Significant Others as Environmental Resources: Toward a Sociological Refinement of Social Cognitive Career Theory

Social cognitive career theory notes that life satisfaction is higher among students with clear outcome expectations and higher self-efficacy. Environmental resources would affect expectations and self-efficacy, but, as the theory is specifically focused on the internal factors affecting life satisfaction, this part of the model is currently still underdeveloped. Sociological frameworks suggest significant others are environmental resources. Specifically, we suggest that teachers’, parents’, and peers’ expectations are consequential for outcome expectations, self-efficacy, and eventually life satisfaction. In this study, we explore the role of the peer and teacher cultures of expectations and the role of parental support and parental pressure. Multilevel analyses on longitudinal ISCY data (2346 students; 30 schools), gathered from the school year 2013-2014 onwards, confirmed that significant others are associated with life satisfaction. In the short term, higher teacher expectations boost students’ goal efficacy and life satisfaction. Higher parental support, but lower parental pressure, relates to higher life satisfaction. In the long term, parental support and goal efficacy increase life satisfaction. Moreover, students expecting to attend higher education had a larger increase in life satisfaction than those who were still undecided, due to undecided students having lower goal efficacy. Parental academic pressure reduces life satisfaction but only for undecided students.