Preprint

A Safe Harbour in a Cut-Throat World? General and Engineering-Specific Primal World Beliefs Among Indian Engineering Undergraduates

Ritabrata Chakraborty

School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Pennsylvania

Preprint, 17 October 2026

Paper (PDF) Code & Data Cite

Abstract

Primal world beliefs (primals), people's most basic beliefs about whether the world is Safe, Enticing and Alive, predict well-being but have rarely been studied in non-Western students or alongside beliefs about a specific domain. A convenience sample of 108 Indian engineering undergraduates (aged 17–25) completed the 18-item Primals Inventory (PI-18) and 18 new, positively keyed engineering-specific items. Relative to published reference values, students saw the world as markedly less Safe (d = −1.06), with the largest deviations on items describing the world as cut-throat and competitive (86.1% agreed) and as bad. Yet they rated engineering as substantially safer than the world (dz = 0.72, 95% CI [0.51, 1.00]); this elevation persisted when only positively keyed general items were compared (dz = 0.50) and was specific to Safe, with negligible differences for Enticing and Alive. General primals explained only 12%–22% of the variance in engineering-specific beliefs. Measurement analyses showed that reverse-keyed PI-18 items formed a method factor, and that the all-positive engineering items were dominated by one general factor and partly contaminated by acquiescence, except for the Safe subscale. Students may treat engineering as a protected pathway within a threatening world, consistent with compensatory-control and effort-justification accounts that require longitudinal testing. Domain-specific primal measures need balanced keying, and PI-18 studies in India should model keying effects.

Keywords: PI-18, Worldview, Career Security, Acquiescent Responding, Reverse-Keyed Items, STEM Higher Education

Key results

d = −1.06General Safe vs. published reference values (PI-18)
86.1%agreed the world is “cut‑throat and competitive”
dz = 0.72Engineering rated safer than the world, within person
12–22%Variance in engineering beliefs explained by general primals

Findings

  1. A cut-throat world. Students' general primals were below reference values on every scale, most of all on Safe, driven by agreement that the world is competitive and getting worse.
  2. A safety premium for engineering. Students rated engineering as markedly safer than the world. The gap held under a keying-matched comparison and was specific to Safe. Engineering was not seen as more enticing or purposeful than the world.
  3. Loose coupling. General primals explained only 12%–22% of the variance in engineering-specific beliefs, which favours differentiation over a simple top-down “lens” account.
  4. Keying matters. Reverse-keyed PI-18 items formed a method factor. The all-positive engineering items were dominated by a general factor and partly inflated by acquiescence, except the Safe subscale.

Figures

Heat map of item intercorrelations for the 18 PI-18 items and 18 engineering-specific items.
Figure 1: Item Intercorrelations for the General (PI-18) and Engineering-Specific (EPB-18) Items (N = 108). Thin Outlines Mark Intended Subscales; Thick Lines Separate the Instruments
Dot plot of each PI-18 item mean in this sample compared with the published reference mean.
Figure 2: General Primal Items in the Present Sample (Circles; Means with 95% CIs, N = 108) Compared with Published Reference Means (Diamonds; Clifton & Yaden, 2021, Study 2, N = 5,171). (R) Marks Reverse-Keyed Items, Shown After Rescoring
Two-panel figure: engineering-specific versus general Safe, Enticing and Alive means, and a scatter plot of each student's engineering versus general Safe score.
Figure 3: Engineering-Specific Versus General Beliefs. (A) Means with 95% CIs; Hollow Markers Use Only Positively Keyed PI-18 Items. (B) Each Point Is One Student; Dashed Lines Mark the Scale Midpoint; the Solid Line Is the Least-Squares Fit
Forest plot of correlations between the acquiescence index and each general and engineering-specific scale.
Figure 4: Correlations (95% CIs) of the Content-Balanced Acquiescence Index with General and Engineering-Specific Scales

Paper, data & code

First page of the paper

Citation

@misc{chakraborty2026safeharbour,
  title     = {A Safe Harbour in a Cut-Throat World? General and Engineering-Specific
               Primal World Beliefs Among Indian Engineering Undergraduates},
  author    = {Chakraborty, Ritabrata},
  year      = {2026},
  note      = {Preprint},
  url       = {https://ritabrata-chakraborty.github.io/Primal-World-Beliefs-Engineering/}
}