opinion | The most common graduation advice tends to backfire
As American high school and college students graduate and embark on the next phases of their lives, one piece of advice they will no doubt receive is to follow their passions or similar feeling. It seems like a nice guideline, cliché as it is: do something that feels true to yourself instead of living up to expectations.
But following your passions often turns out to be a bad idea. New research that we and our colleagues conducted found that when asked to identify their passions, women and men tend to cite stereotypical female and male interests and behaviors. Women more often say that they want to make art or help people, for example, while men more often say that they want to do science or play sports.
In other words, when people are asked to identify their passions, people seem to be doing exactly what should discourage following their passions: they are conforming to societal expectations. This finding is especially troubling for anyone concerned about gender differences in fields such as computer science and engineering, in which women are significantly underrepresented.
In two surveys — one of more than 500 students nationally and the other of about 150 students at the University of Washington who recently declared their majors — we found that “follow your passions” was the most common piece of advice U.S. students heard. and used when selecting their majors.
We then asked hundreds of undergraduate students which majors and careers they would choose if they followed their passions and which majors and careers they would choose if they prioritized salary and job security. We found that when it came to pursuing male-dominated fields such as computer science and engineering, the gender gap was greater when students chose to follow their passions, with men disproportionately choosing those fields. We also found that the gender gap in selecting future occupations narrowed when we asked people of both genders to prioritize nurturing and emotionally supporting other people.
That is, encouraging women and men to follow their passions when choosing a field of study or career creates a major gender gap. If you encourage them to make money, there’s less of a gender gap, with more women leaning into traditionally masculine fields. And if you encourage them to nurture and support other people, there’s also less of a gender gap, with more men leaning into traditionally feminine fields.
Are we suggesting that women shouldn’t pursue their passions and enter fields they don’t really care about just to close the gender gap? Of course not. For starters, traditionally female work is important, and society needs people who are passionate about it and want to pursue it – men included.
But what strikes us, based on this and other research, is that for many young people, passions seem to be largely based on internalized societal expectations about what is appropriate for their gender rather than full and accurate information about what, say, study computer science is really fun.
Recall that most American high school students don’t take it a single computer science, engineering or physics lesson. And girls attend these classes even less often than boys. That means many girls who give up on these courses do so without ever trying them. Even when girls take these classes, research shows they often do encounters negative stereotypes about their abilities and interests – while giving girls positive experiences in these areas can increase their interest.
Our point is that the passions young people are supposed to follow seem very malleable and susceptible to influence. In several experiments one of us (Dr. Cheryan) conducted, high school girls And college women showed less interest in enrolling in a computer science class when the classroom was decorated with “Star Trek” posters, video games, and other objects stereotypically associated with men than when the same classroom was decorated with nature posters, plants, and other more gender-neutral objects.
If the presence or absence of a science fiction poster can change your interest in a field, you’re probably not thinking about the field itself; you’re probably thinking about whether the culture of the field is one you could fit in and be successful in.
In many non-Western countries, students are not encouraged to view study choice as a form of self-expression. The results can be striking: In countries such as Malaysia And Kuwait, gender differences in computer science and engineering education are much smaller than in the United States. Students in those countries usually choose their majors for other reasons — income, job security, family obligations.
The “follow your passions” advice can seem like asking people what they want to do with their lives. All too often they are asked to limit their choices by their gender. So let’s change what we say to high school and college graduates. Of course you can follow your passions. But also keep an open mind and try things you may have ruled out without even realizing why. There may be more to be passionate about than you realize.