speaker 1: And you know, given how these things seem to be
Speaker 1: distributed in the population, it's well worth understanding what the
Speaker 1: experience and nature of these other meanings might be when
Speaker 1: you see other meanings. Do you mean like self, other
Speaker 1: person's work on spiritual life? Is that what you meant?
Speaker 1: Or you meant job career? I'm meaning job and career. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's not as much focus on these orientations,
Speaker 1: and I think can become a little bit you know,
Speaker 1: almost like caricatures, right in terms of oh, you know,
Speaker 1: job people are they're just in it for the money
Speaker 1: and they don't you know, and there's all this sort
Speaker 1: of stuff kind of put on that that I don't
Speaker 1: think we have a good research base to claim, right that, like, Oh,
Speaker 1: these are the people who don't care about their work
Speaker 1: and they're just kind of you know, in it, And
Speaker 1: may be the case, you know, it may also be
Speaker 1: the case that they would very much like to derive
Speaker 1: other types of meeting from the work, and what they're
Speaker 1: left with for a variety of reasons, is seeing it
Speaker 1: as primarily a financial exchange, you know, with the organization.
Speaker 1: But that may or may not mean that they care about,
Speaker 1: you know, doing a good job and that they care
Speaker 1: about you know, not letting their coworkers down and you know,
Speaker 1: things like that. Right, But I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: if I think about the second half of my career,
Speaker 1: getting into a position where you know, I and my
Speaker 1: colleagues can delve more deeply into those orientations feels important. Oh,
Speaker 1: I absolutely agree, And I'm glad you brought that up.
Speaker 1: Just returning because Ken Sheldon's self recurrence theory is on
Speaker 1: my mind late. He was on the podcast recently and
Speaker 1: I've been digging into his work and I really like
Speaker 1: what the one thing I do really like about his
Speaker 1: work is it distinguishes between the goal contents of your
Speaker 1: goals and he has found that their particular growth oriented
Speaker 1: community growth, you know, like I'm growing my capacities are
Speaker 1: correlated with greater happiness, small being than goals having to
Speaker 1: do with money, pop reularity. Yes, kind of I would
Speaker 1: call insecurity related goals or versus growth goals. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to map this on to your framework a little bit.
Speaker 1: And so there is that empirical evidence suggesting that there
Speaker 1: is a link there between those kinds of goals and
Speaker 1: lo or well being kind of money in particular. But nevertheless,
Speaker 1: it is a good point because, like I mean, we're
Speaker 1: still talking about a large swath of the population. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you look at Wall Street. I know, maybe I'm stereotyping,
Speaker 1: but I mean I can't imagine this not being true
Speaker 1: if you look at Wall Street, right, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: almost like a truism. You know, people are money hungry. Well,
Speaker 1: although there I mean, so this is the thing that
Speaker 1: to me is so fascinating right about the meaning of work,
Speaker 1: is that there are people who work in finance, There
Speaker 1: are people who work in investment banking who are absolutely
Speaker 1: as you put it, sort of there for you know,
Speaker 1: it's a big old paycheck, and you know that that's
Speaker 1: the thing that's bringing them back every day. But there
Speaker 1: are also people we have found in work that we've
Speaker 1: done who do that same work and they see what
Speaker 1: it is that they're doing in far more sort of
Speaker 1: self transcendence, you know, social terms, right, that they are
Speaker 1: creating value in a way that that is the meaning
Speaker 1: of it to them, and that the pay and sort
Speaker 1: of the focus on the pay, you know, certainly is
Speaker 1: a part of it. It's not that that's not you know,
Speaker 1: on their radar at all, but that for them, this
Speaker 1: feels like it's the activity and what the activity produces
Speaker 1: in the world that is their primary focus, right. And
Speaker 1: just as there are people who do that work who
Speaker 1: they want to become managing director, and then after their
Speaker 1: managing director, they want to kind of keep moving up
Speaker 1: that ladder, you know, to have a shot at potentially,
Speaker 1: you know, running a firm someday, which is much more
Speaker 1: akin to a career orientation. So even in that kind
Speaker 1: of work, there are people who just you know, love
Speaker 1: the work for the sake of the work itself, sort
Speaker 1: of see it, you know, almost more akin to play
Speaker 1: that you know, in the way that they engage with it.
Speaker 1: And you know, people who head off and you know,
Speaker 1: see the work that they're doing, even though others may
Speaker 1: see it in other terms as sort of being far
Speaker 1: more pro social and about you know, doing this work
Speaker 1: in order to have a positive impact on the world
Speaker 1: in ways that again, you know, they look different from
Speaker 1: each other even though they're off doing the same job.
