Undergraduate Students' Optimistic Bias In Career Choice And Its Variability

Since the concept of optimistic bias was put forward,it has been proved to exist in many fields,such as consumer lending,disease cognition,business decision-making and so on,but there is little research in career choice.Optimistic bias in career choice refers to the optimistic bias in the process of career choice.It specifically shows that compared with others,people think that they will experience more positive events.In this study,undergraduate students are taken as the research objects,and behavioral data and EEG data are used to explore the optimistic bias in career choice and its implicit variability from the explicit and implicit levels.In the first study,we used the questionnaire to investigate whether there was an explicit optimistic bias of undergraduate students.In the second study,starting conditions and different social prestige vocation vocabularies were used as independent variables,and response time and EEG indicators as dependent variables.In the third study,we used the subthreshold evaluation conditioned reflex technology to intervene the implicit optimistic bias in career choice and explore its variability.Under the experimental conditions,the following conclusions were drawn:(1)On the explicit level,undergraduate students had optimistic bias in career choice of type II(in the judgment of negative events related to career choice,the subjects think that others are more likely to experience negative events)in career choice and hadn't optimistic bias in career choice of type I.(2)Undergraduate students had implicit optimistic bias in career choice.When the target stimulus is high social prestige vocation words,the response time of “I” is shorter than that of “he”;when the target stimulus is low social prestige vocation words,the response time of “I” is longer than that of “he”.(3)The target stimulus was high social prestige vocation words,and the N1 and N2 components were more negative when the priming stimulus was "he" than "I",indicating that the subjects invested more attention resources and had greater cognitive conflict under the condition of "he-high prestige";the target stimulus was low social prestige vocation words,and the P2 component average amplitude was larger when the priming stimulus was "I" than "he",indicating that the subjects were more sensitive to “I-low prestige” condition;the mean amplitude of LPP component was larger when the target stimulus was low social prestige vocation words and the priming stimulus was "other" than "I",which indicated that the subjects were optimistic about self-cognition.(4)Undergraduate students' implicit optimistic bias in career choice had variability.The use of the subthreshold evaluative conditioned reflex consistent with optimistic bias can enhance optimistic bias in career choice,the use of subthreshold evaluation conditioned reflex inconsistent with optimistic bias can reduce optimistic bias in career choice.