How proactive personality promotes career exploration: A self-expansion perspective

Proactive career exploration lays a vital foundation for individuals’ development. Taking a human initiative perspective, we focused on the influence of proactive personality on career exploration behavior. Specifically, drawing on self-expansion theory, we anticipated that a more proactive personality would pertain to higher career self-efficacy, which would further promote career exploration behavior. In addition, individuals often seek self-expansion through support obtained from close relationships; thus, we proposed that the above link would be stronger when parental career support was high. Results from a time-lagged survey study with 595 university students from China supported our hypotheses. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.