Speaker 1: What it is they actually believe they're doing and why
Speaker 1: differs for sure. And you've made that point in your
Speaker 1: papers that two people in the same exact job, you know,
Speaker 1: can differ widely in you know, their orientation even within
Speaker 1: a job. And so I think that's a great point.
Speaker 1: I wonder what Ken sheldonin Safe is here, because he's
Speaker 1: kind of made the argument, like the ideal happiness is
Speaker 1: doing growth oriented things for the right reasons. It's both
Speaker 1: having the growth orient goals and having autonomous motivation for
Speaker 1: its versus a controlled motivation for it. That both in combination,
Speaker 1: and then you get different gradations of all these things.
Speaker 1: So he's like, you know, in the middle might be
Speaker 1: like he might make the case, my gosh, it's funny,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to like reconstruct what someone might say and
Speaker 1: he might not say this at all. Okay, let me
Speaker 1: phrase it like this, because I don't want to get
Speaker 1: him in trouble if I'm wrong, but his research, I
Speaker 1: think suggests that like empirically, choosing jobs that have a
Speaker 1: focus on money, even if your motivation is growth oriented, yes,
Speaker 1: is not as conducive to well being as having a
Speaker 1: job that is day in and day out, the focus
Speaker 1: is on helping others and you have the autonous motivation.
Speaker 1: I think he would make that argument, and I would
Speaker 1: agree with him entirely. And this is you know, I've
Speaker 1: been doing some work with Barry Schwartz recently, kind of
Speaker 1: playing through some ideas. I know, I've been blessed with
Speaker 1: wonderful co authors and colleagues, and he's you know, primary
Speaker 1: sort of among that number. But you know, we've been
Speaker 1: working through some ideas having to do with the nature
Speaker 1: of motivation and so on, and thinking about this sort
Speaker 1: of builds off of ideas in a paper that we
Speaker 1: wrote a few years ago looking at the nature of
Speaker 1: the motivations of West Point cadets, of why it as
Speaker 1: they went to West Point in the first place, and
Speaker 1: were those motivations more internal to the activity of what
Speaker 1: it is that you're doing at West Point, which is
Speaker 1: becoming an army officer versus were they more instrumental motivations.
Speaker 1: And you know, what we find is essentially sort of
Speaker 1: long term field evidence for the over justification effect or
Speaker 1: the crowding out effect, to show that having different reasons
Speaker 1: for understanding why it is you're there and is it
Speaker 1: a focus on sort of an ultimate payoff to you,
Speaker 1: sort of career wise versus the actual focus of the
Speaker 1: thing itself and the service right that that represents being
Speaker 1: primary to you matters. It matters for who makes it
Speaker 1: through us point, It matters for how long people stay
Speaker 1: in the military and their career, and it matters for
Speaker 1: whether they're elite performers in the first five years of
Speaker 1: their mandatory military service following graduation. And I, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the points that Barry and I have made
Speaker 1: and continue to develop sort of out of that research
Speaker 1: is the idea that if you you know, you can
Speaker 1: imagine job contexts or organizational contexts in which people are
Speaker 1: confronted constantly by the organization or by their managers, you know,
Speaker 1: with scripts that essentially tell them that the reason that
Speaker 1: they're there, or the only reason that they're there is
Speaker 1: because they're you know, making money, and that this is
Speaker 1: about trying to get a bigger bonus, and it's about
Speaker 1: you know, what their raise is going to be, and
Speaker 1: you know how well the company is doing financially and
Speaker 1: so on, and that you know, you could take someone
Speaker 1: who has you know, say they're focused on growth and
Speaker 1: they chosen those goals autonomously. You can imagine sort of
Speaker 1: steeping someone in a context that's you know, drilling home
Speaker 1: this very different narrative over a long period of time
Speaker 1: could be really damaging. Yeah, and so you know, talking
Speaker 1: soul sucking, right, I mean, because we know right once
Speaker 1: people have this alternative script in their head that I'm
Speaker 1: doing this because you know, let's say, like I love
Speaker 1: my clients I very much. You know, I love sort
Speaker 1: of helping them and sort of you know, seeing them
Speaker 1: through the kinds of things that I'm working on them with.
Speaker 1: And you know, every time you finish working with a client,
Speaker 1: let's say you get a paycheck, right if the company
Speaker 1: is sort of over, the firm is sort of structuring things,
Speaker 1: so it's all about the paycheck, and we're going to
Speaker 1: do this with your client set so we can really
Speaker 1: maximize your own and if you hit this many clients,
Speaker 1: you're going to get this, you know, this much more
Speaker 1: money and so on and so forth, that it creates
Speaker 1: this alternate script, if you will, you know, we're understanding
Speaker 1: of why am I working so hard for my clients?
