Behind Dislike: Adaptive Purposes for Undergraduates’ Negative Emotions in the Career Decision-Making Process

The first career interest inventory emerged in the late 1920s. The response options for the questions in the Strong Vocational Interest Blank included ‘like’ and ‘dislike.’ Both answers are emotional reactions. Regrettably, clients within the context of vocational counseling often regard negative feelings (e.g., dislikes) as inconsequential. Yet, negative emotionality can be adaptive and feasibly assist career decision-makers. In the literature on college students’ career development and emotional functioning, there is a paucity of information about how negative emotions advance the career decision-making process and how career decision-makers apply such knowledge. Hence, a sample of undergraduates (n = 256) was recruited to ascertain imaginable adaptive career decision-making benefits from negative affect. Employing a Mixed Methods-Grounded Theory methodology, the present study tabulated the negative emotional reactions of college students to vocations that were self- or computer-reported. In addition, their answers to two investigative questions about the selection of their negative emotions were analyzed. From the data, three negative meta-emotions emerged as reactions to participants’ reported occupations; four adaptive purposes for their selected negative affect were also discovered. A theoretical framework and applicative suggestions from the findings are presented.