| Social cognitive career theory (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994, 1996) holds that a person's career-related self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and intentions can all be influenced by verbally persuasive messages, and can, in turn, all influence a person's level of career behavior. Prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979) holds that messages framed in terms of potential losses tend to have a greater impact on message recipients' self-efficacy, outcome expectations, intentions, and subsequent behaviors in situations involving more outcome uncertainly. No research exists that tests the effects of message framing on college student career decision-making self-efficacy, outcome expectations, intentions, and behaviors. The purpose of the present study was to test these effects. Results of the present study indicate that, (a) theoretically relevant messages can have a positive impact on college student career decision-making cognitions and behaviors regardless of how they are framed, (b) how a message is framed may not differentially affect a student's career decision-making cognitions, and (c) loss framed messages appear to motivate students to engage in more career-related behaviors than gain framed and control messages. |
