In addition to the specific results of each of the four studies (as presented in chapters 2–5), some general insights are gained in this dissertation. First, the dissertation finds support for the role of person-environment fit with respect to personality in the transition from the education system to the labor market: Specific personality-related characteristics are associated with specific educational and occupational environments (fields of study, professions, and sectors of employment), which points to congruence (similarity) between individuals and their environments (opportunities, demands, fellow students, and col-leagues).
Among university students, field of study is significantly associated with specific so-cial preferences (see chapter 2), which suggests mutual selection and (possible) adapta-tion of person and environment with regard to motives. Although business/economics students make experimental choices with higher self-interest, they exhibit significantly less positional preferences (preferences concerning the relative position in comparison to others) than students with another major, on average. This preference for more efficient choices (increasing the total payoff of the group) versus relative and equity concerns fits the usual fundaments of the curriculum in this field of study.
Person-environment fit also becomes evident in the result that individuals with higher civic virtue are more probable to be employed in a sector that is directly concerned with serving the society (the public sector), when holding other motives (altruism, risk aver-sion, and laziness, and financial motivation) constant (see chapter 3). The positive asso-ciation between civic virtue and public versus private sector employment holds within different branches (e.g., health and social care, service, and – with a weak effect – educa-tion) and is found to be due to (self-) selection (before the start of the career and in the form of sector changes during the career).
The dissertation then goes beyond the transition to sectors of employment and focuses on a specific profession, the teaching profession (see chapter 4): Rather than comparing public and private sector employees within the education branch (as in chapter 3), teach-ers are compared to non-teaching employees. The focus is on the motive of risk avteach-ersion, which is included as a control variable in chapter 3. The study finds support for the hy-pothesis that the teaching profession – as a profession that appears highly familiar and
that is associated with relatively high expected job security and rather fixed payment schemes – attracts individuals that score higher in risk aversion than observationally equivalent other employees. As expected, the relationship is particularly strong for risk aversion with respect to occupational career, holds within a more narrowly defined job area (the caring branch of education, health, and social care), and statistically already holds for individuals with no year of work experience. We find tentative evidence that socialization additionally contributes to teachers’ higher risk aversion, at least for occu-pation-related risk aversion.
Finally, person-environment fit with respect to personality is found for the transition from high school to university and the labor market (see chapter 5). The results of the study show that individual characteristics at the end of high school, including vocational interests and personality traits, significantly predict earnings 14 years later beyond field of study (that is, when holding field of study constant). The results further suggest that estimated effects of field of study on earnings decrease when controlling for individual characteristics. This indicates that personality is associated both with field of study and with earnings on the labor market, and that individuals with characteristics that are more desirable on the labor market (e.g., higher enterprising interests, lower artistic interests, and higher conscientiousness) tend to be sorted into more profitable fields, which creates a positive bias if not controlling for individual characteristics. These selection effects are in line with person-environment fit theory, which would predict that individuals with sim-ilar personality tend to choose fields (and to be selected into fields) which are associated with specific opportunities, demands, and people in their study environment and their expected occupational environment.
While the dissertation finds support for the role of person-environment fit with respect to personality in the transition from the education system to the labor market, a second main finding is that the extent of the personality-related similarities is often weak: The associations between individuals’ personality and specific occupational environments (compared to other occupational environments), as found in the present dissertation, are not large. For example, the theoretically predicted relationship between civic virtue and public versus private sector employment is positive and significant, but small (see chapter 3): With all control variables (biographical, work-related, and Big Five personality traits), a higher value in civic virtue by one standard deviation is associated with an increase in the probability of public sector employment by 4.9 percentage points (see subchapter 3.4.2). As discussed in subchapter 3.5, this is a small standardized effect size of 0.11 in
terms of Cohen’s d (see COHEN 1988). The estimated relationship is overall similar within most branches and when concentrating on the motives before sector selection (that is, in the year before the first employment or before a change from the private to the public sector) (see subchapters 3.4.3 and 3.4.4). There is also a small positive relationship be-tween risk aversion and public sector employment; the standardized effect size, calculated by dividing the coefficient in Model 5 of Table 3.5 by the standard deviation of the de-pendent variable, as shown in Table 3.3, amounts to d = 0.05. The estimated association between occupational-related risk aversion and public sector employment when including all control variables (see subchapter 3.4.3) is only slightly larger and amounts to d = 0.06.
The theoretically predicted relationship between teaching profession and risk aversion is also not large, but small to moderate (see chapter 4): Teachers score 0.15 standard devi-ations higher in risk aversion than observationally equivalent other employees, on aver-age, while the association with occupation-related risk aversion is significantly larger and amounts to 0.33 standard deviations (see subchapter 4.4.2). The relationship between teaching profession and risk aversion is similar – but smaller for occupation-related risk aversion – at zero years of experience (see subchapter 4.4.4).
However, a third main finding is that indications of person-environment fit are stronger when comparing university students in different fields of study. Using an experimental measure of positional preferences – as one form of social preferences – chapter 2 shows that majoring in business/economics relates to approximately 0.62 less positional choices over all six games choices, on average (see subchapter 2.5.2). This effect appears rela-tively substantial (more than 10% of the choices), and the standardized effect size is d = 0.38, a medium effect. In chapter 5 it is seen that students in different fields of study differ substantially from each other, on average, with respect to their vocational interests, while the average differences in personality traits are smaller (see subchapter 5.4.1). The results suggest that all considered individual characteristics (educational achievement, cognitive abilities, vocational interests, personality traits, and socio-economic background) to-gether explain 15.9–47.0% of the significant relationships between field of study and earnings.
Therefore, when assessing the role of personality for the transition from the education system to the labor market, it appears that motives (preferences) and interests are highly relevant for (self-) selection into fields of study, while the selection into specific sectors and professions on the labor market is overall only weakly related to motives. Moreover, there is only weak evidence for socialization effects with respect to motives on the labor
market. This suggests that, although (self-) selection by personality exists on the labor market, a substantial amount of personality-related heterogeneity remains in occupational careers. According to environment fit theory, this middle course between person-ality-related congruence and diversity might allow for taking the advantages of congru-ence (e.g., high productivity in specialized tasks, and low conflict), while at the same time fulfilling different demands within the same area and remaining flexible for a changing environment.