Self-esteem as a moderator of the relationship between scientific interests and the job satisfaction of physicists and engineers

A study with 121 engineers and 93 physicists tested the prediction that interests in science, as measured with the Strong Vocational Interest Blank for men, would be positively related to intrinsic satisfaction for high-self-esteem physicists and engineers but would be unrelated for low-self-esteem physicists and engineers. The predictions were confirmed for the sample of physicists to the extent that high-self-esteem Ss showed a significant correlation between interests and intrinsic satisfaction, but low-self-esteem Ss showed a nonsignificant correlation. Because the difference in correlations was nonsignificant, it could not be concluded that self-esteem was a moderator in the case of the physicists. Self-esteem did moderate the relationship between interests in science and both extrinsic and intrinsic satisfaction for engineers, but the correlations were in a direction opposite to those predicted. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).