Modeling the Individual Process of Career Choice

Making a suitable career choice is a difficult task. Every year, many adolescents prematurely end their studies, commonly citing “having made the wrong choice” as the main reason. This is a problem, both for the adolescents making these choices, and for society, which bears at least part of the cost of higher education. A thorough understanding of how adolescents make these career choices is essential to identifying the factors responsible for why the wrong choices are often made. Identity development theory emphasizes the role of exploration in career choice, but neglects many of the micro-level processes likely to play an important role. Similarly, traditional decision theory often focuses on optimization of choice, thereby neglecting the cognitive mechanisms that may explain deviations from optimal choice. Here, we present a novel computational approach to modeling long-term decision making. We combine elements of the macro-level theory on identity development with a firm rooting in micro-level cognitive processes. Specifically, we model decision making as an iterative process in which individuals can explore new options or more deeply investigate options that are already under consideration. The output of our model allows us to analyze how the quality of decisions depends on various factors, such as aspiration levels, the tendency to explore new options, and the ability to judge the fit of an option with one’s interests and capabilities. We present some preliminary results that already show our approach can lead to surprising conclusions, encouraging further development of this model in the future.