The dry, often vacuous descriptions of career information sources found in some textbooks do not explain the complex psychological process whereby an individual filters and integrates environmental information for use in career decisions. The promotion or mobilization of an effective search and information processing is a fascinating and vital part of any career intervention. The study of career search and information overlaps to a degree with ongoing work in industrial-organizational psychology on recruitment and job preview (Meglino, DeNisis, Youngblood, & Williams, 1988; Reilly, Brown, Blood, & Malatesta, 1981; Wanous, 1973), and provides a natural linkage between counseling psychology and industrial psychology. Rapidly developing theory and research in social cognition also provide fresh perspectives on this core area of career psychology.
The Lamination of Information and Barriers around Occupations
Occupations and professions develop protective mechanisms to limit the number of new recruits and aspirants. Bucher (1976) provided an unusually clear and concise perspective on the constraints that prevent an individual from gaining entry to or information about specific occupations. One form of constraint is pervasive, and affects an individual's development without that person's immediate awareness; the second form of constraint includes those sudden or random events that an individual may be aware of but have little power to control. The pervasive constraints include one's position in society, which result in the unconscious formation of a world view peculiar to that position, and which may act to limit one's aspirations and horizons simply through the lack of consideration of different life possibilities. For example, according to Bucher, the poor ghetto child may be less likely than the upper middle class child to aspire to a career in science.
Secondly, there are certain opportunity structures, which Bucher (1979) defined as "range of life chances or options available to the individual", that are associated with one's position in society. These structures interact with position constraints to limit the range of choices open to an individual. For example, Bucher described one common problem in vocational counseling in which the son or daughter of an upwardly mobile professional family chooses a job in the skilled crafts. The opportunities and barriers operating when an upper middle class child aspires to a nonprofessional occupation are similar to those when a lower class child aspires to a high-level position. Finally, Bucher noted that most occupations project auras or images of what might be required for entry that often discourage minority or disadvantaged applicants from aspiring or applying to those professions.
In addition to the pervasive constraints that limit access to jobs, certain specific barriers further restrict access. Most occupations have inside channels of communication, such as trade journals or professional societies that are designed to slow entry to their ranks. One's access--or lack of access--to the flow of information on the inside of an occupation also determines one's ability to acquire a job in that field. Frequently, there is a socialization system (usually called an "old boy" network) that controls exposure to the experiences that provide the opportunity to test and improve one's skills in order to advance to the higher ranks in an occupation (McCall, Lombardo, and Morrison, 1988).
One of the major tasks in career intervention is to help the client penetrate the layers of constraints surrounding an occupation by positioning the client inside the flow of accurate information around that profession (Pavalko, 1976). The systematic study of how information affects decision making and which aspects of that information are crucial has lagged far behind the development of new media and technology for presenting occupational information. However, four long-range programs of research on the problem of the effects of career information on career decision making are beginning to improve our understanding of the process of acquiring such information. The first, a twenty-year research program by Krumboltz and his colleagues, attempted to promote information seeking through model reinforcement. The second, by Bodden (1970) and his co-workers studied the role of cognitive complexity in reactions to career information. The third, a more recent variation of Bodden's original work by Neimeyer and associates, focused on the differentiation and integration of cognitive vocational structures. The final program of research used principles of social cognition to view the career client as a personal hypothesis tester who examines occupations in the face of information encountered (Blustein & Strohmer, 1987).
Promoting Career Information Seeking
In an unusually vigorous series of studies, Krumboltz and his associates (Krumboltz & Schroeder, 1965, Ryan & Krumboltz, 1964; Thoresen, Hosford, & Krumboltz, 1970; Thoresen & Krumboltz, 1968; Thoresen, Krumboltz, & Varenhorst, 1967) used direct counselor reinforcement of interview responses or treatments employing audio-taped models being reinforced to promote the frequency and variety of information-seeking behavior (ISB) both inside and outside of the counseling interview. In the first of these studies, Ryan and Krumboltz (1964) reinforced decision or deliberation responses during a twenty-minute interview. The reinforced responses significantly increased in frequency in both the decision and deliberation groups when compared to a non-reinforced control. Subsequent work by Krumboltz and Schroeder (1965) compared reinforcement counseling, model reinforcement counseling, and a no-treatment control group. The reinforced groups engaged in significantly more ISB than the controls. Direct reinforcement increased ISB more for females than for males, whereas model reinforcement produced the opposite result.
