College & Career

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Decisions, decisions, decisions.

College is often the first non-supervised young adults get. They are on their own, mostly so. Some choose to drop out of college, others don’t start. But everyone gives a lot of tentative thought to what they want do for a living.

Here’s what is included in this lesson:

• Vocational choice theories
• Problem solving
• Decision making
• Cognitive bias
• Schizophrenia
• Disability

Mind Map

Notes

• Decision Making
  • Cognitive process
  • Something we do often
  • Difficult to define
  • Involves
    • Alternatives (finite set)
    • Reduction
    • Selection
    • Commitment
    • Behavior
  • Context
    • Needs, preferences & values
    • Interactive with environment; course adjustment
  • Both
    • Continuous reiterative process
    • Terminal problem solving task
  • Irrational?
    • Unstated assumptions & values
    • Occurs too fast to see process
    • Don’t track process, just results
  • Rational
    • Rational Choice Theory
      • Cost-benefit analysis
      • Pros & cons
  • Both deliberative & flow
    • Careful planning while in cave
    • Quick adaptation when lion is chasing you
    • Ambiguous situations
    • Time pressures
    • High stakes
  • Tangen’s 6 Steps of Prob. Solving
    • Where am I now
    • Where do I want to be
    • How do I get from here to there
    • Will this work
    • Try it out
    • Repeat
  • Important factors
    • Information Overload
    • Trying to reach multiple goals
  • Making Decisions
    • Given
      • 50% chance of winning $20
      • 10% chance of winning $10
      • Which will people choose
  • Cognitive Bias
    • Availability bias
      • Rate easily recalled items as occurring more frequently
      • Read a lot of success stories think they happen more often
    • Bystander Effect
      • When others are present, less likely to help
      • Diffusion of responsibility
    • Fundamental Attribution Error
      • AKA, Correspondence Bias
      • AKA, Attribution Effect
      • We prefer dispositional explanations
        • Overvalue personality reasons
        • Undervalue situation reasons
      • You screw up, you’re a bad person
      • Waiter is rude to you
        • Dispositional Explanation
          • Mean, nasty person
          • Always this way
        • Situational Explanation
          • Having a bad day
          • Car wouldn’t start
          • Wife left him
    • Self-Serving Bias
      • Take credit for our success
        • All hard work
        • Self-made
        • All me
      • Failures are caused by external events
• Vocational Theories
  • Choice is thought to be 1 time
    • Pick a career & stick with it
  • Age-graded
    • Everyone goes though at same time and in same order
  • 1. Eli Ginzberg
    • 3 stages
    • 1. Fantasy stage
      • What parents want
      • What want to be when 7 yrs old
    • 2. Tentative choice (11-16 yrs)
      • A. Interest Stage
      • B. Capacity Stage
      • C. Value Stage
    • 3. Realistic choice (17+)
      • A. Exploration Stage
      • B. Crystallization Stage
      • C. Specification Stage
  • 2. Robert Havighurst
    • Age-graded stages:
    • Identification (5-10)
    • Acquisition (11-15)
    • Vocational (16-25)
    • Productive Stage (26-40; 41-70)
  • 3. Donald Super
    • 5 stages:
    • 1. Growth
      • A. Fantasy (4-10 yrs)
      • B. Interest (11-12 yrs)
      • C. Capacity (13-14 yrs)
    • 2. Exploration (15-24)
      • A. Tentative (15-17 yrs)
      • B. Transition (18-21 yrs)
      • C. Trial stage (22-24 yrs)
    • 3. Establishment (25-40)
      • A. Trial stage (25-30 yrs)
      • B. Stabilization (30-40 yrs)
    • 4. Maintenance (40-64)
    • 5. Decline (65+)
  • 4. John Holland
    • Vocational Choice Theory
      • Influences teach you to behave in certain way in particular situations
      • Personality
    • Influences include:
      • Heredity
      • Culture & Civilization
      • Friends & parents
      • Matured person
      • Social status
    • Interaction of environment
    • Choose occupational environment where feel most comfortable
      • Who like to hang out with
      • How see yourself
    • 6 environments:
      • Intellectual
      • Aesthetic (artistic)
      • Realistic
      • Social
      • Conventional
      • Enterprising
    • Richard Bolles: What Color Is Your Parachute?
• Disability
  • Affect ability to work
  • Mobility & travel
  • Sit up straight
  • Time on task
  • Length of day
  • Lack of privacy
  • Deadlines
• Schizophrenia
  • “The Schizophrenias”
  • 1% incidence
  • Slightly more common in men
  • Starts as teens or early adult
  • Typical onset 16 to 30
    • Uncommon onset over 45
  • Symptoms vary; seem OK until share thoughts
  • Episodes
    • Symptoms come & go
    • Typical: not more than 6 weeks
    • Hallucinations last a few days; feel agitated
    • Delusions last a few months
  • Range of severity
    • Hospitalized
    • Meaningful lives in communities
  • 1. What you don’t do diagnosis
    • Negative symptoms
    • Similar to drug abuse
    • Similar to brain damage
      • Don’t feel happy
      • Lack of pleasure
      • Don’t feel deeply
      • Flat affect
        • Monotonous voice
        • Face immobile
      • Don’t look normal
        • Can’t control eye movements
        • Unusual facial expressions
      • Don’t take care of yourself
      • Lack initiative & planning
        • Poor hygiene
      • Don’t follow through on tasks
        • Lack of persistence
      • Don’t talk normal
        • Lack fluidity
  • 2. What you do diagnosis
    • Not schizophrenia without them
    • Positive symptoms
    • Delusions
      • TV sends special messages
      • Martians are controlling me
      • I killed someone
      • I am a king
      • People plot against me
    • Hallucinations
      • Hear voices
      • Many at once; confusing
      • See things not there
      • Smell things not there
      • Invisible fingers touch me
    • Thought Disorders
      • Disorganized thinking
      • Thought blocking
      • Rambling nonsense speech
  • Long-term drug treatment
    • Antipsychotic drugs not cure
      • Don’t fully treat condition
      • Don’t work for 1/3 of patients
    • Serious side effects
      • Similar symptoms to Parkinson’s disease
      • Slow movement, lack of facial expression, general weakness

