After reading this
chapter, I felt a lot of material was covered which left my head spinning. Since so much information was presented, I
found it hard to pick one thing to focus on; however, the social cognitive
perspective caught my interest the most.
This perspective discusses several ideas that play into career decisions
such as the interaction between individuals and their environment,
self-efficacy, and an individual’s ability levels (Brown, 2012). This theory seems to be more complex than a
few of the theories previously discussed in earlier chapters which makes it
intriguing.
The social cognitive theory is based on a basic principle
that most of us know which is that we influence the environment while the
environment is also influenced by us. I
couldn’t agree more with this statement, and the possibilities of influence are
endless. If different people are placed
in the same identical environment, each of them will exert a different
influence on that environment while that environment will also do something
different for each individual.
With
that being understood, the next area discussed was self-efficacy. This again seems logical as it suggests that
people are interested in areas or careers that they believe they will produce
favorable outcomes (Brown, 2012, p.63).
I certainly think this applies to my situation. I performed well in my undergraduate classes
in psychology, and I also did very well in statistics classes and my research
labs. Since I did well in those areas, I
became more interested in the material and thus the major of psychology was essentially
decided for me. It also helped in my
decision to pursue graduate school because I knew that I performed well in the
undergraduate level, so I likely thought I would find success in the same field
at the graduate level. I really
connected with the self-efficacy piece of this perspective which my
understanding of my own pursuit in this field.
Turning
back to the concepts of the social cognitive theory, other things factor in to
occupations besides environment and self-efficacy such as a person’s
expectations and their goals that they have for themselves (Brown, 2012, p.
63). I agree that these pieces go into a
career decision, but the strongest of the factors appears to be
self-efficacy. If someone does not
believe in themselves, then they will have lower expectations meaning they will
likely not meet their goals. In essence,
low self-efficacy could cause you to fail in meeting your expectations and
goals because you didn’t believe in yourself which in turn could cause low
self-esteem. Therefore, self-efficacy is
the key to achieving your goals and having a sense of self value.
In
summary, the social cognitive perspective is more complex than other theories
such as trait-factor theory. It has many
more components which interact with one another to produce the outcome of a
person’s career. I am in favor of this
theory so far compared to the ones that have been explored. I like the depth of this theory, and I would
enjoy hearing what others feel about this perspective as well.
References
Brown, D. (2012). Career information, career
counseling, and career development (10th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc.
No comments:
Post a Comment