Abstract
The two cohorts of emerging and young adults each occupies a point in historical time that point to the significance of choice. Two styles of selection, optimizing and satisficing are discussed; those who feel compelled to take an optimizing approach make the maximal choice and those who select from the best available choices and move forward to make a satisficing choice. With respect to career choice, the two cohorts in the study provide rich and variable expression to their hopes and fears, but a clear difference in the approach to career choice emerged for the two cohorts. Those in the more affluent cohort tended to gravitate toward a pruning of choice, feeling the anxiety of choice more acutely. By comparison, those with fewer economic resources and less access to a safety net tended to prefer the risk management possibilities afforded by a wider field of choice.
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Konstam, V. (2015). The “Tyranny” of Choice: A Reexamination of the Prevailing Narrative. In: Emerging and Young Adulthood. Advancing Responsible Adolescent Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11301-2_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11301-2_5
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