Cultivating Work Devotees in Professional Socialization

• In Event: 511 - Section on Social Psychology Paper Session. Ethnographic Contributions to Social Psychology

Abstract

Studies of work-nonwork conflict for professionals have outlined structural and cultural factors that require devotion to work versus family and imply a forced choice between schemas. Researchers have also outlined the role of other schemas, such as gender schemas, in impacting the choice between work and family devotion schemas. But how do workers come to be devoted to their occupation in the first place? Like gender schemas, work devotion schemas are learned. Unlike gender schemas, we do not have a good understanding of how work devotion schemas are learned. Classical professions, like medicine, still display high work devotion and there is a tradition of studying the professional socialization into these fields. Drawing from an ethnographic study of medical education, this paper will outline the process by which medical students become “work devotees.” Understanding how work devotion is cultivated in medical students as part of professional socialization provides a useful comparison case to more common differential socialization and occupational sex segregation research.

Author

• Alexandra H Vinson, University of California-San Diego