The Role of Anticipated Inaction Regret and Future Work Selves in College Students’ Information Seeking: Extending the Theory of Motivated Information Management

Abstract

Career counselors are valuable resources for college students who are seeking information related to their future career options. Additionally, college students may weigh specific benefits and costs of seeking information prior to deciding on an information seeking strategy. This study used the theory of motivated information management (TMIM) as a framework to examine predictions about college student’s information seeking strategies when they are uncertain about their future career options. This study extends the TMIM by introducing and testing two new types of outcome expectancies: anticipated inaction regret and future work selves. Furthermore, this study adds to the growing body of literature that applies the TMIM to non-interpersonal contexts. With cross-sectional survey data from 194 undergraduate college students, this study’s results show that the two new types of outcome expectancies generally functioned within the TMIM framework as TMIM predicts for outcome expectancies. Additionally, TMIM generally worked as a model for predicting college students’ information seeking. The study found that an uncertainty discrepancy predicted negative affect, both positive and negative affect predicted anticipated inaction regret and future work selves, future work selves predicted efficacy, anticipated inaction regret and efficacy directly predicted information seeking, and anticipated inaction regret indirectly affected information seeking via target efficacy. Theoretical implications for the TMIM framework and practical implications related to career counselors who services to college students are discussed.