British Journal of Guidance & Counselling

ISSN: 0306-9885 (Print) 1469-3534 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbjg20

Irrational career decision-making: connecting

behavioural economics and career development

Dave E. Redekopp

To cite this article: Dave E. Redekopp (2016): Irrational career decision-making: connecting
behavioural economics and career development, British Journal of Guidance & Counselling,
DOI: 10.1080/03069885.2016.1264569

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03069885.2016.1264569

Published online: 03 Dec 2016.

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BRITISH JOURNAL OF GUIDANCE & COUNSELLING, 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03069885.2016.1264569

Irrational career decision-making: connecting behavioural

economics and career development*
Dave E. Redekopp
Life-Role Development Group Ltd., Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Very frequently, students and clients do not do what they say they will do. Received 31 March 2016
Decisions and plans made in counselling sessions are often not enacted. Revised 25 October 2016
The career development field may be better able to address the chasm Accepted 20 November 2016
between rational decisions and actual behaviour by applying the
KEYWORDS
findings of behavioural economics. Behavioural economics research is Behavioural economics;
revealing the predictability of irrational behaviour. Behavioural career development;
economics addresses choice, decision-making, risk and judgment, key cognitive psychology;
elements of career theory and practice. Career guidance and counselling rational decision-making;
would be well served to attend to findings regarding how decisions are irrational decision-making
really made and, with some ethical caveats in mind, incorporate the
management of non-rational behaviour into practice.

Introduction
‘Society in the 21st century is a “risk society” that forces individuals to manage their lives proactively
in order to survive and thrive’ (British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 2015). The use of the word
‘manage’ (i.e. direct, control and govern) here connotes a degree of conscious rationality. The bur-
geoning work of behavioural economists in recent years is reminding us of the degree to which
choices may not be conscious or rational. We like to think our choices are ‘ours’ and that we made
them consciously and purposefully; discovering how choices are ‘really made’ has been the
impetus that created the field of behavioural economics. Behavioural economics began as a continu-
ation of cognitive psychologists’ work on errors in judgment, especially as applied to economic
choices. In this vein, behavioural economics is far less about economics and far more about
choices, and this is why its lessons should be considered in the context of career development.

Overview of approaches to non-rational decision-making and behaviour

We have long known that our own decisions and behaviour are not always under our conscious
control. Pavlov’s (1897/1902) dogs could just as easily have been Pavlov’s humans. Instead of salivat-
ing to a bell, our heart rate goes up to the ping of an incoming e-mail. Freud (1901) theorised that
unconscious processes are powerful drivers of behaviour, creating seemingly irrational choices and
actions. Later, John Watson (Watson & Rayner, 1920), Thorndike (1923) and Skinner (1948) demon-
strated a variety of ways that behaviours could be changed without conscious awareness. Reason
as the driver of behaviour faced further setbacks with Festinger’s (1957) work on cognitive disso-
nance, in which after-the-fact rationalisation of our behaviour becomes a substitute for reason. As

CONTACT Dave E. Redekopp liferole@telusplanet.net

*
A version of this article was published as a book chapter in the Dutch publication as Redekopp, D. E. (2015). Irrational career
decision-making: Connecting behavioural economics and career development. In M. Kuijpers, & R. Lengelle (Eds.), Een loopbaan
van betekenis (p. 37).
© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 D. E. REDEKOPP

well, doubt was cast on rational choice-making by Asch’s (1952) conformity experiments and both
Milgram’s (1963) and Philip Zimbardo’s (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973) research on the influence
of power and authority on our behaviour.
In the last decade there has been an enormous expansion of research and writing on ‘faulty think-
ing’ within the purview of behavioural economics. I describe the results of some of these recent
efforts below, but as the brief history above illustrates, psychologists have long known the assump-
tion that human choice is predominantly rational to be untrue. Behavioural economists are identify-
ing more precisely the conditions under which decisions are rational and irrational, and highlighting
the predictability of irrationality. For the most part, they have done so without an over-arching theor-
etical foundation, focusing instead on specific effects or ‘cognitive illusions’.
Examples of these cognitive biases or cognitive illusions include (Gigerenzer, 2012; Kahneman,
2011; Samson, 2016):1

