Psychological determinants of indecisiveness in portuguese secondary school students

Abstract

Indecisiveness, defined as a general difficulty in making decisions, is a specific type of career indecision that has been associated with several negative psychological variables. However, not many studies have employed a developmental psychological approach to understand the etiology of indecisiveness. Addressing this knowledge gap, the present study hypothesizes that specific aspects of adolescents' relationship with their parents, and their individual characteristics are key to explain indecisiveness, while controlling for sex differences. Based on a sample of 353 Portuguese secondary school students, we ran a hierarchical linear regression including three blocks of variables in the prediction of indecisiveness. The first block of the hierarchical regression analysis included the adolescent's sex and explained 7% of the variance. We also found that being female predicted indecisiveness. The second block included attachment security and conflictual independence regarding parental figures and explained 10% of the variance. Presenting higher levels of insecure attachment to the father and more conflictual dependence from the mother predicted higher levels of the criterion variable. Finally, the third block included the adolescent's self-esteem and trait anxiety, explaining 28% of indecisiveness. Higher levels of anxiety and lower levels of self-esteem predicted the dependent variable. The model including all the variables in analysis accounted for 45% of the variance in indecisiveness, corroborating the incremental validity of the models' blocks of variables. The implications for career research and counselling are discussed.