The relation between specialty choice of psychology students and their interests, personality, and cognitive abilities Jelte M. Wicherts ⁎, Harrie C.M. Vorst Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands abstract article info Article history: Received 12 August 2009 Received in revised form 6 January 2010 Accepted 7 January 2010 Keywords: Scientific-practitioner interests IQ Psychology majors Prediction of academic performance Vocational choice The aim of this longitudinal study was to investigate differences in interests, personality, and cognitive abilities between students majoring in the six specialties of psychology at the University of Amsterdam. Results show that students at Social Psychology and Work and Organizational Psychology were on average more extraverted than students of other specializations, that students of Psychological Methods and Psychonomics were relatively more open to experience, and that students at Clinical Psychology were on average more neurotic. Differences in cognitive ability were small, but significant, with the highest scores among students of the more research-oriented specialties. With discriminant analyses on the basis of nine interest scales, 53% of the students were correctly categorized in the specialization chosen two or years after interests were measured. Interest profiles of the specialties follow differences in interest in helping people, abstract vs. concrete topics, and technical issues. Person-specialization congruence failed to predict academic performance. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction At the end of their second year as Bachelor students, Dutch psychology majors choose a specialty, such as Psychonomics, Social Psychology, or Clinical Psychology. These specialties are closely associated with different topics of psychological science and diverse professional competencies related to both research and practice. The choice of specialty may be influenced by personality and cognitive ability, but is commonly thought to depend mainly on student's interests. Research among psychology majors in the US has highlighted a clear distinction between researcher and practitioner interests (Leong & Zachar, 1991; Zachar & Leong, 1992, 1997, 2000). Several studies have addressed the relatively low interest in scientific issues among many psychology majors (Bishop & Bieschke, 1998; Leong, Zachar, Conant, & Tolliver, 2007; Tinsley, Tinsley, Boone, & Shim Li, 1993; Vittengl et al., 2004), although psychology majors clearly differ in this regard. For instance, Martin, Gavin, Baker, and Bridgmon (2007) recently compared doctoral students at different specialties of psychology and found clear differences between these groups in scientist-practitioner interests. Also, Zachar and Leong (2000) found that psychology majors' researcher and practitioner interests were stable over a 10-year period and predictive of later professional behavior. According to Holland (1973, 1985), vocational interests can be seen as a personality characteristic, which can be subsumed under six types: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional (RIASEC). According to Holland, both persons and professions (or fields of education) can be characterized by a profile (or three-letter-code) that indicates the dominance of the six types. The code Investigative-Artistic-Social is viewed as dominant for the profession of psychology (Camp & Chartrand, 1992). However, psychology students who follow different routes in their curriculum or who differ in research-practitioner interests may be characterized by different RIASEC profiles. While interest in research appears to be positively related to the Investigative and the Investigative-Artistic types, practitioner interests appear to be positively related to the Social type (Mallinckrodt, Gelso, & Royalty, 1990; Zachar & Leong, 1992). Some RIASEC scales have been shown to be correlated with the five dominant personality factors (e.g., De Fruyt & Mervielde, 1997; Gottfredson, Jones, & Holland, 1993) as well as with cognitive capacities (Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997). In line with these findings, Vittengl et al. (2004) found that psychology students' interest in research was positively associated with Openness to Experience and with cognitive ability. Thus, individual differences in interests, personality, and cognitive ability may be associated with specialty choice in the academic study of psychology. 1.1. Current study The goal of this longitudinal study is to compare psychology students of different specialties in terms of interests, personality, and Learning and Individual Differences 20 (2010) 494–500 ⁎ Corresponding author. Department of Psychology, Psychological Methods, Univer- sity of Amsterdam, Roetersstraat 15, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Tel.: +31 205257067; fax: +31 206390026. E-mail address: J.M.Wicherts@uva.nl (J.M. Wicherts). 1041-6080/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2010.01.004 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Learning and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/lindif