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 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.

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.

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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.