Terms

• acquisition
• aesthetic (artistic) environment
• age-graded stages
• agitation
• alternatives
• ambiguous situations
• antipsychotic drugs
• attribution effect
• availability bias
• basal metabolic rate (BMR) = amount of energy your body expends daily
• behavior
• biological aging, or senescence = theory of aging, cells can infinitely divide
• bystander effect
• capacity
• capacity stage
• cognitive bias
• cognitive process
• cognitive-affective complexity = as adults mature, integrate thinking & emotion into complex structure
• commitment
• commitment within relativistic thinking = synthesize contradictions, living with opposing views
• context
• conventional environment
• correspondence bias
• cost-benefit analysis
• course adjustment
• cross-linkage theory of aging = genetic theory of aging, compounds interfere with normal cell growth
• crystallization stage
• decision making
• decline stage
• deliberative reasoning
• delusions
• diagnosis
• diffusion of responsibility
• disability
• disorganized thinking
• dispositional explanation
• dualistic thinking = young children, divide into good-bad categories, in contrast to realistic,
• enterprising environment
• episodes
• epistemic cognition = thinking about how knowledge is discovered
• establishment stage
• expertise = acquiring mastery and skills
• exploration stage
• fantasy
• fantasy period = childish vocational choices; want to be a fireman and a Nun
• fantasy stage
• finite set
• flat affect
• flow
• free radicals = odd number of electrons on oxygen atoms, cause of cell damage, countered by antioxidants
• fundamental attribution error
• Ginzberg, Eli
• growth stage
• hallucinations
• Havighurst, Robert
• high stakes
• Holland, John
• identification
• incidence
• influences
• information overload
• intellectual environment
• interest
• interest stage
• lack of fluid speech
• lack of initiative
• lack of persistence
• lack of pleasure
• maintenance stage
• negative symptoms
• nonsense speech
• occupational environments
• personality
• positive symptoms
• postformal thought = integrates emotion and thought; hot cognition
• pragmatic thought = use logic to solve real world problems
• premenstrual syndrome (PMS) = symptoms during last half of menses, varies between women
• problem solving steps
• productive stage
• pros & cons
• range of severity
• rational choice theory
• realistic choice
• realistic environment
• realistic period = late teens & early 20’s, vocational choices less idealistic
• reduction
• reiterative process
• relativistic thinking = ability to adjust “truth” within contexts
• schizophrenia
• selection
• self-serving bias
• side effects
• situational explanation
• social environment
• specification stage
• stabilization
• Super, Donald
• symptoms
• telomeres = keep chromosome ends from fusing together when cells divide
• tentative
• tentative choice
• tentative period = vocational choices as teens, subject to change
• terminal problem
• thought blocking
• thought disorders
• time pressures
• transition
• trial stage
• unusual facial expressions
• value stage
• vocational
• vocational choice theory
• vocational theories

Quiz

•  1. Which is one of Holland’s environments:
  • a.           establishment
  • b.           exploration
  • c.           realistic
  • d.           growth
• 2. When others are present, you are less likely to help according to the:
  • a.           fundamental attribution error
  • b.           diffusion of responsibility
  • c.           thought blocking
  • d.           availability bias
• 3.  Which is a positive symptoms of schizophrenia:
  • a.           thoughtfulness
  • b.           alcohol abuse
  • c.           happiness
  • d.           delusions
• 4. Rambling nonsense speech is an indication of which schizophrenic symptom:
  • a.           conventional thinking
  • b.           aesthetic socialism
  • c.           disturbed thinking
  • d.           thought extension
• 5. Hallucinations are:
  • a.           hierarchical
  • b.           systematic
  • c.           episodic
  • d.           all of the above

Answers

•  1. Which is one of Holland’s environments:
  • a.           establishment
  • b.           exploration
  • c.           realistic
  • d.           growth
• 2. When others are present, you are less likely to help according to the:
  • a.           fundamental attribution error
  • b.           diffusion of responsibility
  • c.           thought blocking
  • d.           availability bias
• 3.  Which is a positive symptoms of schizophrenia:
  • a.           thoughtfulness
  • b.           alcohol abuse
  • c.           happiness
  • d.           delusions
• 4. Rambling nonsense speech is an indication of which schizophrenic symptom:
  • a.           conventional thinking
  • b.           aesthetic socialism
  • c.           disturbed thinking
  • d.           thought extension
• 5. Hallucinations are:
  • a.           hierarchical
  • b.           systematic
  • c.           episodic
  • d.           all of the above

Summary

Bonus

Photo credit

Photo by Benjamin Wedemeyer on Unsplash