Handling the Stress of Looking for a Job in Law School: The Relationship between Intrinsic Motivation, Internal Attributions, Relations with Others, and Happiness

Abstract

A study was conducted to examine how law students cope with the stress of looking for a job. We argue that effective coping is exhibited by the capacity to keep stress in one domain of life from spreading to and contaminating other, unrelated areas of life. Certain situations may be undeniably stressful; however, individuals who can maintain positive feelings about their life as a whole despite this stress may cope well. We hypothesized that three social psychological variables might be associated with this phenomenon: motivation (intrinsic versus extrinsic), attributions (internal versus external), and relations with others. The results indicated that students with intrinsic motives for being a lawyer were happier with their lives in general than were students with extrinsic motives. Likewise, students who attributed the ability to find a job to internal attributes were happier than were those who did not. Relations with others did not relate to happiness. Implications of these findings for career counse...