Future anxiety, psychological courage and career decision-making difficulties in emerging adults: a variable- and person-centred analysis

Abstract Career decision-making is a salient developmental task in emerging adulthood. This study examined how future anxiety and psychological courage (PC) relate to career decision-making difficulties, controlling for perceived social support, subjective socioeconomic status (SES), age and gender, and using complementary variable- and person-centred approaches. Emerging adults (N = 462) completed the Career Decision-Making Difficulties Questionnaire (CDDQ) and measures of future anxiety and PC. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that higher future anxiety was consistently associated with greater overall career indecision and with each CDDQ domain, whereas PC was negatively associated with overall difficulties and with Lack of Readiness and Lack of Information (but not Inconsistent Information). Latent profile analysis identified three distinct profiles—Low-difficulty, Moderate-difficulty, and High-difficulty. Controlling for covariates and using the Low-difficulty profile as the reference category, higher future anxiety was associated with greater odds of belonging to the Moderate-difficulty and High-difficulty profiles, whereas higher PC was associated with lower odds of belonging to the Moderate-difficulty profile but was not significantly associated with odds of belonging to the High-difficulty profile. Findings suggest that emotional and motivational factors—specifically future anxiety and PC—are promising avenues for understanding individual differences in career decision-making difficulties during emerging adulthood.