. Anchoring. Also called ‘reference dependence’ or a particular form of ‘priming’, this labels how we
make assessments and decisions in terms of expectations rather than in absolute terms. Salespeo-
ple use this effect a great deal by displaying a sticker price (e.g. $899) and then having a ‘now only’
or ‘on offer’ price (e.g. $499). An example from career development work where this might apply:
job seekers sometimes do themselves a disservice by comparing a job’s income to national
averages rather looking at the income they need. This is particularly true with students, who reg-
ularly sift through occupational information using income as their first sorting criterion. Roles with
salaries that compare poorly to the anchor salary are quickly discarded rather than explored
further.
. Loss aversion. There is a bigger emotional impact to losing something than there is to gaining the
same thing. This is also called the ‘endowment effect’ because being endowed with something
raises its value. This may be why losing a job is more painful than getting a job is exciting, and
why lateral transfers often feel like losses to employees.
. Framing. Framing is an effect in which people make different decisions based on how information
is presented. Framing, or frame dependence, often combines anchoring with loss aversion. I was at
a talk in which the presenter had a slide that said the following: ‘Australia plans to maim or kill
250,000 people in traffic accidents in the next decade’ (Johnston, 2014). The audience was
shocked (especially when the speaker affirmed that this was government policy!). The next
slide, which said exactly the same thing in a different way, showed how the government had actu-
ally made the announcement: ‘Australia plans to reduce serious injury and fatal vehicle collisions
by 50% in the next decade’. As it turns out, this would mean 250,000 fewer collisions of this nature
should take place, but it would also mean that 250,000 would still be maimed or killed. An example
of this in careers’ work might be a student’s reaction to hearing that there is a 66.6% chance of
being rejected for a place in a training programme compared to a one out of three chances
that he or she will get in. The student who hears the former statistic is more likely to give up
than the one who hears the latter figure, even though the information is identical.
. Hyperbolic discounting, present bias or time discounting. The further away things are in the future,
the less we value them. If we are offered either a cookie today or two tomorrow, we typically take
the cookie today. However, if offered a cookie 365 days from now or two 366 days from now, we
will take two. This has been used to great effect in setting up retirement savings plans. Employers
can say to employees: ‘Instead of the raise that’s coming in 6 months going into your paycheque,
what if we put it into a retirement savings plan for you?’ The future value is deeply discounted for
employees; so they typically approve of such a scheme.
. Sunk cost fallacy. ‘Throwing good money after bad’ is the analogous aphorism for this. We tend to
look at past investments as a factor in future success, even when they are irrelevant. A relatively
worthless car that we have put a lot of money into is still a relatively worthless car, yet because we
have invested in it we tend to put more into it. Career counselling clients often look at their
 BRITISH JOURNAL OF GUIDANCE & COUNSELLING 3

investments in education in this way. For example, ‘Yes, I hate this programme but I’ve already put
2 years into it. I need to finish it!’
. Confirmation bias. This has also been called the ‘halo effect’ or ‘Pygmalion effect’. It refers to the
tendency people have to seek out information that confirms a belief they already have. Both
left-wing and right-wing voters can easily find evidence for their views. Both are also unlikely to
change their perspectives, largely because of this effect. In a career guidance discussion, it may
be hard to break a student’s belief that ‘all bosses are out to get you’ if this is a deeply held
belief. This bias can create repeated difficulties for a person at work.
. Base rate neglect. People often make mistakes in judging probabilities because they focus on rela-
tive change to the exclusion of absolute change. Gigerenzer (2012) uses this example to illustrate
the effect: a third-generation birth control pill was reported to create 100% more blood clotting
problems than the second-generation pill. Women avoided the new pill, resulting in 13,000
additional abortions. A closer look showed that a 100% increase changed the instance of blood
clotting from 1 in 7000 cases to 2 in 7000 cases, a marginal shift. Career counsellors make
similar errors, paying great attention to a sector’s growth and little to its absolute numbers. The
retail sector may grow by only 1%, but it is such an enormous sector that this can account for thou-
sands of jobs.
. Planning fallacy. On average, people are overconfident about their ability to get things done in the
future, regardless of tendencies to optimism or pessimism. There is a tendency to plan as if the
best case will occur, not the likely case or the worst case. In a career-planning context, this can
lead to a belief that one might be able to accomplish a list of goals in the future (e.g. write a
book, market the business or take a course) that lead to repeated failure and eventually giving
up on various goals, which may have been realistically achieved if a proper estimate had been
made.
. Crowding out. Extrinsic motivation (e.g. engaging in a task for a reward) can dull or remove intrinsic
motivation (e.g. doing the task for the enjoyment of it), an effect known since Harlow’s exper-
iments with monkeys. Behavioural economists have been paying detailed attention to when
and how this effect occurs. People whose work search focuses on pay, bonuses and other
‘perks’ may not recognise the corrosive effect these motivators could have on their intrinsic
desire to do the work in the first place.
. Focusing illusion. Kahneman (2011) points out that we overemphasise the importance of things
when we are thinking about them. For example, when thinking about buying a car, we give typi-
cally too much weight to the importance of the car in our lives as well as too much weight to its
various features. For most of us, not much of our lives are spent in a car and it is ultimately rather
unimportant, although it feels important when we are focused on getting one. In a work situation,
a focusing illusion may occur when we are thinking about a promotion and suddenly we can think
of little else and imagine our future happiness or self-worth depends upon it.

