What is the Investigative career type?

The Investigative career type describes people who are most interested in observing, analysing and working out how things work. If you lean this way, you tend to enjoy research, complex problems and following the evidence wherever it goes. It often suits science, medicine, data, engineering research, technology and other fields where curiosity is a big part of the job.

It's one of six interest areas in John Holland's RIASEC model. On the model's hexagon, its neighbours are Realistic and Artistic, and its opposite is Enterprising. So many Investigative people also like practical work or creative thinking, and fewer enjoy selling and persuading for its own sake. That's a tendency, of course, and you'll find plenty of exceptions.

What Investigative interests tend to look like

You might recognise these habits:

• You can't leave a puzzle alone until you've solved it.
• You read the footnotes, and sometimes the study behind the footnotes.
• "Because I said so" is about the least convincing thing anyone can say to you.
• You lose track of time when you're digging into something.
• You'd rather understand a problem fully than get a quick fix.
• You enjoy being proved wrong, or at least you like what you learn from it.

This isn't the same as being academic. A mechanic chasing a strange fault, a nurse noticing a pattern, or a hobbyist mapping birds in the local reserve can all be thinking this way.

How Investigative interests show up

At work

Typical fields include laboratory science, medicine, data analysis, software research, economics, psychology, pharmacy, environmental science and forensic work. You tend to do best with hard questions, access to good information and room for deep focus. You tend to want to know the reasoning behind a decision.

The friction often arises from a mismatch in pace. Business decisions may not wait for the perfect answer. You might feel frustrated by colleagues who go with gut feel, and they may feel frustrated by your request for just a bit more data. It helps to ask early, "What decision does this need to support, and how sure do we need to be?" Then give your best current answer with a level of confidence attached. People who enjoy the social side of work may also help you translate findings into something others can use.

In love

You probably show love by paying close attention and trying to really understand your partner. You may remember the odd little thing they said about their childhood, or research the best treatment for their sore knee. That's lovely. The risk is treating a feeling like a problem to solve, or wanting to establish the facts of an argument when your partner just wants you to know it hurt. "Do you want me to help figure this out, or do you just want me to listen?" is a good question to keep handy.

With friends

You're likely the friend with the odd facts and the long, late conversations that wander into the nature of time. You may prefer a few people who like those talks to a big group. Friends may come to you when they want a clear-headed read on a hard choice. Watch out for correcting people in social settings. Being right about the date of a battle rarely improves the dinner party. If you find small talk tiring, you might also relate to what it's like to be an introvert, though the two don't always travel together.

Strengths and watch-outs

The strengths include curiosity, rigour, independence and comfort with complexity. You can spot a weak argument and you're willing to say "we don't know yet", which is rarer and more valuable than it should be.

The watch-outs have practical fixes. Analysis can become a place to hide from deciding, so set a decision date before you start researching. Your careful explanations can lose people, so lead with your conclusion and offer the detail if they want it. And being sceptical can read as being dismissive, so say what you like about an idea before you pull it apart. If you're leading others, it can be worth learning how emotional intelligence works, since being correct is only part of persuading people.

How to work with someone high or low in Investigative interests

Someone with strong Investigative interests

• Give them the reasoning and the data, not just the instruction.
• Bring them hard problems and protect some time for deep work.
• Agree on when "good enough to decide" has been reached.
• Don't read their questions as an attack. They're usually a sign of interest.

Someone with few Investigative interests

• Give them the summary first and the supporting detail on request.
• Connect findings to what they need to do next.
• Don't assume that they're careless because they're not asking for the numbers.
• Value their ability to act and move on when the evidence runs out. Sometimes that's exactly what's needed.

Research notes

• Personality overlap. Larson, Rottinghaus and Borgen (2002) meta-analysed links between interest types and the Big Five, and reported a moderate correlation between Investigative interests and openness to experience (about .28). So curiosity and these interests often go together, but they're far from identical.
• Scientists and personality. Feist (1998) compared personality traits among scientists, non-scientists and more and less creative scientists. Overall, creative people tended to be more open and more self-confident and driven. It's a pattern across groups, not a checklist for who can do science.
• Interests predict more than enjoyment. Nye and colleagues (2012) reviewed 60 studies and found that interests are related to performance and persistence in both work and study, and that the fit between a person and their environment was more predictive than interest alone. So being interested in something helps, and being somewhere that rewards that interest helps even more.
• Sex differences, with caution. Su, Rounds and Armstrong (2009) found men reported somewhat stronger Investigative interests on average (a small effect, d = 0.26), while differences for science and mathematics specifically were also relatively small. Averages like these say nothing about any one person's ability or future. They also depended on how the questionnaire items were written.

The U.S. Department of Labor's O*NET database describes this interest area in terms of research and studying the natural world and human behaviour, and it lists jobs for each type. It's free, and it's a useful next stop, even though its details reflect the American labour market.

Investigate yourself

You'll probably want to see the data on your own interests. Fair enough. Take the Career Compass Expedition to see how you score across all six career types. It takes about seven minutes and uses Selfcarta's own questions, which haven't yet been independently validated, so treat your result as a hypothesis worth testing. You could test it by talking to people in the jobs that catch your interest.