Teaching a rational approach to career decision making: Who benefits most?

Who benefits most from rational decision-making training? Rational, intuitive, fatalistic, and dependent decision makers were compared on how much they learned from a rational decision-making training intervention. A Decision-Making Questionnaire was administered to 255 community college students to determine which style each used predominantly in three past career-related decisions. Subjects were randomly assigned to instruction in rational decision making or to a placebo intervention and later completed the Career Decision-Making Skills Assessment Exercise, a paper and pencil test on the application of rational decision-making principles. Individuals who had been highly impulsive, dependent, or fatalistic in prior course selections and those who exhibited dependency in prior job choices appeared to learn most from the rational training curriculum. Implications for when rational decision-making training should be prescribed are discussed.