acceptable professional alternatives are successively selected, and three categories of
“tolerable limits” are circumscribed: gender identity, prestige, and effort. The final choice
is the result of a compromise between the level of renunciation the person is forced to in
the situation, and the actual perception of this compromise. On the basis of experimental
studies, there have been formulated the following rules of reaching a compromise:
- the relative importance of gender identity, prestige, and effort depends on
the severity of the compromise; - a good choice will be sought rather than the optimal. The effort involved
in gathering and analysing the information necessary for the optimal
choice may be too big; - unsatisfactory choices will be avoided by persevering in an inefficient
option, subsequent seeking of alternatives, reconsidering the effort limit
or postponing decisions and commitments; - people get used to making compromises in work (in order to satisfy their
professional interests); it is however little probable that will should get
used to low prestige, or to an option pushing the tolerable gender limit.
Self-tuning in decision-making (Omodei; Wearing, 1995) is presented from the point of
view of counsellors who need to actively seek additional information and integrate it. At
the same time they must decide in real time what kind of feedback to give clients, since it
further determines the structure of statements and common decisions. Bobevski and
McLennan (1998) state that complex decisions originate in motivational processes, which
generate intentions, emotions, focusing attention, and decisions translated in concrete
actions. People perceive these actions and their results with an impact on emotions, by
having their attention and subsequent decision-making processes influenced, and getting
involved in new actions. The model puts forth the idea that in any situation decision
makers seek reactions in their environment and act so as to (re)gain control. Efficiency in
a decision-making situation stays in the ability of human subjects to control not only their
cognitive and attention resources, but also the emotional and motivational state. The
studies of Bobevski and McLennan (1998) show that increased efficiency does not
necessarily have to be associated with emotional detachment of the counsellor from the
client, but rather with a level of emotional involvement corresponding to the task.
Counsellors who reported very high levels of involvement were open to perturbing or
irrelevant thoughts regarding the clients’ needs. A major source of anxiety for a
counsellor could be “the self-perceived feeling of failure felt on controlling the
progressive succession of interactions intended to support the client”.
Counsellors do not put themselves in the clients’ position in order to make a decision,
even if they find the situation clear from a formal or theoretical point of view.
Counsellors give personalized assistance in clarifying the forces, interests, practices
involved in the problem brought up by the clients, help them discern their own advantage
and possibility of growth. However tempting the path of rational decision, it relies on and