Thoresen et al. (1967) used an improved design to examine the differential effects of sex-pairings on the promotion of ISB. This study replicated the gender difference in model reinforcement (males responded more), but it may simply be that the male model, who engaged in athletics, was more attractive than the female model, who was a speech therapist. Pursuing this problem further, Thoresen and Krumboltz (1968) found that high-success athletic models who were reinforced for ISB on an audiotape were most effective in promoting ISB among subjects who heard the tape. Thoresen et al. (1970) varied the level of success (attractiveness) of the model on the tape but found no significantly different effects for the highly successful model, although the results were in the hypothesized direction. Related studies (Hoffman, Spokane, & Magoon, 1981; Krivatsy 8c Magoon, 1976) found increases in ISB following brief inventory feedback, and Kivlighan, Hageseth, Tipton, and McGovern (1981) found gains in ISB following individual or group intervention.
It seems quite clear from these findings that nearly any career intervention, regardless of how brief or artificial, will stimulate a modest increase in information seeking. Perhaps the term focused exploratory behavior would be a better label for what was stimulated in these studies. R. A. Myers (1971; 1986) classified information seeking as an instrumental outcome behavior, and wondered why it continued to be so popular as an outcome measure considering that few attempts were made to verify the accuracy of the client's self-report of the information seeking, and that any exploratory behavior was assumed to be beneficial, regardless of its content. Although Krumboltz and his colleagues were more concerned with the properties of the model as a stimulus for exploratory behavior, later investigators have simply used ISB as an outcome measure, without paying attention to the nature or content of the exploration those results. In this respect Myers's advice is well taken: We have already demonstrated that career intervention will result in increases in exploratory behavior, and that these increases will result in beneficial client outcomes (Grotevant, Scarr, & Weinberg, 1977). What is needed is a more analytic look at the data and its effects on the client's cognitive process (Myers, 1986). Krumboltz's (1983) most recent work, for example, suggested that private belief systems may delimit exploration and consideration of options at a level that is not entirely conscious to the client nor open to the counselor. More sophisticated, recently developed measures of exploration (Stumpf, Colarelli, & Hartman, 1983) are instrumental outcomes that can be tied to very specific treatment components, and contain both behavioral and cognitive elements. New work in computer-assisted intervention offers a unique way to study which aspects of information are attended to and which are absorbed during exploration.
Cognitive Complexity and Career Information
A later and more analytic line of research on career information by Bodden (1970) and his associates at Texas Tech University attempted to assess the impact of controlled information presentations on the client's cognitive state. In an unusually heuristic doctoral dissertation and several subsequent papers with his colleagues, Bodden outlined a model of the relationship between cognitive complexity and career information. Arguing that cognitive complexity should lead to finer judgments among stimuli and information about jobs, and therefore greater appropriateness, Bodden (1970) used a variant of Kelly's Role Construct Rep Test to measure complexity, a measure of realism based upon ability and a congruence measure based upon Holland's (1985a) theory of person-environment fit to assess appropriateness. No significant relationship between complexity and appropriateness was found in this first study, although there was some evidence that complexity was related to congruence as measured in Holland's theory. A subsequent study (Bodden & Klein, 1972), however, confirmed the relationship between cognitive complexity and congruence. Furthermore, complexity was found to be independent of Holland type. Bodden and Klein (1973) later found a significant relationship between cognitive complexity and the affective stimulus value of occupations.
When judging negatively valued occupations, subjects tended to be more cognitively complex than when judging positively valued occupations. In a subsequent co-relational study, Winer, Cesari, Haase, and Bodden (1979) found that a measure of cognitive complexity was related to career maturity.
Bodden and James (1976) shifted the research tactics of the Texas Tech group from a co-relational to an experimental mode. They either presented subjects with information on the twelve occupations that are included on Bodden's (1970) cognitive differentiation grid, or relegated them to a control group that received no information. Unexpectedly, reading the information significantly reduced complexity and differentiation, a finding that Bodden was hard-pressed to explain and interpreted as a refutation of his model. He suggested that clients may actually "tighten" their construct system and use new information selectively to bolster their current views of the world of work (Bodden & James, 1976). The findings from these studies challenged the conventional wisdom that information was uniformly beneficial in career intervention and suggested a more complex view of information processing, which meant that "the practicing counselor should be wary of the possibility that his [sic] clients may distort new information in such a way as to fit preconceived ways of viewing the world of work" (Bodden & James, 1976).