Kahneman (2011) explains these types of effects in terms of two metaphorical (i.e. they need not rely
on references to actual neural structures or functions) thinking systems.

. System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary
control.
. System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex
computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience
of agency, choice, and concentration (pp. 20–21).

System 1 helps us make hundreds of decisions a day with minimal effort. We do not need to stew
about how to orient ourselves to a sound, ride a bike, respond with joy to a happy announcement,
answer a phone or read a newspaper’s headline. Tasks of this nature are typically handled in a semi-
automatic way by System 1, but many System 1 tasks can be overridden with the competing
4 D. E. REDEKOPP

attention of System 2. For example, shaking someone’s hand when being introduced is typically a
System 1 task, but System 2 will sometimes take over in potentially awkward settings when a differ-
ent response (e.g. a hug) is more appropriate.
System 2 requires our attention and can therefore be disrupted if our attention is drawn else-
where. For instance, many aspects of driving a car are handled by System 1, but some tasks, such
as turning left at an intersection involving oncoming vehicles and pedestrians require System 2
decision-making. Drawing attention (e.g. answering a phone call) from System 2 at this time is a
bad idea as doing so will reduce the effectiveness of System 2 in such a high-risk situation.
The many cognitive illusions described above are the result of System 1 activities when System 2
thinking is actually needed. System 1 uses heuristics to make rapid decisions, and has presumably
evolved as a means of ensuring the species’ survival. Fast decision-making that accommodates
only one or two key variables is likely useful for survival in primitive circumstances. In the current
complex world, however, it may be that survival is best served by an increasing use of System 2 to
override System 1 decisions.
We know that we can outsmart ourselves (raising the question, of course: which self is the real self
– the self doing the outsmarting or the self being outsmarted?), using System 2 strategies to override
the automated work of System 1. Samson and Voyer (2012, 2014) found System 2 became more
dominant when the decision was important, personally relevant and in a context of being held
accountable by others. Overcoming the cognitive illusions typically requires some foresight and strat-
egy, and this brings us to the relationships between System 1, System 2 and career development.

