What kind of shoes does a social worker wear? And does it matter?

I’ve just had a paper published which describes some research about prototypical social identities – the image that we conjure up in our minds’ eyes when we think about a ‘typical’ member of a particular profession.

As a society, we have become quite wary of stereotypes. We know that they can be inaccurate and can foster discrimination and so we try to eradicate them. But actually, stereotypes are a very natural and normal part of human cognition. Our brains have developed all sorts of mechanisms to maximise the amount of information they can process, and minimise the amount of effort this takes. Stereotypes are one such mechanism and whilst it is clearly wrong to set too much store by them, it’s important to recognise that they are inevitable, and therefore I think we need to learn a bit more about them.

The study

I gathered some students together for some focus groups (24 psychology undergraduates in four focus groups) and asked them to close their eyes and imagine a typical member of four different professions: primary teacher, organisational psychologist, clinical psychologist and social worker. I then asked me to describe these prototypes. Their stories were fascinating.

The first surprising thing was the amount of detail my participants were able to give me. I was keen to push them to see how far they could go with their descriptions. Although they were a bit slow to start, once they got warmed up, they were able to give me all sorts of details about their prototypical characters. They told me what their prototypes looked like, what they wore, what their homes were like, how they spent their holidays, their weekends, their money, who they were living with, what their children were like, what they ate, what they drank, etc etc etc.. I pushed them hard but they met me step for step, and I couldn’t find a question they weren’t able to answer. How amazing to think that they all had this wealth of data about these professions, lurking in the back of their minds!

The second strange thing was that they seemed much more fluent when talking about their imagined prototypes outside work, than in work. A couple of them voiced concerns at the start about their lack of knowledge about the jobs – they said that they didn’t know what an organisational psychologist was, so weren’t sure that they would be able to contribute to the discussions. I told them not to worry, but just to close their eyes and see what came up. And despite not knowing any details about the job itself, they were able to tell me that their imagined organisational psychologist lived in Clapham, had a golden retriever, enjoyed skiing, lived with someone who worked in finance and liked a cocktail bar. It was intriguing to me that these personal stories could be so vivid, when the knowledge of the job itself was so shaky.

The prototypes described seemed to be based on a mix of societal stereotypes and personal experiences. There were clearly some characteristics that the participants’ images of the different professions had in common: the clinical psychologists were intelligent and a bit quirky; the social workers were warm, had clear left-wing values, and lived in slightly shabby homes, and they wore comfortable shoes - this came up surprisingly often. These aspects felt like socially-shared stereotypes, shared by many of the participants and probably influenced by things that we all have access to - the media, fictional characters from tv, films and books, and cultural stereotypes. But the participants’ also described some particular characteristics which seemed specific to them and were based on their own individual experiences – some spoke about primary teachers they remembered from their school days, and psychologists they themselves had met, and they clearly drew on their own experiences when imagining their prototypical professionals.

One final interesting thing was that the particular features of the prototypes described seemed to be clearly linked to personality characteristics. The comfortable shoes, slightly shabby sofas and hearty casseroles of the social workers all seemed to conjure up a warm personality. The colourful accessories and off-the-beaten-track holidays of the clinical psychologists sounded quirky. The dungarees, the karaoke and the comedy tv programmes illustrated the primary teachers’ playful nature.

So why do we care?

It seemed then that the participants had a vast wealth of knowledge about each of these professions, hidden slightly below their consciousness: they didn’t always know that they had this knowledge, but with a few questions and just a little bit of focused attention, they were easily able to bring it to the forefront of their minds. I think it’s inevitable that this information will have an impact on their career choices. How could it not? If they think of themselves as a warm person, they are bound to be more drawn to a profession whose prototype they see as warm. If they like the idea of being seen as a playful person, they are going to be more enthusiastic about choosing a profession they associate with this characteristic.

The career guidance profession is rightly concerned that people should be making their career choices on the basis of up to date, accurate and relevant careers information. Of course this is important. But if people are using their own prototypical ideas to inform their opinions, then we need to be aware of that, so that we can draw this information out, and get them to scrutinise it. If they can identify their own preconceptions, work out where their ideas have come from, and consider whether the information is accurate or relevant, then we can help them to base their decisions on the right kind of information. If we ignore the fact that our clients have a vast array of existing information then we are allowing it to influence their choices, regardless of whether it is accurate, up to date or relevant.

My suggestions might lead to some unusual career conversations, which could touch on some topics that have traditionally been outside the typical carer guidance remit. But that’s no reason to avoid them. If it helps clients to explore their ideas fully, then surely it’s worth a try?

The paper

Yates, J. & Cahill, S. (2019). The characteristics of prototypical occupational identities: a grounded theory of four occupations. British Journal of Guidance and Counselling. Online first. 10.1080/03069885.2019.1706154