The Influence Of Interns’ Outgroup Attitude On Work Value

In the post-pandemic era,the employment of college students attracted social attention.As the competition in job markets became more fierce,more and more college students applied for internships to gain competitive edge in the job search and there were changes in graduates’ expectations for future work.Most previous studies focused on tangible outcomes in terms of skill improvement gained in internships as it increased graduating students’ employability.Few studies paid attention to the psychological effects on interns as well as the effects on employment.Also,few studies considered interns and occupational groups as two separate groups and tested whether interns’ outgroup attitude toward specific occupational groups had influences on their psychological states.Thus,this study took intergroup perspective to investigate interns’ outgroup attitude toward specific occupational groups and its effects on interns’ psychological states.Also,this study tested whether interns’ psychological states imposed effects on their employment in terms of their expectation for future work(work values).This study had three objectives: understanding interns’ outgroup attitude toward occupational groups by means of the stereotype content model,testing whether interns’ outgroup attitude had effects on their psychological capital and psychological capital had influence on their work values.Also,this study tested whether interns’ psychological capital had mediation effects on the relation between interns’ outgroup attitude and work values.This study adopted the quantitative method and collected data from 246 valid questionnaires.According to the results,students having internships in college life had significantly higher psychological capital and work values than students not having internships.The interns showed explicit outgroup favoritism in terms of competence dimension,which was in accordance with the prediction of system justification theory.Also,interns’ outgroup favoritism had positive effects on their psychological capital and their psychological capital positively predicted their work values.Moreover,interns’ psychological capital had mediation effects on the relation between interns’ outgroup favoritism in competence and work values.There were inconsistent findings in the sub-groups of interns:interns in companies,schools,and government departments.