Career development and System 1 decision-making

If we believe the primary task of career development is occupational choice, making ‘big decisions’
and other long-term, significant ‘macro’ decisions/actions,2 we can likely ignore the work of behav-
ioural economists. Macro career development and the ‘big decisions’ within it are typically under the
purview of System 2.
If we believe, however, along the lines of happenstance (cf. Krumboltz & Levin, 2004), constructi-
vist (cf. Savickas, 2011) and chaos (cf. Pryor & Bright, 2011) theories of career development, that ‘every
decision is a career decision’ (Redekopp, 2015), System 1 decisions and actions may play a consider-
able role in individual career development. The idea of career development as a lifelong process of
learning and experience that encompasses many roles besides the work role has been expressed in
many ways (e.g. Krumboltz, 2009; Savickas, 2011; Super, 1957). Career development is currently
viewed quite broadly by most theorists. In simple terms, ‘When intentional, career development is
about actively creating the life one wants to live and the work one wants to do’ (Haché, Redekopp,
& Jarvis, 2006, p. 2). This means that if I want to be healthy and physically fit in my preferred future,
what I eat for breakfast today, how I sit while writing this article and how I pace myself are all career
decisions – they all influence my health and therefore my ability to move toward my preferred future.
System 1 has an enormous impact on the types of day-to-day, minute-to-minute decisions that all
add up to becoming our lives. A student may make the System 2-based macro decision to go to uni-
versity and then be very deliberate about this System 2 decision as it relates to micro choices such as
course selections (although System 1 plays a large role even here). The relative success or failure of
the entire endeavour, however – objectively, subjectively and emotionally – depends predominantly
on thousands of nano decisions, many of which are made by System 1: sleep or go to class? Study
with a show on in the background or study quietly so as to be more focused? Go to bed early
before the day of a test or have one more beer with friends? Pay attention in class or scan Facebook
on a tablet? These successes or failures then play into the next System 2 choices as the student begins
to label themselves and their characteristics (e.g. ‘I’m no good at math’ and ‘I don’t have self-
discipline’).
Consider an additional premise: no decision is really a decision until enacted.3 Even if we help our
clients make considered and reasonable decisions through our career conversations, we also know
 BRITISH JOURNAL OF GUIDANCE & COUNSELLING 5

they are not enacting those decisions while we speak with them. We help them discover themselves,
form intentions, consider additional research and make plans. It is only when the counselling conver-
sation ends that the decisions made during the conversation can come to life. Along the way to
executing the decisions, System 1 is likely to affect progress. For example, a student who has
decided to research alternative work roles by conducting interviews may conduct one such infor-
mation-gathering project and then cease doing so, being misled by:

. confirmation bias, selectively hearing and seeing only information that confirms previously formed
opinions of an occupational role or setting;
. the focussing illusion, placing far more emphasis on the importance of relatively minor parts of an
occupational role than on more significant aspects of the role (I suspect people wanting to work
with food services on movie sets succumb to this frequently!) or
. the planning fallacy, thinking the steps to get to a work goal are far easier than they really are.

In this case, the student does not truly execute the ‘decision’ to conduct information interviews, in
which case a relevant decision was not really made. Explaining the need for openness and
guiding a student or client to notice his or her own cognitive illusions can be a first step in lessening
the effects of our tendency to revert to System 1 strategies.
A corollary to ‘no decision is really a decision until enacted’ is this: almost all macro and micro
decisions involve and depend on many nano decisions. A student tells you they have decided to
get part-time work at a fast-food restaurant. When does this decision really start to look like a
decision?

. When they tell you (i.e. make public) they have made a decision?
. When they decide to get an application form from a fast-food restaurant?
. When they decide to fill out the application form carefully and submit it?
. When they decide to go for an interview when asked?
. When they decide to actually show up for the interview?
. When they accept a position offered to them?
. When they actually show up on the first day of work?
. When they return to work for the second day? Third day?

If the student quits after three days, did they really decide to work at a fast-food restaurant? System 2
makes the decision to work at the fast-food restaurant, but System 1 may be powerfully influencing
the nano decisions the bigger decision comprises.

Questions to ponder
The connections between behavioural economics research on irrationality and career development
practice are not clear. However, I believe that our field would be well served by taking this work
seriously and considering its implications on practice and policy. Several key questions and, in
some cases, very tentative answers follow.

Philosophy
To what degree is our field still operating under the assumption of the rational decision-
maker, and to what degree should this change?
It is no surprise that humans do things for rational and irrational reasons. The surprise might lie in the
extent to which irrational decision-making shapes behaviour. Recent career development theory may
acknowledge and incorporate the non-rational, but I think that career development practice
6 D. E. REDEKOPP

overwhelmingly views irrational tendencies as merely bothersome. This is a testable question and, if
answered in the affirmative, may need addressing.

What is the real aim of our work?

