The Role of Emotional Experiences in Commitment Development in Internship Students

Abstract

In this study I address the relation between real-time experiences and vocational identity development in psychology students during their practical internship. By means of a multi-method approach I aimed to shed light on the role of salient emotional experiences in commitment development, and on the characteristics of these experiences. In a diary study internship students reported every week about their most relevant experience. For each student the most salient positive and negative emotional experience was selected. Most positive and negative experiences concerned competence-related issues. Salient emotional experiences were related to commitment change for a prolonged period of time. In line with the theoretical models, salient positive emotional experiences enhance the commitment strength, and salient negative emotional experiences reduce the strength. However, many experiences include different characteristics. In particular, negative emotional experiences are characterized by a diversity of both positive and negative characteristics.