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472 Journal of Career Development 37(1) behaviors are more likely to be driven by the public or collective self rather than the private self. Personal concerns such as happiness, values, and interests become less salient with individuals who possess collectivistic selves, because these individuals are more often driven by questions such as, ‘‘What does my family value? How can I avoid bringing shame to my group? What are their interests?’’ Indeed, the literature has accumulated evidence that interdependent individuals are more likely to make career decisions that are influenced by others. For example, Tang et al. (1999) showed that family involvement, but not personal interests, was a strong predictor of career choice interests in an Asian American sample. Similarly, Flores and O’Brien (2002) have demonstrated that family support, but not personal interests, was a strong predictor of career choice prestige in a sample of Mexican American high-school girls. A traditional understanding of career theories has been that individuals make the ‘‘best’’ career choices when they implement their individual self-concept (e.g., Super, 1990) or match their personal interests to a career (e.g., Holland, 1996). Such an approach has been thought to be inappropriate for more interdependent Asian Americans for whom choosing a career based on family influences is more likely (e.g., Hardin, Leong, & Osipow, 2001; Leong & Chou, 1994; Leong & Hardin, 2002; Leong & Serafica, 1995). Although such interdependent motivations in career decision making have in the past been interpreted as representing inappropriate levels of dependence in career decision making, more recent work has indicated that Asian Americans may simply use a different process to arrive at equally ‘‘good’’ career decisions. For example, although early studies found that Asian Americans exhibited lower career maturity than European Americans (Leong, 1991; Luzzo, 1992), the two groups did not differ in terms of vocational identity (Leong, 1991) or their career decision-making skills (Luzzo, 1992). Hardin et al. (2001) demonstrated that the measure of career maturity used in these studies confounded culturally appropriate interdependence with career-immature dependence. Part of the problem has been a failure to fully understand the diversity in culturally based self-concepts. As Leong et al. (2007) argued, researchers and clinicians have tended to assume that career decisions based on the interests of family members or important others are made at the expense of the individual’s own interests. This logic, however, assumes that one’s own interests are necessarily different from those of important others. Although this may well be true for those with an independent self, it is much less likely to be true for those with an interdependent self. Indeed, Hardin and her colleagues have argued recently that when interdependent individuals choose careers that are consistent with their family’s interests and values, they are indeed implementing their self-concept (Hardin, 2007, 2008; Robitschek & Ashton, 2007, 2008). Cultural Context of the Psychosocial Environment The third dimension of the cultural formulations approach is Cultural Factors Related to Psychosocial Environment and Levels of Functioning, or more simply, 472 Downloaded from http://jcd.sagepub.com at MICHIGAN STATE UNIV LIBRARIES on May 19, 2010
Leong et al. 473 the self in cultural context (Leong et al., 2007). According to Lewis-Fernandez and Diaz (2002), this dimension includes a consideration of how culture affects a client’s perception of stressors and supports in the environment. This means that vocational counselors need to consider the cultural context in which their client’s vocational difficulties have arisen. When considering the vocational development of Asian Americans, an obvious culturally based stressor is the experience of real and perceived barriers to choosing and implementing a career. Largely owing to the persistence of the model minority stereotype, which portrays Asian Americans as academically and financially successful, vocational counselors may forget that Asian Americans do in fact face significant career barriers. The model minority stereotype itself can serve as a career barrier by contributing to occupational stereotyping; an early study, for example, found that European American college students perceived Asian Americans as significantly less likely to succeed in sales and significantly more likely to succeed in computer science, mathematics, or engineering than European Americans (Leong & Hayes, 1990). Sue and Okazaki (1990) argued that many Asian Americans are well aware of these stereotypes and therefore perceive that such math science-dependent careers are more accessible, whereas careers that rely on more social and enterprising skills (such as sales or broadcasting) are likely to be more closed to Asian Americans. Given that the careers that are perceived as more open to Asian Americans are those that are dependent on higher education, Sue and Okazaki argued that education is thus relatively more functional for Asian Americans than for members of other groups. Vocational counselors need to explore the extent to which the model minority stereotype has influenced the career-related difficulties with which their Asian American clients present. For example, has the client received messages that mathematics and science related careers are more appropriate for him or her because he or she is Asian American? Has the client internalized the model minority stereotype to such an extent that he or she perceives his or her lack of interest or aptitude in math as a personal failure (cf. Lee, 1994)? The overarching question is the extent to which external or internalized messages consistent with the model minority stereotype have affected the client’s occupational self-concept and restricted the possible selves (Markus & Nurius, 1986; Oyserman & Markus, 1993) the client perceives. The model minority stereotype is likely to influence the vocational self-concepts of Asian Americans broadly. Leong and Chou (1994) argued convincingly that less acculturated Asian Americans would be more likely to experience occupational stereotyping, in part because they may be more susceptible to stereotyping by the dominant culture (cf. Leong & Hayes, 1990); in other words, more traditional Asian Americans may experience more external barriers to what are perceived as nontraditional Asian American careers. In addition, to the extent that less acculturated Asian Americans have less contact with the dominant culture, they may be exposed to fewer role models in other careers. Downloaded from http://jcd.sagepub.com at MICHIGAN STATE UNIV LIBRARIES on May 19, 2010 473
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