17 Our results support H1 that
college attendees
from low SES backgrounds have especially slow life history strategies. Further, among
college attendees,
our results are consistent with
low SES
individuals exhibiting even slower strategies than
high SES
individuals on
average number of children
p = 0.03 and
smoked daily
0.07. Thus, the pool of low SES people minimally eligible to select into accounting are predominately those with slow life history strategies. This point is
critical in examining determinants of entry into accounting, as we theorize that distinguishing features of accounting likely make it appealing to people pursuing slower strategies.
4. Experimental Tests of H2 and H3
– SES and Self-Selection into Accounting
We test H2 and H3 using multiple methods due to the paucity of data on self-selection and the complex array of factors that could influence this decision. To maximize the internal validity
of our inferences, we first test these hypotheses with an experiment using upper-division accounting students. In particular, we use priming procedures to actively manipulate cues of
macroeconomic uncertainty i.e., recession versus neutral and randomly assign participants to observe recession versus neutral primes. Because we cannot actively manipulate SES, the
experiment only allows us to make associational claims about H2. However, randomly assigning participants to different primes does allow us to make strong causal inferences about H3,
specifically, the effects of the recession prime on career intentions within a given level of SES e.g., how do low SES individuals respond to recession, as opposed to neutral primes?.
4.1. Participants and Procedures Experimental participants n = 245 are business students recruited from accounting classes
at a large public university in the Southeast United States, of which 209 85.3 were accounting majors. The sample comprises 51 20.8 freshmen and sophomores, 87 35.5 juniors, 47
19.1 seniors, and 59 24.1 Mast er’s students. Participants begin the experiment by reading
18 a 600-word story that contained our priming manipulation described below. To ensure that
participants attended to the prime and did not believe that the prime was related to their career intention judgment, the instructions directed participants to assume that the prime was “like a
memory task” and that there would be questions about the story at the end of the study. After reading the story, participants completed a series of questions about their career intentions,
answered manipulation and attention check questions, and answered questions about their childhood and current SES. To avoid deception, we included memory questions about the story to
follow through on the statement in the materials that the story was like a memory task. 4.2. Variables
4.2.1. Recession prime
In the recession prime condition, participants read a story about economic hardships confronted by recent college graduates. The story
—titled “Tough Times Ahead: The New Economics of the 21
st
Century”—was formatted to look like a news article and was adopted from Griskevicius et al. 2011b and 2013. In brief, the story focused on economic hardships confronted
by recent college graduates, including skyrocketing student loan debt, intense labor market competition, increasing food and energy costs, and diminishing funds for government social
support programs. In the control condition, the story also adopted from Griskevicius et al. 2011b and 2013 was designed to elicit similar levels of negative arousal.
10
The story focused on a person spending several hours looking for keys around their house. We could have used a neutral prime
that described good economic conditions, but that would have risked manipulating negative arousal along with macroeconomic cues.
10
A prime unrelated to the job selection task is desirable for internal validity, as varying some aspect of the task would risk confounding cues of economic uncertainty with uncertainty about career objectives, task enjoyment, etc. We are
grateful to Vlad Griskevicius for graciously sharing his materials.
19 As manipulation checks, we asked participants in each condition to rate the extent to which
the story made them believe the world will become 1 more unsafe, 2 more unpredictable, and 3 more uncertain. Participants’ responses in the recession condition were higher than those in the
control condition on all three measures all p 0.01, but did not differ on measures of negative arousal such as anger, frustration, or stress that could influence the career intention judgment. This
indicates a successful manipulation that varied the uncertainty of the environment, but held constant levels of negative arousal that could influence our measures. See Appendix A.
4.2.2. SES
To capture SES, we asked participants to report whether or not they are a first generation college student. We classified participants as low SES
if they reported having no parents or guardians with a college degree and as high SES if they reported at least one parent or guardian
with a college degree.
