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Social cognitive career theory

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S-Greenhaus.qxd 4/12/2006 5:07 PM Page 750
750———Social Cognitive Career Theory
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Seibert, S. E., Kramer, M. L. and Liden, R. C. 2001. “A Social
Capital Theory of Career Success.” Academy of
Management Journal 44:219-237.
SOCIAL COGNITIVE
CAREER THEORY
Social cognitive career theory (SCCT) is a relatively
new theory that is aimed at explaining three interre-
lated aspects of career development: (1) how basic
academic and career interests develop, (2) how educa-
tional and career choices are made, and (3) how acad-
emic and career success is obtained. The theory
incorporates a variety of concepts (e.g., interests, abil-
ities, values, environmental factors) that appear in ear-
lier career theories and have been found to affect
career development. Developed by Robert W. Lent,
Steven D. Brown, and Gail Hackett in 1994, SCCT is
based on Albert Bandura’s general social cognitive
theory, an influential theory of cognitive and motiva-
tional processes that has been extended to the study of
many areas of psychosocial functioning, such as aca-
demic performance, health behavior, and organiza-
tional development.
Three intricately linked variables—self-efficacy
beliefs, outcome expectations, and goals—serve as
the basic building blocks of SCCT. Self-efficacy
refers to an individual’s personal beliefs about his or
her capabilities to perform particular behaviors or
courses of action. Unlike global confidence or self-
esteem, self-efficacy beliefs are relatively dynamic
(i.e., changeable) and are specific to particular activity
domains. People vary in their self-efficacy regarding
the behaviors required in different occupational
domains. For example, one person might feel very
confident in being able to accomplish tasks for suc-
cessful entry into, and performance in, scientific fields
but feel much less confident about his or her abilities
in social or enterprising fields, such as sales. SCCT
assumes that people are likely to become interested in,
choose to pursue, and perform better at activities at
which they have strong self-efficacy beliefs, as long as
they also have necessary skills and environmental
supports to pursue these activities.
Self-efficacy beliefs are assumed to derive from
four primary sources of information: personal perfor-
mance accomplishments, vicarious experiences (e.g.,
observing similar others), social persuasion, and phys-
iological and emotional states. Personal accomplish-
ments (successes and failures with specific tasks) are
assumed to offer a particularly compelling source of
efficacy information, but the nature of the social mod-
els and reinforcing messages to which one is exposed,
and the types of physiological states one experiences
while engaged in particular tasks (e.g., low levels of
anxiety), can all affect one’s self-efficacy regarding
different performance domains.
Outcome expectations refer to beliefs about the
consequences or outcomes of performing particular
behaviors (e.g., what will happen if I do this?). The
choices that people make about the activities in which
they will engage, and their effort and persistence at
these activities, entail consideration of outcome as
well as self-efficacy beliefs. For example, people are
more likely to choose to engage in an activity to the
extent that they see their involvement as leading to
valued, positive outcomes (e.g., social and self-
approval, tangible rewards, attractive work condi-
tions). According to SCCT and the larger social
cognitive theory, persons’ engagement in activities,
the effort and persistence they put into them, and their
ultimate success are partly determined by both their
self-efficacy beliefs and outcome expectations.
Personal goals may be defined as one’s intentions to
engage in a particular activity (e.g., to pursue a given
academic major) or to attain a certain level of perfor-
mance (e.g., to receive an A in a particular course). In
SCCT, these two types of goals are, respectively,
S-Greenhaus.qxd 4/12/2006 5:07 PM Page 751
Person Inputs
– Predispositions
Self-efficacy
– Gender
Expectations
– Race/ethnicity
– Disability/
Health status
Learning
Interests
Experiences
Background
Outcome
Environmental
Expectations
Influences
Figure 1. A Simplified View of How Career-related Interests and Choices Develop over Time, According to SCCT
SOURCE: Adapted from Lent, R. W., Brown, S. D. and Hackett, G. 1994. “Toward a Unifying Social Cognitive Theory of Career and
Academic Interest, Choice, and Performance” [Monograph]. Journal of Vocational Behavior 45:79-122.
referred to as choice goals and performance goals. By
setting goals, people help to organize and guide their
own behavior and to sustain it in the absence of more
immediate positive feedback and despite inevitable
setbacks. Social cognitive theory posits that goals
are importantly tied to both self-efficacy and outcome
expectations: People tend to set goals that are consis-
tent with their views of their personal capabilities and
of the outcomes they expect to attain from pursuing a
particular course of action. Success or failure in reach-
ing personal goals, in turn, becomes important infor-
mation that helps to alter or confirm self-efficacy
beliefs and outcome expectations.
