Assessing the Impact of a Role Model in the Construction of Professional Identities

We investigated the effects of the presence of a role model on self-efficacy among individuals who are new to an organization. This research was conducted through an Amazon Mechanical Turk experiment in April 2018. We randomized 60 participants into two groups: role model group and control group. Participants in the role model group (group 1) were asked to respond to a prompt by describing an individual they consider a role model and any interactions that occurred or that was witnessed with that individual. Participants in the control group were asked to describe an individual in their firm and any positive or negative interactions witnessed. After the completion of this task, participants completed a set of survey questions, including the Rosenberg Self-esteem questionnaire and the General Self-Efficacy questionnaire. To conclude, we were unable to demonstrate that individuals in role model group had significantly higher appraisal of their own self-efficacy when compared to the control group.