8

A Cognitive Information

Processing Approach to

Career Problem Solving

and Decision Making

Gary W. Peterson, James P. Sampson Jr.,

Janet G. Lenz, Robert C. Reardon

An old adage goes something like this: “Give people a fish and they
eat for a day, but teach them how to fish and they eat for a lifetime.”
In this chapter, that message is applied to career counseling. We
show how career counselors can not only help individuals make an
appropriate career choice today but, more important, can help them
acquire the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that will enable them to
make appropriate career choices for a lifetime. The ultimate aim of
the theoretical approach presented here is to provide a parsimonious
conceptual framework for helping individuals become skillful career
problem solvers and decision makers throughout their lives.
We begin this chapter by briefly placing our cognitive informa-
tion processing (CIP) approach within the context of career theory
and practice as well as in cognitive psychology. We then provide
information about CIP theory and related research, applications of
CIP in practice, and a summary of related research and speculation
about future trends; we conclude with two case applications.

Background of the Approach

Perhaps the earliest beginnings of viewing career problem solving
from a cognitive theory perspective can be traced to Frank Parsons’s

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