An empirical investigation as to the need for multicomponent decision models

The adequacy of an exclusively attitudinal component model, which is analogous to the traditional decision-theoretic model where each option is scored and weighted on multiple attributes, was investigated. The results indicated that a purely attitudinal model was inadequate when predicting the career intent of young people. This conclusion held, irrespective of how the relative weights used in the attitudinal component model were measured. An adequate model will have to include normative (i.e., judgments of others' beliefs) and affective (i.e., emotional) components in addition to an attitudinal component. Although decision-theoretic models can readily be expanded to include the normative component by including attributes that represent judgments of others' beliefs about alternative actions, it is not clear how to include a global-affective component.