When I was a graduate student many years ago, I would regularly grit my teeth when reading about
Milton Erickson’s (Haley, 1973) strategic therapy. Erickson’s approach was manipulative (e.g. ‘con-
fusion technique’ and ‘double-bind’), focussed on unconscious processes, and designed, in my
view, for the aim of immediate happiness. As a student of humanistic/existential counselling, I
wanted to help clients rise above their unconscious impulses, grapple with their existential
demons and make authentic choices about their lives. Yet, looking back, in light of what I now
know about cognitive illusions, I see that Erickson’s strategies also have merit and bypass some of
the ‘irrational’ forces that impede our process.
Behavioural economics is showing us the possibilities of helping clients become ‘happy’ without
the need for deep introspection or soul-searching. In the true sense of ‘behavioural psychology’, this
emerging field is showing us again how changing the environment can change behaviour. It is
further demonstrating that these behaviour changes can make us happy and content, even when
we do not know why or how. What implications might this have for the career development field?
Might we for instance use strategies such as ‘priming’ and ‘framing’ to assist students and clients
without them knowing we are using these techniques?

To what degree is the ‘self’ a cognitive illusion?

Frans Meijers (Lengelle & Meijers, 2015) spoke recently at a career development conference in
Edmonton, Canada,4 asking ‘Which self is the “authentic” self? Is there a single self that is the “auth-
entic” self?’ These are interesting questions, but when put in the context of behavioural economics
they may become quite moot. If it is not clear that there is (a) a single self or, in the case of multiple
selves, that (b) we do not know which is the ‘authentic’ one, maybe the whole idea of ‘self’ is a cog-
nitive illusion. It is certainly helpful to have the notion of ‘self’ but, like the notion of ‘true memory’,
this may simply be a heuristic mechanism to help us communicate and move along with our lives.

Policy
To what degree should career development policy and practice include disrupting or nudging
System 1 choices?
The notion of ‘nudging’ refers to shaping people’s behaviour by changing the structure of the choices
available to them (also called the ‘choice architecture’). A particularly successful example of this is in
organ donation sign-up. Countries such as Austria, in which people have to choose to not be an organ
donor (an opt-out model), have sign-up rates in the range of 99%. Countries such as Germany, in
which people have to actively choose to be an organ donor (an opt-in model), have sign-up rates
closer to 12% (Thaler, 2009).
I do not know the many ways in which career development decisions are or could be actively
nudged (e.g. showing only occupations requiring post-secondary education in an occupational
search engine unless the user specifically requests to see other occupations5), but the larger policy
question remains: whose business is it to alter other people’s choices by using their own System 1
tendencies ‘for them’ or ‘against them’? If the economy in our region needs a particular set of
skills, should roles with these skills get priority in our occupational search engines? If so, who
chooses the highest priority occupations?
Behavioural economists would likely argue that we, as educators, programme developers and
policy-makers, are inevitably ‘nudging’ choices, but that we are currently doing it sloppily because
we refuse to own up to our culpability in this matter. Their argument would likely be that you
cannot not influence choice, so why not do it thoughtfully and ethically?
 BRITISH JOURNAL OF GUIDANCE & COUNSELLING 7

Practice
How should we build System 1 change into our practice?
I would argue that most System 1 change in career counselling or career education comes via instruc-
tion (e.g. ‘If you do your cold calls early in the morning before you get tired, you’re less likely to
neglect doing them’) or persuasion/imploring (e.g. ‘You really, really need to follow your action
plan. It is easy to ignore it, but you will make way more progress if you follow it between now
and the next time we talk’). Some practitioners may go a step or two further with skilled facilitation
(e.g. motivational interviewing) or strategic follow-through (e.g. ‘I want you to text me after you’ve
completed each step of your plan’ or ‘I’m going to phone you at a random time this week to keep
you on your toes’), but I believe that most practitioners rely on the assumptions that clients and stu-
dents want to change and succeed; so they will do what they say they will do. Again, this is a testable
assumption, and a test would likely produce findings that vary widely across contexts (e.g. school
counselling vs. employment counselling), countries and client groups.
Interestingly, neither we nor our clients do what we say we are going to do on a very frequent
basis! We all know this, and yet our practices often rely on this false premise that we will. Personally,
I believe this is one of the reasons that ‘coaching’ has caught on in the last two decades (at least in
North America). The coaching community is far more likely to actively schedule daily ‘check-ins’, to
ensure choices are structured appropriately, to follow-up with clients randomly; in general, to recog-
nise that System 1 is guaranteed to get in the way of System 2 intentions.