Speaker 1: Is it because I'm trying to hit you know, en
Speaker 1: plus two? So I get to this special sort of payoff.
Speaker 1: Even if it's not salient, it can be made salient
Speaker 1: by the context you're in. And I think that it's
Speaker 1: hard to imagine situations in which that's not damaging. I
Speaker 1: love it. And also I love that West Point paper.
Speaker 1: I was so excited when I read it. I shared
Speaker 1: it with my colleague Angela Duckworth and she yes, She's like,
Speaker 1: oh I was reviewing that. Yeah, and I loved it too.
Speaker 1: I hope you I hope I did you know that
Speaker 1: you knew? She was? Oh, I'm not. I was like,
Speaker 1: is that an ethical to say that on the Psychology podcast?
Speaker 1: But she's like, oh, yeah, I loved it. It revealed
Speaker 1: that to me. Well, it's all good. Yeah, we're both
Speaker 1: huge fans of that paper. Because you know, Angela, I
Speaker 1: have a lot of these discussions about how people take
Speaker 1: her concept of grid and then only focus on the
Speaker 1: perseverance part. But leave out the passion part, and that's problematic,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, the West Point cadets that are
Speaker 1: doing the best are those that have that combination of
Speaker 1: both exactly exactly. But also another thing I really really
Speaker 1: liked about your paper was how you distinguish between consequences
Speaker 1: and motives. I mean, that's what you were just basically
Speaker 1: talking about, was that distinction. But there's a quote I
Speaker 1: actually pulled out from that paper, which I love. I
Speaker 1: love the paper so much that I but I'm going
Speaker 1: to put out my favorite quote, favorit quot from the
Speaker 1: paper because it segues nicely into the job crafting topic
Speaker 1: I want to talk about. So, because instrumental consequences cannot
Speaker 1: be eliminated from human affairs, what the results suggest is
Speaker 1: that attention should be paid to motives in addition to consequences,
Speaker 1: and that efforts be made to structure activities so that
Speaker 1: some consequences do not become motives. So I think that, yes,
Speaker 1: and correct me I'm wrong, But it seems like a
Speaker 1: nice segue into talking about job crafting, because first of all,
Speaker 1: could you define job crafting? And then maybe how can managers,
Speaker 1: not just employees themselves do but how can managers kind
Speaker 1: of help empower the employees to craft the job so
Speaker 1: they structure actively, so even if they're working in banking.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be on record here saying, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't be a record. You're saying it's bad banking,
Speaker 1: and I am kind of saying I'm not. It's not
Speaker 1: that I'm saying that, but I am kind of saying that.
Speaker 1: But I'm saying, you know, I'm agreeing with you in
Speaker 1: the sense that no matter what, the job is great
Speaker 1: because you could have in the nursing profession, you could
Speaker 1: have a terrible environment, you know, like that's not conducing.
Speaker 1: So really, I think, you know, we are talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, collapsing over professions. You know, I do think
Speaker 1: there are professional differences. I did make that point already,
Speaker 1: but I'm saying collapsing over that. There's a higher arching
Speaker 1: point here, right, Yeah, Yeah, I think so, And I think,
Speaker 1: you know, so to define job crafting, you know, the way.
Speaker 1: So this is work that I've done with Jane Dutton
Speaker 1: and later I love Jane Dutton so much me too.
Speaker 1: She's she's absolutely she's such a good human being. Yes,
Speaker 1: she's I think a role model to us all and
Speaker 1: so work that I did with her, and then work
Speaker 1: you know for the work that following up on that
Speaker 1: with Justin Berg, who's done some really great work in
Speaker 1: the awesome to hes right he was, he was, And
Speaker 1: then the work that we've gone with together with Adam
Speaker 1: that we've done on job crafting. You know that this is,
Speaker 1: you know, to me, something that is possible sort of
Speaker 1: in all kinds of work. And what it is is
Speaker 1: people's you know, employees sort of acts to change the
Speaker 1: task or relational or cognitive boundaries of their jobs in
Speaker 1: ways that for them sort of change the meaning of
Speaker 1: the work they're doing and their identity in that work.
Speaker 1: And so that sounds sort of very abstract, but basically
Speaker 1: what I mean by it is, you know, it's tweaking
Speaker 1: what it is that you're actually doing in the job
Speaker 1: from a task standpoint. So this can be you know,
Speaker 1: adding new tasks into the work, stripping other tasks out,
Speaker 1: spending more time or less time on various things that
Speaker 1: are part of the job, or changing how it is
Speaker 1: that you're engaging in those tasks. And likewise, with relationships,
Speaker 1: it could be seeking out more interaction with people in
Speaker 1: the whatever department, and fewer interactions with people from say
Speaker 1: a department that you know isn't as reinforcing of the
Speaker 1: kind of meaning that you want to make of the
Speaker 1: work that you're doing, and you know, and or you know,
Speaker 1: stripping out or building in new or old relationships entirely.
