did not think she had the writing and quantitative skills required for
success in such fields. The counselor pointed out that her aptitude
data suggested that she didhave the needed aptitudes, and subse-
quent discussions with her revealed that her writing skills were well-
developed but that she had always disparaged them by comparing
her written papers in college to published articles. After a series of
additional efficacy-enhancing efforts, she ultimately decided to con-
tinue her education in a doctoral program in urban sociology, where
she went on to perform quite well.
The second strategy represents a slight modification of standard
occupational card sort procedures and can be illustrated with an-
other counseling case. The client was a thirty-year-old woman who
was unhappy in her job as an advertising salesperson for a major
trade publisher. We had her complete a modified vocational card
sort procedure in which she, as is standard practice, was asked ini-
tially to sort occupational titles into “might choose,” “in question,”
and “would not choose” categories. We then asked her to sort the
occupations in the “in question” and “would not choose” categories
further into subcategories reflecting (1) self-efficacy beliefs (“might
choose if I thought I had the skills”), (2) outcome expectations
(“might choose if I thought they would offer me things that I
value”), (3) definite lack of interest (“wouldn’t choose under any
circumstances”), and (4) “other.”
As a result of this two-stage sorting process, she placed several
occupations (including social psychology, sociology, and econom-
ics) in the “lack of self-efficacy” category. Subsequent discussions
with her, as with the first client, revealed that she did not think she
had the quantitative aptitude to compete and succeed in such
research-oriented social professions. In order for her to gather data
on the realism of these self-efficacy beliefs, the counselor asked her
to study sources of information on graduate study in these fields.
She discovered that her scores on the quantitative section of the
Graduate Records Exam (taken several years before) were quite
competitive for graduate study in psychology and sociology, though
not in economics. She ultimately decided to pursue a career in
SOCIAL COGNITIVE CAREER THEORY 289