law school. She acknowledged that although she enjoyed some of
the classes, she worried about what she would do with these majors
if she didn’t go to law school. She said she knew a lot about being a
lawyer because of her family, but she was less informed about her
other alternatives. In addition, her prior work experiences had not
given her an opportunity to investigate options that she was pres-
ently considering.
E’s readiness to engage the career problem-solving and decision-
making process was to some degree hampered by her negative
thinking. Her anxiety over selecting one option from her many
areas of interest and her frustration over not having made a deci-
sion made it difficult to further clarify her self-knowledge and
option knowledge. At the time of her visit to the career center, E
seemed to be low on the capability dimension of the readiness
model (see Figure 8.3). In contrast, E does not seem to be affected
by issues associated with the complexity dimension. She comes
from a supportive, intact family that appears to be providing ade-
quate financial support. She has no physical limitations and has had
opportunities to work, take responsibility, and develop useful skills
that might serve her in future occupations. Given E’s low capabil-
ity and low complexity, the career adviser concluded that E pos-
sessed a moderate level of readiness for career decision making and
could be helped through brief staff-assisted services.
Define Problem and Analyze Causes.From a CIP perspective, E’s
gap was the lack of a specific occupational goal (Occupational
Knowledge), as well as a tendency toward negative thinking (Exec-
utive Processing) that essentially shut down her ability to effec-
tively process information and make a career decision. Although E
had used a decision-making strategy to identify a course of study,
she had been unable to apply this same strategy to the choice of an
occupation. E’s negative thinking caused her to overgeneralize and
be fairly rigid in her thinking about options. Her role models were
primarily in the legal field, and it was hard for her to imagine what
A COGNITIVE INFORMATION PROCESSING APPROACH 355