Speaker 1: And so that's the second form, and the third form,
Speaker 1: which sounds more abstract because it's cognitive crafting, is changing
Speaker 1: how it is that you think about the work that
Speaker 1: you're doing from the point of view of, you know,
Speaker 1: is this a collection of tasks or is this somehow
Speaker 1: an integrated whole in a way that you hadn't necessarily identified,
Speaker 1: you know before, Right, So you could think of someone
Speaker 1: who thinks of their job as I come in and
Speaker 1: I teach three classes, and I have this many meetings
Speaker 1: and then I have to do office hours and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth, versus someone who comes in and
Speaker 1: thinks about, you know, I'm here to facilitate the learning
Speaker 1: journey of all of my students in any way that
Speaker 1: I can. And both people are essentially doing the same thing.
Speaker 1: And you know where this moves beyond I would say
Speaker 1: sort of tricks of the mind, or you know, sort
Speaker 1: of saying like well, you know, one is kind of
Speaker 1: just telling themselves something different, right, even though they're doing
Speaker 1: the same thing. Is that our work suggest they're actually
Speaker 1: they end up doing different things. You end up focusing
Speaker 1: on different things. You end up shaping that job in
Speaker 1: different ways, not just in your head and sort of
Speaker 1: how it does you think about it, but what it
Speaker 1: is you're actually doing on the ground. And it's exciting
Speaker 1: because you know, people do this in jobs even where
Speaker 1: it's expressly forbidden and they're not allowed to deviate sort
Speaker 1: of from their job descriptions, they find ways to fly
Speaker 1: under the radar and do it anyway. So I think
Speaker 1: there's something fundamentally human about this. But you can think
Speaker 1: about managers being in a position to not mandate crafting,
Speaker 1: right and not like build it into Okay, well are
Speaker 1: the things that you want to craft in, we're going
Speaker 1: to make part of your developmental plan, and we're going
Speaker 1: to measure you against those objectives next year and so on. Right,
Speaker 1: there's very little that's autonomous in some sense in that
Speaker 1: you know, it becomes sort of part of the job
Speaker 1: description as opposed to helping employees think through how could
Speaker 1: we support you to make this job more your own
Speaker 1: right and while you know, meeting the expectations and the
Speaker 1: needs of the organization. So I also want to be careful.
Speaker 1: It can be easy to fall off the other side
Speaker 1: of the balance beam and think that what we're talking
Speaker 1: about with job crafting is people just having a free
Speaker 1: for all work and doing whatever that they want, you know,
Speaker 1: which isn't what we exactly right, Like you have somebody
Speaker 1: kind of playing the piano in the in a corner
Speaker 1: and somebody else, you know, teaching people how to play Texas,
Speaker 1: hold them or something like this that you know int
Speaker 1: have done. There much more darker than that now, I'm
Speaker 1: curious as to what they would be, you know. The
Speaker 1: but this idea that you know, people know what it
Speaker 1: is that they're responsible to the organization for right, and
Speaker 1: within that you know that this is what the organization
Speaker 1: needs for me, this is what I'm being paid for.
Speaker 1: Within that, I think there are often more degrees of
Speaker 1: freedom than we realize in how it does we do
Speaker 1: that or what it does we emphasize in how we
Speaker 1: do that in ways that have two sort of effects. One,
Speaker 1: I think it brings people face to face with the
Speaker 1: fact that they have agency in their working lives. Which
Speaker 1: you know is often I think a challenge for people
Speaker 1: and also that they can use that agency in ways
Speaker 1: that shape the meaning of what it is that they're
Speaker 1: doing toward you know, something that is potentially more optimal
Speaker 1: for them. Okay, good, and not just optimal for them,
Speaker 1: but also potentially optimal for everyone. You have this quote,
Speaker 1: might an active this is a question. Quote might an
Speaker 1: active job crafter spark positive, proactive action among other employees?
Speaker 1: I love that. I love that question. Have you answered
Speaker 1: that question yet? So, you know, is crafting contagious? I'm
Speaker 1: flipping in my head. I just wanted a review with you,
Speaker 1: Nicho recently of sort of the state of So this
Speaker 1: has sort of become a literature, which is both thrilling
Speaker 1: and there's something kind of gobsmacking about that when that happens.