In a replication and extension of Bodden and James (1976) with a markedly improved design, Haase, Reed, Winer, and Bodden (1979) presented subjects with positive, negative, or mixed information about the twelve occupations on the cognitive differentiation grid. They found that any negative information moderated the simplifying effects of information on complexity; that is, mixed or negative information resulted in less simplification than positive information alone.
Two final entries in this important series of research studies (Cesari, Winer, & Piper, 1984; Cesari, Winer, Zychlinski & Laird, 1982) examined differences in cognitive complexity between career decided and undecided students following exposure to occupational information. In both studies, no differences were found between decided and undecided students, although the simplification effects found in Haase et al. (1979) were replicated.
Secondly, there are certain opportunity structures, which Bucher (1979) defined as "range of life chances or options available to the individual", that are associated with one's position in society. These structures interact with position constraints to limit the range of choices open to an individual. For example, Bucher described one common problem in vocational counseling in which the son or daughter of an upwardly mobile professional family chooses a job in the skilled crafts. The opportunities and barriers operating when an upper middle class child aspires to a nonprofessional occupation are similar to those when a lower class child aspires to a high-level position. Finally, Bucher noted that most occupations project auras or images of what might be required for entry that often discourage minority or disadvantaged applicants from aspiring or applying to those professions.
In addition to the pervasive constraints that limit access to jobs, certain specific barriers further restrict access. Most occupations have inside channels of communication, such as trade journals or professional societies that are designed to slow entry to their ranks. One's access--or lack of access--to the flow of information on the inside of an occupation also determines one's ability to acquire a job in that field. Frequently, there is a socialization system (usually called an "old boy" network) that controls exposure to the experiences that provide the opportunity to test and improve one's skills in order to advance to the higher ranks in an occupation (McCall, Lombardo, and Morrison, 1988).
One of the major tasks in career intervention is to help the client penetrate the layers of constraints surrounding an occupation by positioning the client inside the flow of accurate information around that profession (Pavalko, 1976). The systematic study of how information affects decision making and which aspects of that information are crucial has lagged far behind the development of new media and technology for presenting occupational information. However, four long-range programs of research on the problem of the effects of career information on career decision making are beginning to improve our understanding of the process of acquiring such information. The first, a twenty-year research program by Krumboltz and his colleagues, attempted to promote information seeking through model reinforcement. The second, by Bodden (1970) and his co-workers, studied the role of cognitive complexity in reactions to career information. The third, a more recent variation of Bodden's original work by Neimeyer and associates, focused on the differentiation and integration of cognitive vocational structures. The final program of research used principles of social cognition to view the career client as a personal hypothesis tester who examines occupations in the face of information encountered (Blustein & Strohmer, 1987).
Promoting Career Information Seeking
In an unusually vigorous series of studies, Krumboltz and his associates (Krumboltz & Schroeder, 1965, Ryan & Krumboltz, 1964; Thoresen, Hosford, & Krumboltz, 1970; Thoresen & Krumboltz, 1968; Thoresen, Krumboltz, & Varenhorst, 1967) used direct counselor reinforcement of interview responses or treatments employing audio-taped models being reinforced to promote the frequency and variety of information-seeking behavior (ISB) both inside and outside of the counseling interview. In the first of these studies, Ryan and Krumboltz (1964) reinforced decision or deliberation responses during a twenty-minute interview. The reinforced responses significantly increased in frequency in both the decision and deliberation groups when compared to a non-reinforced control. Subsequent work by Krumboltz and Schroeder (1965) compared reinforcement counseling, model reinforcement counseling, and a no-treatment control group. The reinforced groups engaged in significantly more ISB than the controls. Direct reinforcement increased ISB more for females than for males, whereas model reinforcement produced the opposite result.
Thoresen et al. (1967) used an improved design to examine the differential effects of sex-pairings on the promotion of ISB. This study replicated the gender difference in model reinforcement (males responded more), but it may simply be that the male model, who engaged in athletics, was more attractive than the female model, who was a speech therapist. Pursuing this problem further, Thoresen and Krumboltz (1968) found that high-success athletic models that were reinforced for ISB on an audiotape were most effective in promoting ISB among subjects who heard the tape. Thoresen et al. (1970) varied the level of success (attractiveness) of the model on the tape but found no significantly different effects for the highly successful model, although the results were in the hypothesized direction. Related studies (Hoffman, Spokane, & Magoon, 1981; Krivatsy 8c Magoon, 1976) found increases in ISB following brief inventory feedback, and Kivlighan, Hageseth, Tipton, and McGovern (1981) found gains in ISB following individual or group intervention.