SCCT’S INTERESTS MODEL
Self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and goals play
key roles in SCCT’s models of educational and voca-
tional interest development, choice making, and per-
formance attainment. As shown in the center of the
figure above, interests in career-relevant activities are
seen as the outgrowth of self-efficacy and outcome
expectations. Over the course of childhood and ado-
lescence, people are exposed, directly and vicariously,
to a variety of occupationally relevant activities in
school, at home, and in their communities. They are
also differentially reinforced for continuing their
engagement, and for developing their skills, in differ-
ent activity domains. The types and variety of activi-
ties to which children and adolescents are exposed is
Social Cognitive Career Theory———751
Proximal Environmental Influences
(Supports and Barriers Experienced
During Choice-Making)
Performance
Choice Choice
Domains and
Goals Actions
Attainments
partly a function of the context and culture in which
they grow up. Depending on cultural norms, for
example, girls are typically exposed to and reinforced
for engaging in different types of activities than are
boys.
Through continued activity exposure, practice, and
feedback, people refine their skills, develop personal
performance standards, form a sense of their efficacy
in particular tasks, and acquire certain expectations
about the outcomes of activity engagement. People
are most likely to develop interest in activities at
which they both feel efficacious and from which they
expect positive outcomes. As people develop interest
in an activity, they are likely to develop goals for sus-
taining or increasing their involvement in it. Further
activity involvement leads to subsequent mastery or
failure experiences, which, in turn, help to revise self-
efficacy, outcome expectations, and, ultimately, inter-
ests within an ongoing feedback loop.
Interest development may be most fluid up until
late adolescence, the point at which general interests
(e.g., in art, science, social, or mechanical activities)
tend to become fairly stable. At the same time, data on
the stability of interests suggest that interest change
does occur for some people during their postadoles-
cent years. SCCT posits that such changes, when they
do occur, can be explained by changes in self-efficacy
beliefs and/or outcome expectations—more precisely,
by exposure to potent new learning experiences (e.g.,
parenting, technological advances, job training or
S-Greenhaus.qxd 4/12/2006 5:07 PM Page 752
752———Social Cognitive Career Theory
restructuring) that enable people to alter their sense of
self-efficacy and outcome expectations in new occu-
pational and avocational directions.
In sum, people are likely to form enduring interest in
an activity when they view themselves as competent at
performing it and when they expect the activity to pro-
duce valued outcomes. Conversely, interests are
unlikely to develop in activities for which people doubt
their competence and expect negative outcomes.
Furthermore, SCCT posits that for interests to blossom
in areas for which people have talent, their environments
must expose them to the types of direct, vicarious, and
persuasive experiences that can give rise to robust effi-
cacy beliefs and positive outcome expectations.
Interests are impeded from developing when individuals
do not have the opportunity to form strong self-efficacy
and positive outcome beliefs, regardless of their level of
objective talent. Indeed, findings suggest that perceived
capabilities and outcome expectations form key inter-
vening links between objective abilities and interests.
SCCT’S CHOICE MODEL
SCCT’s model of the career choice process, which
builds on the interests model, is also embedded in the
figure above. Arising largely through self-efficacy and
outcome expectations, career-related interests foster par-
ticular educational and occupational choice goals (e.g.,
intentions to pursue a particular career path). Especially
to the extent that they are clear, specific, strongly held,
stated publicly, and supported by significant others,
choice goals make it more likely that people will take
actions to achieve their goals (e.g., seek to gain entry into
a particular academic major, training program, or job).
Their subsequent performance attainments (e.g., suc-
cesses, failures) provide valuable feedback that can
strengthen or weaken self-efficacy and outcome expecta-
tions and, ultimately, help to revise or confirm choices.
As illustrated in the same figure, SCCT also
emphasizes that choice goals are sometimes influ-
enced more directly and potently by self-efficacy
beliefs, outcome expectations, or environmental vari-
ables than they are by interests. Interests are expected
to exert their greatest impact on academic and occu-
pational choice under supportive environmental con-
ditions, which enable people to pursue their interests.
However, many adolescents and adults are not able to
follow their interests either unfettered by obstacles
or with the full support of important others. The
choice making of these persons is constrained by such
experiences as economic need, family pressures, or
educational limitations. In such instances, people may
need to compromise their interests and, instead, make
their choices on the basis of such pragmatic consider-
ations as the type of work that is available to them,
their self-efficacy beliefs (“Can I do this type of
work?”), and outcome expectations (“Will the job pay
enough to make it worthwhile?”). Cultural values
(e.g., the degree to which one’s choices may be guided
by elder family members) may also limit the role of
personal interests in career choice.
SCCT posits conditions that increase the probabil-
ity that people will be able to pursue their interests as
well as conditions where interests may need to be
compromised in making career-related choices.