Speaker 1: So there are really interesting studies that are being done
Speaker 1: looking at network effects and sort of relational effects of
Speaker 1: job crafting. But that's more about what is true of
Speaker 1: the jobs of the people around you, and in what
Speaker 1: ways would the structure of those jobs around you either
Speaker 1: constrain or enable the kind of crafting that you're doing.
Speaker 1: But I'm not and this is where I worry about
Speaker 1: I don't trust my memory all the time time sort
Speaker 1: of for things like this, But I don't know, but
Speaker 1: it's possible, it's possible someone's done it. But I you know,
Speaker 1: I was just going to say it's possible that they
Speaker 1: do spark, but that the answer that question is yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I'm just trying to think about have I seen
Speaker 1: a working paper or a recent paper that looks at
Speaker 1: that I would think yes, I mean I would think that,
Speaker 1: you know, particularly from the point of view of just
Speaker 1: social learning, right and seeing oh, this is possible and wow,
Speaker 1: you know, this person sort of seems maybe more you know,
Speaker 1: in tune with the work that they're doing, that you
Speaker 1: could imagine this moop spreading around. Let's the alternative hypothesis
Speaker 1: that people have resentment for people like that. They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: who does Jimmy think he is to job craft himself? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so have resentment, you know, worry that it's deviance in
Speaker 1: a negative sense, you know. Feel So One of the
Speaker 1: really to me sort of very interesting factors that were
Speaker 1: variables related to job crafting is interdependence. Right, So if
Speaker 1: there's someone who's job crafting who's quite interdependent with you,
Speaker 1: does it kind of almost make your life worse in
Speaker 1: that you now have to craft to you know, adapt
Speaker 1: to their crafting. But your crafting is not your own
Speaker 1: craft Your crafting is reactive to deal with what it
Speaker 1: is that this person you know has decided in how
Speaker 1: it is they're going to do their work. So you
Speaker 1: could imagine too, you know, the possibility that this could
Speaker 1: be quite inconvenient for people who work around you if
Speaker 1: you're interdependent. Although you know, I think Carrie Leanne at
Speaker 1: the University of Pittsburgh and her co authors have done
Speaker 1: studies looking at this was in education, people doing crafting
Speaker 1: collectively sort of in teams quite effectively, and in fact,
Speaker 1: you know, some of the effects they find are stronger
Speaker 1: for people who craft in that way, like where it's
Speaker 1: almost like a group level process, then you know, do
Speaker 1: it sort of individually. I want to talk about some
Speaker 1: of your more recent work on job crafting and all
Speaker 1: those things in kind of like non traditional I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think of the best word to describe non traditional
Speaker 1: sort of So, what is like virtual work? A lot
Speaker 1: of people, you know, it's becoming big now, a lot
Speaker 1: of entrepreneurs or you can work from home, right, So
Speaker 1: what is the impact of virtual work on job crafting.
Speaker 1: So this is a great question. So I have data.
Speaker 1: So this is a paper that I need to add
Speaker 1: more data too, because what we have at this point
Speaker 1: is a really interesting pattern that we've presented at conferences
Speaker 1: and so on. But in data that I collected with
Speaker 1: Caroline Bartel and Botia Weisenfeld, we look at people who
Speaker 1: people's job crafting as a function of sort of the
Speaker 1: structural variable of actually two structural variables. One are you
Speaker 1: a manager or are you a non manager as a
Speaker 1: way of thinking about the kinds of power and control
Speaker 1: that people might have over their ability right to shape
Speaker 1: their jobs in ways that they might want. And then
Speaker 1: we also look at do you work virtually or not? Right, So,
Speaker 1: in organizations where there's more of a range than ever
Speaker 1: I would think in how much sort of virtual work
Speaker 1: is being deployed where people are either working from home
Speaker 1: or from drop in centers or you know, what have you.
Speaker 1: What we find is that managers craft just as much
Speaker 1: whether they are working primarily on site or off site.
Speaker 1: Right that being more or less virtual doesn't really make
Speaker 1: a difference in how much managers are crafting, which might
Speaker 1: say something about how you know the power or the
Speaker 1: autonomy that you have to craft matters sort of quite
Speaker 1: a bit. What we find though, is that for employees
Speaker 1: who are non managerial, the more virtual they are, the
Speaker 1: more they craft. They look more like managers when they
Speaker 1: are engaging in more virtual work. And the people who
Speaker 1: craft the least are the non managerial employees who work
Speaker 1: on site in the organization who don't do virtual work.
Speaker 1: And so it's an interesting sort of twist on understanding,
Speaker 1: you know, how structural variables might end up, you know,
Speaker 1: unleashing or enabling people to you know, engage in or
Speaker 1: enact their work in different ways. That is really cool.
