Engineering Emotion : Students tell Stories about the Costs of Being Innovative

Abstract

When prompted to imagine the story of today’s top engineering graduate, one might imagine a successful leader and innovator in this ‘research to practice’ full paper. Changes in the emotional responses of today’s college students pose an intriguing question: can generational differences in emotion suggest a shift in entrepreneurial mind-set and leadership choices post-engineering education? This paper uses modified original protocol developed by Horner (1972) on gendered generalizations of professional success and Engle’s (2003) updated approach for considering responses about occupational choice. The researchers also included an emotion scale (PANAS, 1988, 2007) to conduct an examination of 83 college students’ responses to a “storytelling cue” prompt about a time when a new engineering graduate stepped away from their CEO role within their founded company. Measures in two parts are reported. Stories written by the participants are coded for the presence or absence of specific motives, e.g. achievement, power, innovation. Factors of mood are coded as negative affect and positive affect. This study had two between-subject’s factors (gender of participant - female, male - and gender of engineer in the cue prompt - female, male) which yielded four conditions: females-female prompt, males-male prompt, females-male prompt, and males-female prompt. Six univariate ANOVAS, each two by two, crossed two independent variables (gender of the participant and cue prompt gender) to produce four experimental conditions. Results revealed negative affect vs. positive affect responses to the cue. The females in the story received more negative responses by men, and the men coded more negative overall. Data from the preliminary experiment offers stunning stories by college students with compelling motivational and emotional characterizations. Some implications of gender on the costs of being innovative in engineering are discussed.