assumed to be important determinants of career choice (Betsworth &
Fouad, 1997; Hansen, 1984). SCCT’s interest model emphasizes
both the experiential and cognitive factors that give rise to career-
related interests, while tracing the role of interests in helping to
motivate choice behavior and skill acquisition.
As children and adolescents, our interpersonal environments
expose us to a wide array of activities such as crafts, music, sports,
mathematics, and mechanical tasks that have potential relevance to
occupational behavior. In addition to direct or vicarious exposure to
diverse activities, we are differentially reinforced for pursuing certain
activities and for achieving particular levels of performance. It is
largely through repeated activity practice, modeling, and feedback
from important others that children and adolescents are able, grad-
ually, to develop their skills, adopt personal performance standards,
form a sense of their capability at diverse tasks (self-efficacy), and
beliefs about what will happen if they perform these tasks (outcome
expectations).
Our interest model, depicted in Figure 7.1, holds that self-efficacy
and outcome expectations regarding activity involvement exert an
important, direct effect on the formation of career interests. Specifi-
cally, SCCT asserts that people form enduring interest in an activity
when they view themselves as competent at it and when they antic-
ipate that performing it will produce valued outcomes (Bandura,
1986; Lent, Larkin, & Brown, 1989). Conversely, people are likely to
fail to develop interests in (or may form aversions to) activities in
which their self-efficacy is weak or when they anticipate receiving
neutral or negative outcomes.
As Figure 7.1 also shows, emergent interests (along with self-
efficacy and outcome expectations) promote particular goals for
activity involvement. In other words, as people develop an affinity
for an activity at which they feel efficacious and expect positive out-
comes, they form goals for sustaining or increasing their involve-
ment in that activity. These goals, in turn, increase the likelihood
of engaging in the activity. The attainments accruing from activ-
ity performance (such as trophies, grades, or self-satisfaction) then
SOCIAL COGNITIVE CAREER THEORY 265