Speaker 1: Did you just wake up one morning you're like, I
Speaker 1: want to study that topic, like how they be get
Speaker 1: to that. So, you know, in your very kind introduction
Speaker 1: of me, you know, you mentioned how I'm interested in
Speaker 1: how people derive meeting from their work and in particular
Speaker 1: how they do that in difficult contexts. And so this
Speaker 1: study sort of came out of an opportunity with actually
Speaker 1: one of my very best friends in the world from
Speaker 1: grad school who had gone into an organization as opposed
Speaker 1: to into academia, and we were trying to figure out,
Speaker 1: you know, a project that we could do together, but
Speaker 1: our research interests were in very different areas, and when
Speaker 1: it occurred to me that they were really you know,
Speaker 1: interested in questions of people who are working virtually in
Speaker 1: that organization, For me, that really just stood out as
Speaker 1: a context in which the way in which people sort
Speaker 1: of make meaning of the work that they do might
Speaker 1: be particularly difficult or challenging because in some sense, like
Speaker 1: the organization, though it's there, you know, the physical manifestation
Speaker 1: of that organization is not. And so what's the impact
Speaker 1: of that on how people think about, or enact or
Speaker 1: try to bring meaning sort of into their work. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, crafting is a way that people do. That
Speaker 1: became an interesting sort of vehicle right through which to
Speaker 1: look at that. And so it was an opportunity to
Speaker 1: look at a contextual variable that's sort of structural in
Speaker 1: a sense around how people do their work that I
Speaker 1: thought sort of might you know, might create sort of
Speaker 1: some challenge for people that I wanted to do a
Speaker 1: better job of understanding. Yeah, that seems like a natural transition,
Speaker 1: so to speak, which actually is segue into my nerdor court,
Speaker 1: which is how are meaning shape job transitions? You know,
Speaker 1: like like are our careers versus calling orientations, how does
Speaker 1: that shape our job transitions? That it's a great question.
Speaker 1: So that this, you know, again sort of is a
Speaker 1: context where you know, people are you know, people go
Speaker 1: through depending on what statistics you subscribe to and believe
Speaker 1: people will go through anything from like you know, nine
Speaker 1: to eleven, you know, job changes in their career. And
Speaker 1: again obviously there are huge changes across you know, different
Speaker 1: occupations and parts of the economy and so on. But
Speaker 1: again in earlier work that I had done, and this
Speaker 1: is work that's sort of morphed sort of since that
Speaker 1: time into a different focus looking at employment transitions, We've
Speaker 1: been interested in thinking about how does the kind of
Speaker 1: meaning people make of the work they usually do change
Speaker 1: what it means to transition between jobs. And so you know,
Speaker 1: you could imagine for someone who sees the work that
Speaker 1: they do primarily as a job, where it's about, you know,
Speaker 1: an economic exchange with an organization to make an income
Speaker 1: to support your life outside of work. For someone in
Speaker 1: that position, you know, leaving a job or losing a job,
Speaker 1: you know, the challenge that that represents to you is
Speaker 1: replacing an income stream primarily right versus let's say, let's
Speaker 1: contrast that, right with someone who sees the work that
Speaker 1: they do as a calling. A decision to leave a
Speaker 1: job or or you know, being let go from a
Speaker 1: job presents a very different kind of challenge where it's
Speaker 1: not just that you need to you know, people with
Speaker 1: callings need to eat too, right, they need to replace
Speaker 1: an income stream. But even more salient to them, I
Speaker 1: would argue, is the idea that they need to find
Speaker 1: work that enables them to enact the you know, the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that they've identified, you know, is feeding
Speaker 1: sort of their sense of calling. Right. So you know,
Speaker 1: that could be as specific as you know, I work
Speaker 1: on this particular kind of cancer drug and that's you know,
Speaker 1: my life, or it could be something even more general,
Speaker 1: like my calling is to teach, and so you know,
Speaker 1: there's some flexibility in that in terms of how that
Speaker 1: happens or with what audience or you know, what have you.
Speaker 1: But that it matters very much what the content of
Speaker 1: the work is in ways that it wouldn't necessarily for
Speaker 1: people who see their work as well. See I would
Speaker 1: say that's selfish of them. And when I say that,
Speaker 1: I mean that in a good way. See, there's healthy selfishness.
Speaker 1: That's what these people have, you know, like their healthy
Speaker 1: selfishness is what automatically benefits the world, is what Masaw
Speaker 1: would say, and what I this is why again this
Speaker 1: beyond the self idea as well as this notion that
Speaker 1: selfishness is always bad is also incorrect, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: because one could say that's pretty selfish of them meant
Speaker 1: to do that. They're like, no, I'm not gonna do
Speaker 1: that job because it's not calling me, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like no selfishness. But it's a good form.