To what degree can System 2 override System 1? How can we teach clients to outsmart
themselves?
Educators will likely argue that better education is needed so that students and clients learn how to
have System 2 override System 1. By using metacognitive strategies and enhancing executive func-
tion (Jacob & Parkinson, 2015), surely we could teach students to override their default tendencies?
Kahneman (2011) is not optimistic about this approach. He has taught these ideas to hundreds of
students, and claims that both he and his students remain highly susceptible to the described
effects. However, he acknowledges that, with effort, System 2 can anticipate System 1 decisions
and prevent their influence.

How might improving System 1 choices backfire on us and reduce the quality of System 2
decisions?
This may be a conceptual stretch, but it may be possible to manipulate System 1 sufficiently that it
creates conditions preventing the need, or at least the felt need, to deploy System 2 thinking. If, for
example, policy and practice interventions targeted at System 1 are deployed to bolster positivity and
happiness, would it be possible to prevent people from truly examining their states of being? Could
people be kept sufficiently satisfied that they do not have a pressing need to question their motives,
values, intentions or aspirations? For example, consider deploying interventions to ensure people are
‘positive thinkers’. As Burkeman (2012) puts it: ‘ … once you have resolved to embrace the ideology of
positive thinking, you will find a way to interpret virtually any eventuality as a justification for thinking
positively. You need never spend time considering how your actions might go wrong’ (p. 19). It may
be unlikely, but just as cults (and almost all organisations, religious or otherwise) find ways to short-
circuit rational thought, it is possible that society as a whole could do so as well.

To what degree does System 1 affect overall decision effects, especially at the macro level?
Am I currently being deceived by the ‘focussing illusion’ and paying too much attention to the
possible impact of System 1?
It could be that System 1 decisions are simply not that important to one’s overall career development.
I may in fact be subject to the focussing illusion here, placing great import on System 1 simply
because I am paying attention to it. A close look at the research shows many studies of very
8 D. E. REDEKOPP

constrained choices under highly artificial circumstances in short time periods; therefore the findings
may not be generalisable to the ‘real’ world. Until more research is done, the argument could be
made that these kinds of effects and biases are quite interesting, but not clinically or practically
important.
Even if System 1 thinking is important, is it necessarily problematic? Gigerenzer (2012), a decision-
making and risk theorist, argues that many non-rational processes are reasonable ways to respond to
great uncertainty. Getting a calculator out to figure out the trajectory of a ball thrown to you might
produce a rational and defensible decision, but you are far more likely to actually catch the ball using
a simple heuristic. Gigerenzer believes that more information, time or computation ability does not
always lead to a better decision. In this vein, Gelatt (1989) pointed out, in explaining his paradox of ‘be
aware and be wary’: if you have a watch, you know the time. If you have two, you are never sure. It
may well be that System 1 thinking does what it is supposed to do quite well, and therefore frees up
time for System 2 to take on problems and decisions that require careful consideration.

