The Effect Of Risk Attitude To Career Decision-making Information Processing

Career decision-making is very important, so researchers had studied variousfactors included individual factors, environmental factors and task characteristics.Career decision-making means decision-makers organize the information about the selfand career environment through the cognitive processes, consider of several alternativecareer prospects, and make a career choice behavior.Under the influence of economic decision-making paradigm, some researchershave started to think about career decision-making in the perspective of riskdecision-making. They regarded career decision-making as a risk behavior, so theindividual choice of career may depend on their risk attitude. People who have differentrisk attitudes use different processing strategies in career decision-making. Based onthis, we focused on how the risk attitude influences the career decision-makinginformation process.In this study, we used the information display board technology, and we usedcareer decision-making task as experimental material. There are 56 college students`subjects in experiment 1a which was to explore the impact of the risk attitude and thenumber of alternatives on the career decision-making information process. On the basisof the experiment 1a, experiment 1b included 108 college students` subjects,introduced of time pressure variables, discussed changes which individual withdifferent risk attitudes maked in information processing strategies under the status ofthe different time pressure. Experiment 2 included 48 college students` subjects toexplore the impact of the implicit risk attitudes and the number of alternatives oncareer decision-making information process. The three experimental variables wereclicks, time of decision, pattern of search, and decision-making satisfaction.The results showed that:(1) The risk attitude had effect on college students’ career decision-makinginformation process. The risk seeking group`s clicks were more than that of the riskaversion group. And the risk seeking group tended to using option-based pattern of search.(2) The number of alternatives had effect on college students’ careerdecision-making information process. The eight kinds of options group had more clicks,longer decision times and higher decision satisfaction than that of the four kinds ofoptions group.(3) Risk attitude and time pressure had effect on college students’ careerdecision-making information process. The clicks with no time pressure group weremore than that of time pressure group both in the risk seeking group and the riskaversion group. And we had them same results in time of decision. Search pattern inthe risk seeking group was positive under no time pressure, which indicated the riskseeking group in favor of option-based pattern of search. But the search pattern undertime pressure was negative, which indicated the risk seeking group in favor ofattribute-based pattern of search. Decision-making satisfaction under no time pressurewere higher than that under time pressure in the group of risk aversion.(4) The implicit risk attitude had effect on college students’ careerdecision-making information process. The implicit risk seeking group was moreinclined to option-based pattern of search than the implicit risk aversion group.