The authors explore the hypothesis that career decision‐making self‐efficacy could be affected by negative career thoughts, Big Five personality factors, and cultural mistrust in a sample of African American and Caucasian college students. Findings demonstrated that negative career thinking, openness, and conscientiousness explained a significant amount of variance in career decision‐making self‐efficacy in a general sample of college students, but no unique variance was explained by cultural mistrust in a sample of African American college students.

According to cognitive information processing theory, career thoughts mediate the relationship between career and life stress and the ensuing career decision state. Using a sample of 232 college students and structural equation modeling, this study found that an increase in career and life stress was associated with an increase in negative career thinking and that an increase in such thoughts was associated with a lower level of decidedness and satisfaction with career choice. However, when the variation associated with negative career thoughts was partitioned in the mediated causal model, career and life stress became associated with less career indecision and dissatisfaction with career choice. The results suggest that counselors attend to negative career thoughts when individuals encounter career and life stress.

The primary purpose of this paper is to introduce essential elements of cognitive information processing (CIP) theory, research, and practice as they existed at the time of this writing. The introduction that follows describes the nature of career choices and career interventions, and the integration of theory, research, and practice. After the introduction, the paper continues with three main sections that include CIP theory related to vocational behavior, research related to vocational behavior and career intervention, and CIP theory related to career interventions. The first main section describes CIP theory, including the evolution of CIP theory, the nature of career problems, theoretical assumptions, the pyramid of information processing domains, the CASVE Cycle, and the use of the pyramid and CASVE cycle. The second main section describes CIP theory-based research in examining vocational behavior and establishing evidence-based practice for CIP theory-based career interventions. The third main section describes CIP theory related to career intervention practice, including theoretical assumptions, readiness for career decision making, readiness for career intervention, the differentiated service delivery model, and critical ingredients of career interventions. The paper concludes with regularly updated sources of information on CIP theory.

No abstract

This study identified relationships among career‐specific barriers (i.e., perfectionism, negative career thoughts, career decision‐making self‐efficacy) in a sample of 300 college students. The authors found relationships among the constructs of interest, prediction of variance in career decision‐making self‐efficacy, and differences among groups of perfectionists on endorsements of negative career thoughts and career decision‐making self‐efficacy. The findings suggest that interventions addressing maladaptive perfectionism and dysfunctional career thinking may enhance clients’ confidence in decision making.

This study adapted existing empirically supported interventions to explore options for serving large numbers of unemployed adults. Participants included 150 unemployed adults (72 experimental group, 78 control group) seeking employment office services to maintain U.S. federal unemployment compensation. A 1‐hour workshop was offered to the 72 experimental group participants. The same career development variables were assessed during data collection for both groups. Results revealed the workshop had no impact on negative career thinking and potentially increased career decision‐making difficulties in the experimental group. Intervention effectiveness issues, implications for future research, and intervention options with unemployed adults are discussed.

At a southeastern university, 226 undergraduate students completed measures of career decidedness, career self-efficacy, degree of dysfunctional career thinking, and career decision difficulty. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that the career-undecided students reported lower levels of career decision-making self-efficacy, higher levels of negative career thinking, and greater decision-making difficulties than did the career-decided students. Advisers working with career-undecided students should strive to enhance their self-efficacy by collaborating with them to attain small, accomplishable goals. (45 ref)-

T his chapter describes the nature and use of cognitive information processing (CIP) theory, originally known as the cognitive information processing approach to career problem solving and decision making and now known simply as CIP theory. The theory's core principle is that problem-solving and decision-making skills are essential in making career choices. CIP theory represents an application of general information processing theory to career choice (Peterson et al., 1991;Sampson, 2008;Sampson et al., 2004). CIP theory assumes that information processing is key to learning and that learning is crucial in promoting the understanding of self and options necessary to make informed and careful choices about occupations, education, training, employment, and leisure. Core elements of information processing theory that are included in CIP-based career interventions include: (a) how persons use schemata (knowledge structures) to organize, add to, and revise knowledge they have about themselves and their options; (b) the rational and intuitive processes persons apply to use what they know to arrive at a decision; and (c) the metacognitive processes persons use to manage problem solving.