11
Self-Selection into Accounting
We measured our primary dependent variable on a 100-point scale that asked participants to assess the likelihood that they intend to pursue a career in accounting. The instrument also asked
participants to rate the likelihood with which they intend to pursue careers in close substitute fields such as finance, investment banking, or consulting. In addition, participants assessed the
importance of five characteristics of a job career: job security, high earnings, likeable colleagues, interesting work, and maximizing future opportunities.
11
Results using two alternative measures of childhood SES do not change our inferences. We also measured SES based on 1 estimated childhood household income and 2 average agreement with three statements capturing
childhood SES. For 2, the statements were “My family usually had enough money for things when I was growing
up,” “I grew up in a relatively wealthy neighborhood,” and “I felt relatively wealthy compared to the other kids in my school.” Our inferences are identical using these measures. We also included measures of current SES to ensure that
childhood SES and not current SES is the mechanism that influences decision making. When we control for current SES, our results do not change.
20 4.3. Results
4.3.1. Tests of H2 and H3
H2 predicts that low SES individuals are more likely to select into accounting. H3 predicts that uncertain macroeconomic conditions, of which recessions are a common contemporary
indicator, will decrease self-selection into accounting by people from poorer backgrounds. To test this, we conduct a 2 Prime: recession, control X 2 Childhood SES: low, high Analysis of
Variance ANOVA with the assessed likelihood of pursuing a career in accounting as the dependent measure. See Table 2 for ANOVA results and descriptive statistics.
Consistent with H2, in the neutral prime condition, intentions to select into accounting are higher when SES is low, as opposed to high 78.00 versus 63.62, F
1,241
= 8.02, p 0.01. Further, the interaction predicted by H3 is significant F
1,241
= 8.42, p 0.01. Specifically, observing the recession prime decreased the likelihood of pursuing a career in accounting when SES is low
63.95 versus 78.00, F
1,241
= 5.75, p = 0.02. Interestingly, though we had no hypothesis for how the prime would affect high SES individuals, Table 2, Panel C shows that observing the recession
prime marginally
increased
the likelihood of pursuing a career in accounting in this group 70.57 versus 63.63, F
1,241
= 7.29, p = 0.10.
12
Thus, H2 and H3 are supported, and the data are consistent with our hypothesized interaction being a causal effect.
4.3.2. Supplemental Test of the Mediating Effect of Job Security
To provide further corroboration of the cognitive process that underlies our effects, we examine participants’ ratings of the importance of job security to their career decision. Our theory
12
Our theory focuses on low SES individuals and thus only predicts that the recession prime will more negatively affect selection intentions among low, as opposed to high SES individuals. However, the observed disordinal
interaction is consistent with the logic of our theory. If recession cues cause individuals to re-calibrate choices in the direction consistent with their upbringing, then it is possible for high SES individuals, as well as low SES individuals,
to reverse their preferences.
21 argues that H2 and H3 occur because low SES college students follow slow strategies in benign
conditions but adopt faster strategies in uncertain conditions. If our theory is valid, then SES and recession jointly affect a person’s likelihood of self-selection into accounting because they jointly
affect the importance of job security to that person. That is, our interaction is likely to have an indirect effect on self-selection, via differences in the importance of job security.
Following the recent statistics literature, we test the significance of the indirect effect using a bootstrapping technique Preacher and Hayes 2008; Hayes and Preacher 2013. Because our
independent variable is an interaction term, we follow the guidance of Hayes and Preacher 2013 to create a multi-categorical independent variable using the linear weights for the interaction
term.
13
We use 5000 bootstrap re-samples of the data to calculate bias-corrected confidence intervals for the total indirect effect. Significance is indicated by confidence intervals that do not
include zero. In our analysis, there is a significant indirect effect of life history strategy on self- selection into accounting, which is mediated by the assessed importance of job security lower CI
= 0.75, higher CI = 9.86. See Figure 1. Thus, our data support the conclusion that the SES by recession prime interaction affects self-selection into accounting because it affects the importance
of job security.
5. Archival Tests of H2 and H3
