Teenagers ’ Lack Of Insight Into Some Of Their Abilities Has Implications For Career Counselling

By Christian Jarrett How much insight do you have into your own mental and emotional abilities, such as verbal intelligence, spatial cognition and interpersonal skills? Might your friends have a better idea of your strengths and weaknesses than you do? In a new paper in the journal Heliyon, a team led by Aljoscha Neubauer explain that while such questions of self- vs. other-insight have already been looked at in the context of the main personality traits and general IQ, theirs is the first investigation in the context of more specific abilities. It’s an important issue for young people, they add, since choosing career paths that play to our abilities can increase the chances of later success – but it remains an open question whether and for which abilities people should rely on their own judgments or seek the advice of others. The researchers recruited 233 participants in their mid-teens (average age 14) and 215 participants in their late teens (average age 18). Participants completed six tests, including: established measures of their verbal, numerical and spatial abilities; a test of divergent creativity (thinking up novel uses for an umbrella, plastic bottle and shoe); and a questionnaire tapping their intra- and interpersonal emotional management (based on the participants’ selection of the best way to deal with various social and emotional scenarios). Immediately after completing the tests, the participants filled out an additional questionnaire asking the...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Occupational Source Type: blogs