Parental emotional warmth and career decision-making difficulties: A model of intellectual-cultural orientation and conscientiousness

We used a mediation model and an integrated, moderated mediation model to examine the effects of parental emotional warmth, intellectual-cultural orientation in family factors, and conscientiousness on the career decision-making difficulties of Chinese college students. We tested 1,196 undergraduate students by employing the conscientiousness subscale of the Chinese version of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R), the Career Decision-making Difficulties Questionnaire (CDDQ), the revised Chinese version of the Egna Minnen av Barndoms Uppfostran scale (EMBU), and the Family Environment Scale-Chinese Version (FES-CV). Our results showed that, in the mediation model, parental emotional warmth had an indirect effect on college students’ career decision-making difficulties through the mediation of conscientiousness. In the integrated model, this indirect effect was moderated by an intellectual-cultural orientated family environment.