Collectively labeled “environmental influences” in the
above figure, these conditions refer to the levels of
support (e.g., family financial and emotional support),
barriers (e.g., lack of finances, inadequate levels of
education), and opportunities available to the individ-
ual. Simply put, SCCT hypothesizes that interests will
be a more potent predictor of the types of choices
people make under supportive rather than under more
restrictive environmental conditions. Under the latter
conditions, one’s interests may need to be bypassed or
compromised in favor of more pragmatic, pressing, or
culturally acceptable considerations.
SCCT’S PERFORMANCE MODEL
SCCT’s performance model is concerned with pre-
dicting and explaining two primary aspects of perfor-
mance: the level of success that people attain in
educational and occupational pursuits and the degree to
which they persist in the face of obstacles. SCCT
focuses on the influences of ability, self-efficacy, out-
come expectations, and performance goals on success
and persistence. Ability (as reflected by past achieve-
ment and aptitudes) is assumed to affect performance via
two primary pathways. First, ability influences perfor-
mance and persistence directly. For example, students
with higher aptitude in a particular subject tend to do
better and persist longer in that subject than do students
with lesser aptitude. (Ability or aptitude may be thought
of as a composite of innate potential and acquired
knowledge.) Second, ability is hypothesized to influence
performance and persistence indirectly though the inter-
vening paths of self-efficacy and outcome expectations.
In other words, performance involves both ability
and motivation. SCCT emphasizes the motivational
S-Greenhaus.qxd 4/12/2006 5:07 PM Page 753
roles of self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and
performance goals. Specifically, SCCT suggests that
self-efficacy and outcome expectations work in con-
cert with ability, in part by influencing the types of
performance goals that people set for themselves.
Controlling for level of ability, students and workers
with higher self-efficacy and more positive outcome
expectations will be more likely to establish higher
performance goals for themselves (i.e., aim for more
challenging attainments), to organize their skills more
effectively, and to persist longer in the face of set-
backs. As a result, they may achieve higher levels of
success than those with lower self-efficacy and less
positive outcome expectations. Thus favorable self-
efficacy, outcome expectations, and goals help people
to make the best possible use of their ability.
It should be emphasized that self-efficacy is seen as
complementing, not substituting for, ability. Indeed,
SCCT does not assume that self-efficacy will com-
pensate for inadequate task ability. It does, however,
predict that the performance of individuals at the same
ability level will be facilitated by stronger versus
weaker self-efficacy beliefs. For example, academi-
cally able adolescents who underestimate their acade-
mic talents, compared to their equally able peers with
more optimistic self-efficacy beliefs, are likely to set
lower goals for themselves, experience undue perfor-
mance anxiety, give up more quickly in the face of
obstacles, challenge themselves less academically,
and consequently experience less academic success.
Social cognitive theory notes that large overesti-
mates of self-efficacy can also be self-defeating. For
example, job trainees whose self-efficacy drastically
overshoots their current skills are likely to set unreal-
istically high performance goals and to take on job
tasks that are beyond their current grasp, which may
occasion failure and discouragement. According to
Bandura, self-efficacy beliefs that modestly exceed
current capabilities are probably optimum because
they are likely to lead people to set challenging (but
attainable) performance goals and to engage in activi-
ties that stretch their skills and that further strengthen
their self-efficacy and positive outcome expectations.
EMPIRICAL SUPPORT
AND PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS
A substantial body of research has accumulated
suggesting that SCCT and its major elements offer a
useful framework for explaining educational and
Social Cognitive Career Theory———753
vocational interest development, choice making, and
performance. Sufficient data have, in fact, accumu-
lated to yield several meta-analyses relevant to SCCT.
Meta-analysis is a research strategy that can be used
to integrate findings and draw conclusions about the
strength of hypothesized relations among variables.
Meta-analyses of SCCT’s interest model have
revealed substantial support for its major hypotheses.
In particular, self-efficacy beliefs and outcome expec-
tations have each been found to account for a sizable
amount of the variation in vocational and educational
interests.
Meta-analyses have also supported SCCT’s choice
hypotheses. For example, it has been shown that
career-related choices are strongly predicted by inter-
ests and, to a lesser extent, self-efficacy beliefs and
outcome expectations. Consistent with SCCT’s
assumptions about the importance of environmental
and cultural influences, some recent research also
suggests that interests may play a smaller role in the
choice-making process of adolescents and young
adults from particular cultures. Specifically, those
from a culture characterized by collective decision
making were more inclined to choose a career path
that was consistent with the preferences of their
family members and with their self-efficacy beliefs
rather than one that necessarily fit their personal inter-
ests. Other research supports SCCT’s hypotheses that
interests are more likely to translate into goals, and
goals are more likely to promote choice actions, when
people are faced with choice-supportive environmen-
tal conditions (e.g., relatively low barriers and high
supports for their preferred educational/occupational
path).