Conclusion
There are many hidden or indirect interventions as well as explicit interventions career development
practitioners could use to shape student or client behaviour in a positive way. Although it sounds like
we are using our knowledge of the way humans are built to ‘condition’ them to respond differently,
we can also see the priming and framing described as helping to assuage the fears and anxieties that
come as part and parcel of the risk society (Beck, 1992).
I believe the effects of the subtle or hidden interventions should be studied further and pursued, in
particular when there is no option to not intervene. For example, if we know that (a) different wall
colours have a predictable effect on client attitude and (b) our counselling office wall will have a
colour, then (c) choose a useful colour! Since schooling is mandatory in most developed countries,
we know we will be intervening with children for many of their formative years – there is no
option not to. When there is an option to intervene, however, some careful thinking is required
before implementing mood-changing or thinking-changing techniques. We may believe that
asking a client to change how they sit in a chair will change their mood (Veenstra, Schneider, &
Koole, 2016), but do we know that the mood change we are seeking is a useful one? Perhaps the
client’s feelings of despair are the very trigger for the long-term behaviour changes they will need
to serve them well in the future.
I also believe that the career development field should pay far greater attention to the various
System 1 findings and interventions that could be enacted to support students’ System 2 decisions.
It seems a shame that counsellors and educators work with clients and students to collaboratively
give of their best selves to fashion intentions, decisions and plans, and then shrug their shoulders
in disappointment when the students and clients do not follow through. The work of behavioural
economics is demonstrating that shrugging is not an acceptable response.
Career coaches and life coaches are among those who seem to have figured out that people will
never fully overcome System 1 effects, and that they will also therefore need ongoing support. Our
field’s assumption, sometimes explicit but most often implicit, is that the goal of all interventions is to
make a client fully adaptable and independent, someone who will have the competencies and
System 2 reasoning skills required to carry on without professional help. Earlier in my professional
career, Kris Magnusson, Barrie Day and I (Magnusson, Day, & Redekopp, 1993) developed a model
of client interventions based on this very premise, which we called the ‘hierarchy of self-directed
adaptation’. The model ‘stacked’ interventions (e.g. advising/guiding, coaching, formal instruction
and consulting) in a sequence responding to a client’s independence and adaptability in a transition.
‘Self-help’ and ‘personal innovation’ are at the top of the hierarchy. I still think movement toward
adaptability and independence should be our aim, but I am now far more willing to scale back my
expectations given what we are finding out about actual human decision-making and action.
 BRITISH JOURNAL OF GUIDANCE & COUNSELLING 9

I encourage readers who are interested in the realities of decision-making and its execution to
consider not only the research and ideas I have addressed here, but to explore related areas
outside the scope of this article. In particular, the work of Mullainathan and Shafir (2013) on the
effects of scarcity; this book may prove to provide a core theoretical base for many effects identified
by behavioural economics in particular as it pertains to those who in more dire need. Another related
area for the interested reader is that of judgment and decision-making (JDM) and, in particular,
research on emotion and decision-making. This is an area of research that saw a handful of papers
published annually in the mid-1990s but saw almost 450 academic papers published in 2013
(Lerner, Li, Valdesolo, & Kassam, 2014). Finally, and perhaps obviously, there are overlaps between
behavioural economics research and the work of positive psychologists. Seligman (2012), perhaps
the most prominent figure in the modern positive psychology movement, and colleagues such as
Frederickson (2009), are working to create a theoretical base to explain outcomes such as positivity,
happiness and optimism.
Whether we are exploring behavioural economics, JDM theory, positive psychology or cognitive
psychology, I believe that the advances in the study of these areas of decision-making and behaviour
are well worth considering from a career development perspective. Of course, the more interesting
and robust these areas of research become, the more time we will need to re-examine our work and
incorporate what we know about human beings into our practices. It is indeed important that we
prime ourselves to see how clients will likely respond, and frame our work in the knowledge that
we will continue to work with willing albeit irrational humans who will need to be supported,
nudged and made aware of their own tendencies within a complex and insecure labour market.

Notes
1. The cognitive effects listed here are only samples. A comprehensive list with descriptions can be found in Samson
(2016), an annually updated guide to behavioural economics.
2. For the purposes of this article, I make a general delineation of choices, namely macro (long-term, such as obtain-
ing a university degree), micro (short-term, such as selecting a university course) and nano (immediate, such as
choosing to skip an early morning class rather than get out of bed to attend class).
3. This may not be a true premise, but it is a useful one. A high-school student, for example, cannot decide to be a
lawyer because no one would hire them for that role. The student can decide to do things such as study hard,
choose law-relevant courses and explore law school entrance requirements, but the decision to be a lawyer is
not available to the student.
4. Alberta Career Development Conference, Edmonton, Alberta.
5. Even font differences between options on a computer screen creates predictable effects, almost regardless of the
content of the options (Coulter & Coulter, 2005).

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Dave Redekopp develops concepts, models and practices in almost all aspects of career development. His work includes
practitioner education, career development research, consulting to organisations, product development and programme
development. Dave holds a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Alberta.

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