Speaker 1: It's a good form. It's a good form of selfishness,
Speaker 1: a good form. It's a good form. I absolutely agree.
Speaker 1: And so what we find is, you know that people,
Speaker 1: the amount of time it takes people to find a job,
Speaker 1: the kinds of jobs they find sort of you know,
Speaker 1: vary by these orientations in ways that that would make
Speaker 1: sense sort of out of these arguments, which is, you know, again,
Speaker 1: it's fun. I enjoy very much sort of asking questions about, Okay,
Speaker 1: where should these things matter, you know, and sometimes we
Speaker 1: have a good of how they might and other times
Speaker 1: it's really you know, less clear to then go investigate
Speaker 1: and learn more about you know, how do these different
Speaker 1: meanings of work end up having an impact in people's
Speaker 1: lives beyond what we've understood previously. Yeah, the way you've
Speaker 1: talked about that is sometimes you say this is an
Speaker 1: alternative framework to how it's traditionally been studied in literature. This,
Speaker 1: you know, how dare you look at the interaction between
Speaker 1: self and world? Right? Yes, and relationships between contingent variables.
Speaker 1: So that's very cool. I have one last question on
Speaker 1: respective of your time today, but I found this another
Speaker 1: very interesting aspect of your more recent research, and that's
Speaker 1: occupational regret and it's consequences for work in life. A
Speaker 1: lot of us, may you know, occupation regret I feel
Speaker 1: like might be very prevalent, and maybe it's a matter
Speaker 1: of framing, cognitive framing. What do you think it could be?
Speaker 1: I mean, I possibly, Yeah, I mean I think that.
Speaker 1: So this paper, it's funny. One of my co authors
Speaker 1: on this paper is Jennifer Toasty Karas. We were just
Speaker 1: writing emailing yesterday about this paper because this is the
Speaker 1: paper that the little engine that could in that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's you know one of the some of the papers
Speaker 1: I'm proud of STUF are ones that I worked on
Speaker 1: for you know, it feel like lifetimes, and this is
Speaker 1: certainly one of them, because we keep sort of adding
Speaker 1: studies to this paper, and so the paper's getting better
Speaker 1: all the time, and you know, someday before I retire,
Speaker 1: it will be published and come out that you know,
Speaker 1: in the paper we're very interested in this question of
Speaker 1: and actually, you know, to be honest, the impetus for
Speaker 1: this paper goes all the way back to when I
Speaker 1: was an undergrad at Penn working with Paul and Rick
Speaker 1: and Barry on this paper that became the Jobs, Careers
Speaker 1: and Collinges paper. Because one of the items in the
Speaker 1: scale that we did, the measure that we developed, was
Speaker 1: something like, if I had it to do over again,
Speaker 1: I would choose my current work life again or I
Speaker 1: would chose my current work again. And for me, what
Speaker 1: was odd about that item and sort of really problematic,
Speaker 1: though you know, all of this is a negotiation and
Speaker 1: we decided to include it and so on and it
Speaker 1: you know, it gets nice variants and stuff, is that
Speaker 1: it doesn't make sense as an item if you never
Speaker 1: chose what you were doing in the first place. And
Speaker 1: I felt like, well, there are whole you know, enormous right,
Speaker 1: numbers of people who land in the work that they're
Speaker 1: doing not because they chose it, but because this was
Speaker 1: they had to do something, this was available, and so
Speaker 1: they did it. And so yes, they chose it, meaning
Speaker 1: you know, no one sort of forced them to fill
Speaker 1: out in the application or to interview for the job.
Speaker 1: They chose it, but they don't, you know, they don't
Speaker 1: feel like it was a free choice. They felt like
Speaker 1: they landed there right out of you know, circumstance or
Speaker 1: out of others pressure or you know, something like this.
Speaker 1: And so that got me interested in thinking about, well,
Speaker 1: what about those people, because that item doesn't really speak
Speaker 1: for them or speak to them, And how do we
Speaker 1: understand people who you know, maybe went into an occupation
Speaker 1: back when there were fewer options available to them, And
Speaker 1: might that shape you know, whether they see their work
Speaker 1: as a job or a career or a calling and
Speaker 1: you know, I what the ideal thing would be. And
Speaker 1: my goodness, from that amount of time ago to now,
Speaker 1: I could have done the prospective longitudinal study involved people
Speaker 1: for twenty years. Is what I first sort of was
Speaker 1: interested in doing is sort of getting a sense of
Speaker 1: what was their sense of how much choice they had
Speaker 1: in entering this occupation and you know how much agency
Speaker 1: they had in that choice, you know, to relate that
Speaker 1: to how do they see the meaning of that work.