Meta-analyses relevant to SCCT’s performance
hypotheses have found that self-efficacy is a useful
predictor of both academic and occupational perfor-
mance. Research on the sources of information, or
learning experiences, from which self-efficacy beliefs
are assumed to derive has found that performance
accomplishments typically show the strongest rela-
tions with self-efficacy in corresponding activity
domains (e.g., successful performance in math-related
classes is associated with higher math self-efficacy).
The other (vicarious, persuasion, emotional) sources
have also been found to relate to self-efficacy,
although typically to a more modest degree than per-
sonal accomplishments.
Finally, SCCT has sparked a number of efforts to
design and test interventions aimed at various facets of
S-Greenhaus.qxd 4/12/2006 5:07 PM Page 754
754———Social Constructionism
career development. In particular, SCCT suggests a
number of targets at which educational and career
programs can be directed. These include efforts to
expand interests and nurture career aspirations in
children and adolescents, facilitate career goal setting
and implementation in adolescents and young adults,
and promote successful work adjustment (e.g., satis-
faction, performance) in adult workers. Reflecting the
central role that SCCT accords to self-efficacy and
outcome expectations, the interventions that have
been proposed or tested to this point tend to rely heav-
ily on experiences that promote these expectations
(e.g., exposure to personal mastery experiences and
support, access to accurate information about work
conditions and outcomes). Extensions of the theory to
a number of subpopulations (e.g., women of color,
gay and lesbian workers, persons with disabilities)
have appeared, and the theory has been applied to the
study of career behavior in a number of countries and
cultural contexts.
—Robert W. Lent, Steven D. Brown, and Gail Hackett
See also Interests, Occupational choice, Self-efficacy, Social
learning theory of career development
Further Readings and References
Bandura, A. 1986. Social Foundations of Thought and
Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall.
———. 1997. Self-efficacy: The Exercise of Control.
New York: Freeman.
Brown, S. D. and Lent, R. W. 1996. “A Social Cognitive
Framework for Career Choice Counseling.” Career
Development Quarterly 44:354-366.
Hackett, G. and Betz, N. E. 1981. “A Self-efficacy Approach
to the Career Development of Women.” Journal of
Vocational Behavior 18:326-336.
Hackett, G. and Byars, A. M. 1996. “Social Cognitive Theory
and the Career Development of African American Women.”
Career Development Quarterly 44:322-340.
Lent, R. W. 2005. “A Social Cognitive View of Career
Development and Counseling.” Pp. 101-127 in Career
Development and Counseling: Putting Theory and
Research to Work, edited by S. D. Brown and R. W. Lent.
New York: Wiley.
Lent, R. W., Brown, S. D. and Hackett, G. 1994. “Toward a
Unifying Social Cognitive Theory of Career and Academic
Interest, Choice, and Performance” [Monograph]. Journal
of Vocational Behavior 45:79-122.
Lent, R. W., Brown, S. D. and Hackett, G. 2000. “Contextual
Supports and Barriers to Career Choice: A Social Cognitive
Analysis.” Journal of Counseling Psychology 47:36-49.
View publication stats
Lent, R. W., Hackett, G. and Brown, S. D. 1999. “A Social
Cognitive View of School-to-Work Transition.” Career
Development Quarterly 44:297-311.
Stajkovic, A. D. and Luthans, F. 1998. “Self-efficacy and
Work-related Performance: A Meta-analysis.” Psycho-
logical Bulletin 124:240-261.
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM
Social constructionism is a postmodern perspective that
emphasizes the socially constructed nature of knowl-
edge. Underscoring the linguistic and relational nature
of all knowledge, it emphasizes personal, social, and
cultural processes that inform, and limit, the develop-
ment of knowledge. In contrast to modernist notions of
reality as singular, stable, universal, and nonhistorical,
social constructionists emphasize that what is taken to
be real represents consensually agreed-upon knowl-
edge that results from coordinated, relationally contin-
gent discourses. What is taken as knowledge or truth is
therefore contextually and temporary bound; what is
true in one time context or culture may not be true in
other times, contexts, or cultures.
Social constructionists place a premium on under-
standing processes of knowledge construction
because they emphasize that what is known is insepa-
rable from the processes of inquiry that give rise to
knowledge. The role of dialogue, broadly understood
as coordinated actions among people, is central to the
construction of knowledge. Given the relational
embeddedness of knowledge, social constructionists
blur the boundary between the personal and social
domains, challenging traditional notions of individu-
ality or the self.
THE SELF AND CAREER CONSTRUCTION
A social constructionist position carries significant
implications for transforming traditional notions of
vocational and career psychology. Career choices, for
example, are understood as coordinated forms of
discourse and relational enactment, rather than as
products of rational, cognitive, or individual decision
making. The traditional supremacy of rational
processes, as reflected in concepts such as “career deci-
sion making,” “self-efficacy,” or “career interests,” cede
to relational and contextual processes that are under-
stood as informing, scaffolding, or facilitating the
emergence of given careers or career enactments, rather