Holland, John L. (1919-)

Empirical and Theoretical Research Themes

Holland's most impressive contribution to psychology was the combining of two important theoretical traditions, namely vocational psychology and personality. In 1959, Holland published his article, “A Theory of Vocational Choice,” in which he presented a theory that gave importance to personality as well as to the reinforcement value that specific environmental events could hold for an individual. He was one of the first major theorists to emphasize the critical importance of the interaction between vocational environments and individual differences and personality. He drew upon basic learning theory and modeling theories of personality development to inform others of these issues. In fact, his work anticipated by about 10 years the interest in personality psychology on the interaction between personality and situation in determining behavior.

To operationalize the personality types and model environments, Holland developed a number of inventories that represent a major applied contribution to the field. All of the Holland assessment techniques are practical and useful assessment devices. Initially he developed the Vocational Preference Inventory to define the personality types that he has studied over the years. The self-scoring and self-interpreted Self-Directed Search served to more comprehensively assess the personality types. Self-Directed Search is now the most widely used interest inventory in the world. To assess environments, Holland and Alexander Astin developed the Environmental Assessment Technique, and more recently Gary Gottfredson and Holland constructed the Position Classification Inventory. The theoretical person-environment framework has further been used to restructure the Strong Vocational Interest Blank, now called the Strong Interest Inventory. Related inventories developed to further define the personality types and model occupational environments include the Vocational Identity Scale and My Vocational Situation. More recently, Holland along with Gottfredson has developed the Career Attitudes and Strategies Inventory, another practical inventory to assess clients' internal and external barriers that may limit their career development.

A third major theme and contribution involves the use of his theory of personality types and work environments as a taxonomy for classifying people and jobs. Data from longitudinal studies, job analysis data, and vocational interest data have resulted in an extensive empirical classification of 13,000 occupations in the U.S. economy. All occupations now listed in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (1991) may be classified using the Holland taxonomy. This has been accomplished in the Dictionary of Holland Occupational [Page 1545]Codes published by Gottfredson, Holland, and Deborah Ogawain 1982 and revised in 1989 and 1996. In summary, his theory, constructs, and operational definitions are extroverted, tough, practical, and compact. As Henry Murray noted some years ago, any assessment of the person is incomplete without some assessment of the environment. We cannot take the person out of personality, but at the same time, we cannot ignore the fact that environments, like people, have personalities and influence behavior. Holland's theoretical framework links the person, the environment, and behavior in a data-based framework to help people understand and cope with problems.

...