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The Differentiation and Integration of Cognitive Structures

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A series of studies by Neimeyer and associates at the University of Florida documented the differentiation, integration, and development of cognitive vocational structures. In a study early in this series, Neimeyer, Nevill, Pro-bert, and Fukuyama (1985) used the cognitive differentiation grid to estimate the level of differentiation and integration, and found that more integrated cognitive schemas were associated with more effective decision making, but that lower levels of integration were associated with increased exploration. A second study (Neimeyer & Ebben, 1985) again used the grid to measure cognitive complexity and compared the effects of four self-directing vocational interventions: (1) the Self-Directed Search (Holland, 1985b); (2) an occupational information treatment; (3) a computer intervention; and (4) an attention control. This carefully designed study unearthed a wealth of information about the role of complexity and information in career intervention. Across all treatments, subjects decreased in complexity, with an associated increase in positivity.

The presentation of positive information reduced complexity, but the authors suggested that this reduction might be short-lived. They offered the interesting notion of curvilinear relationship between complexity and information that explains why information may both decrease and increase complexity.

A subsequent study by Nevill, Neimeyer, Probert, and Fukuyama (1986) found that cognitive schemas became better organized over time, and work by Neimeyer and Metzler (1987) using a cross-sectional design showed that differentiation and integration increased as procedures to assess vocational identity became more specific. Finally, Neimeyer, Brown, Metzler, Hagans, and Tanguy (1989) compared a standard with a personalized cognitive grid and confirmed the finding that women demonstrated higher levels of integration but lower levels of differentiation than men, which seems consistent with L. S. Gottfredson's (1981) belief that acceptable careers are circumscribed by gender early in life.



Analytic research efforts such as those described above are rare in vocational behavior and thus deserve careful scrutiny. Taken together, these studies suggest that although a complex set of personal constructs related to occupations is associated with career maturity and congruence, the presentation of information in its most common form--uniformly positive--may bolster and reinforce overly simplistic views of the world of work. Positive information may therefore result not only in premature career choices, but also, if overdone, the rejection of career options. Furthermore, because various vocational interventions convey information differently, this aspect of the treatment may have a greater effect on the success or failure of the intervention than does the mode of the intervention (e.g., individual or group) (Neimeyer & Ebben, 1985).

To illustrate, studies by Osipow (1962) and Spokane and Spokane (1981) suggested that although exposure to minimal positive information resulted in positive attitude changes toward an occupation, information that was presented too positively actually produced the opposite effect: a blocking or rejection of the occupation. This conclusion is supported by a long history of research on realistic preview in industrial-organizational psychology (Wanous, 1973) that concluded that balanced or realistic information about a job was more likely to lead to beneficial organizational outcomes (e.g., stability and satisfaction) than unrealistically positive previews. A recent study of the realistic preview effect by Meglino et al. (1988) presented subjects with either an enhanced preview, a reduced preview designed to lower overly optimistic job expectations, or no preview at all. Some subjects received both the enhanced and reduced previews. Those who were given the combined previews (positive and negative information) had significant less job turnover than those who had received the negative preview, but any preview resulted in some lessening of turnover compared to no preview. Furthermore, subjects' attitudes toward the occupation after five weeks were related to the preview in expected ways. Because this study was conducted with women in the Army rather than in analogue fashion, the results strengthen the idea that balanced information is important to career choice. Meta-analytic evidence (Breaugh, 1983; Reilly et al., 1981) confirms that realistic job previews are somewhat more effective, especially when self-selection is controlled for (Miceli, 1985), but that no convincing explanation for this effect has yet been offered. We have much to learn about information processing.

Personal Hypothesis Testing and Career Information

In a recent paper, Blustein and Strohmer (1987) applied principles of social cognition to the problem of career information in a natural extension of earlier information-seeking and cognitive complexity research. The authors argued that individuals will favor information and hypotheses that confirm their existing personal beliefs. This confirmatory bias seems to hold across a variety of life situations and decisions. Blustein and Strohmer noted that it is unbiased hypothesis testing or the undistorted evaluation of vocational options that leads to high-quality decision making. Janis and Mann (1977) also considered the unbiased consideration of negative (disconfirmatory) input to be the hallmark of a high-quality personal decision. Such a conclusion is quite consistent with the work of Haase et al. (1979) and Neimeyer et al. (1989), who found that negative or mixed information led to greater complexity, whereas positive information led to greater cognitive simplicity. Since complexity has been significantly related to congruence, it can be argued that negative information improves the quality of the decision and thus leads to greater congruence.

Blustein and Strohmer (1987) conducted two experiments to test the notion that career decisions are instances of personal hypothesis testing. In the first experiment, it was theorized that hypotheses that were directly relevant to an individual's career plans would generate confirmatory bias, whereas those that were unrelated to personal plans would lead to the unbiased consideration of new information. Subjects were accordingly presented with "objective" information about occupations that was either relevant or irrelevant to their personal career plans, and their responses were rated for evidence of confirmatory bias. Subjects who were given the" relevant information exhibited considerably more confirmatory bias than those who received irrelevant information. In the second sub study, a bogus interest inventory was used to simulate expert input. Again subjects were inclined to consider information that confirmed the match between the occupation under consideration and their personal interests, and personality. The authors suggested that this confirming process may be an example of the subjects attempting to reduce cognitive dissonance by ignoring or discounting disconfirming information in an effort to bolster an option already chosen on some conscious or internal level.