It seems quite clear from these findings that nearly any career intervention, regardless of how brief or artificial, will stimulate a modest increase in information seeking. Perhaps the term focused exploratory behavior would be a better label for what was stimulated in these studies. R. A. Myers (1971; 1986) classified information seeking as an instrumental outcome behavior, and wondered why it continued to be so popular as an outcome measure considering that few attempts were made to verify the accuracy of the client's self-report of the information seeking, and that any exploratory behavior was assumed to be beneficial, regardless of its content. Although Krumboltz and his colleagues were more concerned with the properties of the model as a stimulus for exploratory behavior, later investigators have simply used ISB as an outcome measure, without paying attention to the nature or content of the exploration that results. In this respect Myers's advice is well taken: We have already demonstrated that career intervention will result in increases in exploratory behavior, and that these increases will result in beneficial client outcomes (Grotevant, Scarr, & Weinberg, 1977). What is needed is a more analytic look at the data and its effects on the client's cognitive process (Myers, 1986). Krumboltz's (1983) most recent work, for example, suggested that private belief systems may delimit exploration and consideration of options at a level that is not entirely conscious to the client nor open to the counselor. More sophisticated, recently developed measures of exploration (Stumpf, Colarelli, & Hartman, 1983) are instrumental outcomes that can be tied to very specific treatment components, and contain both behavioral and cognitive elements. New work in computer-assisted intervention offers a unique way to study which aspects of information are attended to and which are absorbed during exploration.
Cognitive Complexity and Career Information
A later and more analytic line of research on career information by Bodden (1970) and his associates at Texas Tech University attempted to assess the impact of controlled information presentations on the client's cognitive state. In an unusually heuristic doctoral dissertation and several subsequent papers with his colleagues, Bodden outlined a model of the relationship between cognitive complexity and career information. Arguing that cognitive complexity should lead to finer judgments among stimuli and information about jobs, and therefore greater appropriateness, Bodden (1970) used a variant of Kelly's Role Construct Rep Test to measure complexity, a measure of realism based upon ability and a congruence measure based upon Holland's (1985a) theory of person-environment fit to assess appropriateness. No significant relationship between complexity and appropriateness was found in this first study, although there was some evidence that complexity was related to congruence as measured in Holland's theory. A subsequent study (Bodden & Klein, 1972), however, confirmed the relationship between cognitive complexity and congruence. Furthermore, complexity was found to be independent of Holland type. Bodden and Klein (1973) later found a significant relationship between cognitive complexity and the affective stimulus value of occupations.
When judging negatively valued occupations, subjects tended to be more cognitively complex than when judging positively valued occupations. In a subsequent co-relational study, Winer, Cesari, Haase, and Bodden (1979) found that a measure of cognitive complexity was related to career maturity.
Bodden and James (1976) shifted the research tactics of the Texas Tech group from a co-relational to an experimental mode. They either presented subjects with information on the twelve occupations that are included on Bodden's (1970) cognitive differentiation grid, or relegated them to a control group that received no information. Unexpectedly, reading the information significantly reduced complexity and differentiation, a finding that Bodden was hard-pressed to explain and interpreted as a refutation of his model. He suggested that clients may actually "tighten" their construct system and use new information selectively to bolster their current views of the world of work (Bodden & James, 1976). The findings from these studies challenged the conventional wisdom that information was uniformly beneficial in career intervention and suggested a more complex view of information processing, which meant that "the practicing counselor should be wary of the possibility that his [sic] clients may distort new information in such a way as to fit preconceived ways of viewing the world of work" (Bodden & James, 1976).
In a replication and extension of Bodden and James (1976) with a markedly improved design, Haase, Reed, Winer, and Bodden (1979) presented subjects with either positive, negative, or mixed information about the twelve occupations on the cognitive differentiation grid. They found that any negative information moderated the simplifying effects of information on complexity; that is, mixed or negative information resulted in less simplification than positive information alone.
Two final entries in this important series of research studies (Cesari, Winer, & Piper, 1984; Cesari, Winer, Zychlinski & Laird, 1982) examined differences in cognitive complexity between career decided and undecided students following exposure to occupational information. In both studies, no differences were found between decided and undecided students, although the simplification effects found in Haase et al. (1979) were replicated.