Speaker 1: And it's been a really interesting journey sort of with
Speaker 1: this paper because we find that you know, certainly the
Speaker 1: sense that you know, this isn't this isn't the thing
Speaker 1: that you would have done, you know, had you had
Speaker 1: you know, your druthers or more choice available to you,
Speaker 1: that this really does have a big relationship with sort
Speaker 1: of see the work that you're doing. So a relationship
Speaker 1: between the sense of occupational regret and you know, and
Speaker 1: how much choice you felt like you really had in
Speaker 1: entering that occupation, and that this matters for people's well being.
Speaker 1: It matters for their job satisfaction and their life satisfaction,
Speaker 1: It matters for how much work, you know, how many
Speaker 1: days of work they miss. Like there are a lot
Speaker 1: of interesting mediating relationships in this data to suggest that,
Speaker 1: you know, occupational regret is pretty consequential, right if if
Speaker 1: you're getting up every day, you know, setting your alarm
Speaker 1: and getting up every day and heading off to a job,
Speaker 1: that you would undo this if you could, you know,
Speaker 1: but you haven't, or you can't. You know, we know
Speaker 1: from the broader regret literature that these kinds of things
Speaker 1: can be profound. And you know, given that you know,
Speaker 1: educational regrets are among you know, work related regrets are
Speaker 1: quite high up in people's sort of life regret lists,
Speaker 1: but some are educational regrets. And I would argue that
Speaker 1: the two are probably related, right that if you had
Speaker 1: to stop your education, or didn't have access to education,
Speaker 1: or you know, went to study the wrong thing, you
Speaker 1: may regret like, wow, I really shouldn't have been I
Speaker 1: don't know, a mime major not to pick on mimes,
Speaker 1: and now I'm a mime and like, so I regret
Speaker 1: you know that I study this, and I regret that
Speaker 1: I entered into this occupation. This is to your point,
Speaker 1: I think this may be more common than we think,
Speaker 1: and I think it's worth again sort of understanding what
Speaker 1: the shape of it is. Uh, and it's affects in
Speaker 1: people's lives for sure. I don't know how many people
Speaker 1: just fall into becoming a mind major, though. I yeah,
Speaker 1: I was trying to pick something that would be so
Speaker 1: rare that it you know, I well, my parents the
Speaker 1: other day what I have this actually had this because
Speaker 1: my parents. They're like, was it my foot dock the
Speaker 1: other day? By blah, I was like, what makes someone
Speaker 1: become a foot doctor? Like if you're calling, I'm not
Speaker 1: degrading the foot doctors. They're sort of a very important function.
Speaker 1: But I think that's sort of the point is like
Speaker 1: they sort of see like, you know, I'm a doctor,
Speaker 1: you know, like let me just pick something that will
Speaker 1: serve a porn function, Like, I mean, what other deep
Speaker 1: reason other than you know I anyway, I don't want
Speaker 1: to get into that too much. Yeah, but there are
Speaker 1: people who are fascinated by the foot. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like, you know, everything we do in our
Speaker 1: locomotion on a daily basis comes down to the foot. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So can you know they exist, you know, in between
Speaker 1: sort of people and the earth in a way that's
Speaker 1: transformed like you could really you know, having surveyed and
Speaker 1: interviewed a lot of people who see lots of different
Speaker 1: kinds of work as a calling, you know, it's fascinating
Speaker 1: to see and it's so compelling right when they articulate,
Speaker 1: when is it about this that's a calling? These things
Speaker 1: are pretty powerful, really really powerful. I'm going to wrap
Speaker 1: up today with a quote from individual. I won't say
Speaker 1: what their profession is till I'm done. I don't see
Speaker 1: myself ever stopping working completely. I like it too much.
Speaker 1: It's very satisfy. I mean, this is an art form
Speaker 1: for one thing. It's a tremendous art I did a
Speaker 1: duck for a guy the other day, and when he
Speaker 1: came and picked it up, he almost started crying because
Speaker 1: it looks so nice. He was just so happy. And
Speaker 1: that makes me feel good that he thought I'd done
Speaker 1: a great job. Self satisfaction is a big deal in
Speaker 1: any job. It's a big deal in life. And this
Speaker 1: is spoken by a taxidermist. Yes I love that quote. Yes,
Speaker 1: I love it too. And you contracted that with a
Speaker 1: corporate securities lawyer who didn't need to do do much of
Speaker 1: a calling for that job. Anyway, I won't read that
Speaker 1: quote anyway. Thank you. Thank you so much for chagging
Speaker 1: me today. I'm a great admirer of your work. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much. Likewise, and I really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me, Scott. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: the Psychology podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to react in some way to something you heard.
Speaker 1: I encourage you to join in the discussion at thus
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