Blustein and Strohmer's (1987) study opened a large area of research on the role of social cognition in career search and information. Social cognition theory holds that values, needs, and expectancies affect the way individuals perceive the social environment. These perceptions differ from what would result from a simple analysis of the information received (Higgins & Bargh, 1987). Further, the theory also argues that people may not use rational strategies to weigh the available evidence or to use it to inform their decisions. Research in social cognition has repeatedly demonstrated that in experimental studies individuals go well beyond the data presented during the experiment, even to the point of "remembering" an abstract version of data that they never received (Higgins & Bargh, 1987). Certain features of the data will also influence its salience. For example, Higgins and Bargh concluded that the framework used to process information markedly affects how it is encoded and retrieved, a conclusion supported by Holland, Magoon, and Spokane (1981), who argued that a cognitive framework was an important part of a successful career intervention. This framework is probably most effective when it is a personally derived rather than a counselor-supplied explanation, but some framework is generally better than none (Hoffman 8c Teglasi, 1982). Considering how prone individuals are to accepting confirming versions of information, Higgins and Bargh have posed the question, "Do people never seek the truth?"

It is increasingly clear that the simple presentation of positive or confirming information about career options, without the benefit of a well-constructed cognitive framework for organizing that information, portrays the problem of career information in its least flattering and ineffective manner. Certain aspects of career information will be more salient and influential than others, and the absorption of information presented in career interventions is affected as much by certain characteristics of the perceiver as by the qualities of the information. This was noted some time ago by Samler (1961), who observed that it was the psychosocial or human side of occupational information that was attended to in counseling, not the detailed data about jobs (e.g., salary). Samler observed that it was the occasional photograph in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles that received the most notice from clients, and it is the pictorial content of information that has received the most criticism from minorities and women wishing to rectify imbalances in occupational participation rates. Likewise, Fletcher (1966) argued that vocational interests were compilations of concepts that each had a feeling or affect tone that was considered when making a career decision. A few studies have identified which aspects of information will be salient for which people. Heilman (1979), for example, showed that the sexual composition of a field will have a clear and differential effect on its attractiveness for male and female high school students. Females expressed more interest in and estimated their chances to be better when the ratio of women to men was rising.

Male subjects, on the other hand, were less interested in an occupation as the ratio of men to women became more favorable. Likewise, Norman and Bessemer (1968) found that subjects clung to familiar notions about occupations even in the face of new or conflicting information about their prestige; simple descriptive information, however, did eradicate some prestige effects. Spokane and Spokane (1981) found that positive descriptions and pictorial representations of a reinforced model for participating in an occupation were effective in increasing positive reactions to an occupation, except when that information was unrealistically positive or imbalanced. Biggers (1971) found that most subjects used two or three categories of information to evaluate an occupation, and that the type of work was by far the most commonly used category. Biggers, in this early effort, made no attempt to study respondent characteristics.

A Continuum of Career-Related Information

Rusalem (1954) argued that the presentation of occupational information was more than a simple collection of facts, for it also involved the client's selective perception, which was influenced by the client's feelings about an occupation as well as the client's self-concept. Rusalem further noted that the closer the individual was to the occupation, the more helpful information about it would be. Occupational information can reside in sources very close to the individual (e.g., parents, a personal book) or very much of a distance (e.g., a job site).

Most exploratory experiences begin with proximal information but must proceed to more distal experiences. The most proximal information may come from naive or informal assessments by the client rather than actual information about occupations. Other proximal and easily gathered data can be derived from interest inventories administered in the counseling sessions, information supplied by the counselor, or a computer-assisted exploration. More distal information may be drawn from simulated experiences such as work samples or job experience kits (Krumboltz, 1971), or from discussions or conversations with friends or family members. The most distal, complex, and usually accurate information is gathered when the client moves out into the world of work for a "shadowing" experience, a cooperative arrangement, intern-ship, or trial job. For example, Heitzmann, Schmidt, and Hurley (1986) described a program in which students could make regular on-site visits to a company. Typically in career counseling, it is desirable to mobilize the client to search for distal information and to bring that information back to the counseling session for evaluation.

Mobilizing the Effective Acquisition of Relevant Information

The research in the three areas of career information discussed above-information seeking, cognitive complexity and social cognition-suggest the following applications to counseling practice:
  1. Counselors should encourage clients to integrate negative or discontinuing information about every option under consideration. The client's and perhaps the counselor's tendency will be to ignore such information in favor of more confirming input. Some evaluation of the underlying constructs (and their appropriateness) that the client is using to evaluate occupations should result from the consideration of this disconfirming information. There are methods of reviewing personal constructs (e.g., the Tyler Vocational Card Sort; see Tyler, 1961), but an effort should be made to uncover and challenge any hidden constructs or private rules that may be affecting a client's exploration (see Krumboltz, 1983).

  2. Exploration should be focused upon options that are congruent with the client's interest and abilities, as well as those that may be at the leading or growing edge of the client's zone of "acceptable" alternatives. The broader the exploration, the more likely a congruent outcome will be. A blend of exploratory strategies in which some sweeping review of possibilities is followed by a more in-depth and focused search is the most common model of exploration (Gati & Tikotzi, 1989).

  3. Exploration should begin with proximal information and become increasingly distal. Counselors should discuss the exclusionary nature of information systems around occupations and anticipate any constraints that may be operating to limit the client's access to accurate information. Counselors should not try to supply the client with information, but rather should mobilize the client to explore and penetrate to inside levels of an occupation.

  4. Exploration and information seeking entail both behavioral and cognitive aspects, and should be considered as complex phenomena during counseling. Information based upon the counselor's experience or taken from some readily available commercial source should not be presented until and unless the client has clearly expressed an interest in and readiness for this information. Rather, the contextual and individual factors involved in the decision will probably dictate the nature of the client's exploratory behavior (Blustein & Phillips, 1988).

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