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470 Journal of Career Development 37(1) Self-realization varied according to acculturation, with the highly acculturated valuing self-realization more than the less acculturated students. Similarly, Tang, Fouad, and Smith (1999) found that acculturation is related to how stererotypical Asian American college students’ expected career choices were; students with higher acculturation evidenced less traditional career interests and choices. The above examples highlight the fact that the level of acculturation is an important cultural variable to consider when understanding the career psychology of Asian Americans. Research suggests that Asian Americans can be differentiated along this acculturation continuum, whereby, highly acculturated Asian Americans can be seen as being similar to their Eurocentric coworkers and thus, may experience less adjustment and performance problems in their work organizations, whereas, low acculturated Asian Americans can be viewed as being less similar to White European Americans and thus, may have a harder time adjusting to the values posed by their Eurocentric work environment. It will be important to investigate and consider the extent to which acculturation serves as a significant moderating/mediating variable for the career and vocational behaviors of Asian Americans. Leong and Chou (1994) offer us a good starting point in understanding the role that acculturation plays in the vocational behaviors of Asian Americans, but additional and more in-depth research directions need to be taken. For example, the differential validity of the various acculturation and ethnic identity measures that have been developed for use with Asian Americans can be further investigated. In addition, recent evidence demonstrates that a multidimensional bilinear model of acculturation, which treats acculturation to dominant culture and enculturation to ethnic culture as orthogonal and which considers values and behaviors separately, provides the best fit to data from Asian American populations (Miller, 2007). Such evidence raises questions about whether acculturation in terms of values, behaviors, or both may be most related to career-related variables among Asian Americans. Additional research is also needed on how acculturation interacts with other identities (e.g., sexual orientation) in influencing vocational behavior among Asian Americans. For example, we know that many gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) adults experience and/or fear discrimination in the workplace (Croteau, 1996) and that work attitudes including job satisfaction are related to how ‘‘out’’ GLB adults are at work (Day & Schoenrade, 1997). Integrating such findings with the framework of Leong and Chou suggests that more highly acculturated LGB Asian Americans may experience fewer work adjustment problems and more positive work attitudes than less acculturated LGB Asian Americans. However, no research to date has explored such questions about the interaction of acculturation and identities such as sexual orientation. Cultural Conception of Career Problems The second dimension of the cultural formulations approach as applied to vocational counseling is the cultural conception of the career problems. According to 470 Downloaded from http://jcd.sagepub.com at MICHIGAN STATE UNIV LIBRARIES on May 19, 2010
Leong et al. 471 Lewis-Fernandez and Diaz (2002), this dimension includes a consideration of how clients understand the causes of their concerns and how those concerns are expressed within their cultural context. A vocational counselor needs to consider what clients’ vocational difficulties mean to them rather than automatically imposing his or her conception of the problem on the client. Because the idea of the self is so salient in many vocational theories (e.g., the importance of choosing a career that implements the client’s self-concept), having a culturally appropriate understanding of the self is especially important for vocational counselors. Individuals have multiple selves, whose specific content and behavior manifestations are determined by culture (Heine, 2001; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Singelis, 1994; Triandis, 1989). These multiple selves can be conceptualized in various ways depending on the different influences of culture. For instance, Triandis (1989) distinguished between the private (internal), public (others) and collective (members of a specific group) self as mechanisms that influence beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. Triandis argues that generally individuals comprise all three types of self, but culture will determine which self will manifest at the forefront to influence cognition, affect, and motivation. Culture will also determine the content of the salient self. Applying Triandis’s work to the domain of career problems, then, culture influences the extent to which the public, private, or collective self is most salient in influencing clients’ goals for and their thoughts and feelings about careers, as well as influencing the specific characteristics an individual will develop to deal with career problems (e.g., obedience and conformity vs. autonomy and independence). The self can also be thought of as manifesting in terms of past, current, and future possible selves (Markus & Nurius, 1986; Oyserman & Markus, 1993). These selves comprise different roles, identities, or attributes; in the context of career counseling, possible future selves are particularly relevant. These future selves can be of two kinds: either positive (i.e., hoped-for selves), which may lead to approach motivation to attain specific goals, or negative (i.e., feared selves; Markus & Nurius, 1986), which may lead to avoidance motivation to avoiding specific outcomes. Culture influences the development of clients’ future possible selves through mechanisms such as the role models available to an individual, barriers that prevent an individual from considering certain career goals, and messages about the culture person fit of various career paths. For example, cultural messages about which occupations are most appropriate for Asian Americans or in which they are likely to find the most success may make some future selves (e.g., doctor, engineer) seem more possible than others (e.g., actor, nurse) for many Asian Americans. Career counselors need to account for cultural variables and place value on concepts other than an independent or private self-concept. The sections above have discussed the importance of how culture influences self-concept, so for a career theorist to ignore cultural factors by restricting career development solely to attaining personal interests and implementing personal values is not only inaccurate but potentially dangerous for those individuals who come from a collectivistic cultural framework where the focus is on an interdependent self-construal. In these cases, Downloaded from http://jcd.sagepub.com at MICHIGAN STATE UNIV LIBRARIES on May 19, 2010 471
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