Effect of acceptance-based interventions regarding possible negative outcomes of career uncertainty on the career exploration process of Korean college students

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of an acceptance-based intervention on the career exploration process of Korean college students. For this, 82 Korean college students participated in the experimental study. The participants read a potential negative outcome scenario related to their career decision, and received a randomly assigned intervention (acceptance vs avoidance). Then they sequentially engaged in the career exploration task, the emotional stroop task, and the free recall task. We found that the acceptance-based intervention group sought out more negative career information and decided their career path more quickly than the avoidance-based intervention group. Additionally, the acceptance-based intervention group showed less attention bias to career-related threat words and remembered more career information than the avoidance-based intervention.