Exploring careers with a typology: What we have learned and some new directions.

John L. Holland·1996·American Psychologist

Abstract

Holland's (1985a) typology of persons and environments is outlined, and support for the theory as an explanation of stability and change in careers and work satisfaction is summarized. Studies show that people flourish in their work environment when there is a good fit between their personality type and the characteristics of the environment. Lack of congruence between personality and environment leads to dissatisfaction, unstable career paths, and lowered performance. The results of recent research designed to strengthen the explanatory power of Holland's typology and link it to the Big Five personality factors is described. Speculations about the application of the theory to future careers in a changing economy are offered.

Cites (2)

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    Goldberg, Lewis R. · 1992 · Psychological Assessment
  2. Whither Industrial and Organizational Psychology in a Changing World of Work?
    Cascio, Wayne F. · 1995 · American Psychologist

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Cited by (8)

  1. General Mental Ability in the World of Work: Occupational Attainment and Job Performance.
    Schmidt, Frank L., Hunter, John · 2004 · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
  2. Too Much of a Good Thing: The Challenge and Opportunity of the Inverted U
    Grant, Adam M., Schwartz, Barry · 2011 · Perspectives on Psychological Science
  3. Introduction to the Special Section on Cognitive Abilities: 100 Years After Spearman's (1904) "'General Intelligence,' Objectively Determined and Measured".
    Lubinski, David · 2004 · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
  4. The Future Cybersecurity Workforce: Going Beyond Technical Skills for Successful Cyber Performance
    Dawson, Jessica, Thomson, Robert · 2018 · Frontiers in Psychology
  5. Universality of vocational interest structure among racial and ethnic minorities.
    Day, Susan X, Rounds, James · 1998 · American Psychologist

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How to cite

Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.

This page
CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Exploring careers with a typology: What we have learned and some new directions. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1037//0003-066x.51.4.397
The paper
Holland, J. L. (1996). Exploring careers with a typology: What we have learned and some new directions. American Psychologist. https://doi.org/10.1037//0003-066x.51.4.397

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.