The principles of compromise, which are discussed in the sec-
tions to follow, are:
- Developing conditional priorities
- Opting for “the good”
- Staving off the “not good enough”
- Accommodating to compromise
Principle 1: Developing conditional priorities. The relative impor-
tance of sextype, prestige, and type of work activity depends on the
severity of the compromise required. Severe threats to sextype (seg-
mentgin Figure 4.4) will be warded off before severe threats to
either prestige (h) or interests (i), because a “wrong” sextype (g) is
usually the greater threat to the self-concept. As long as the thresh-
old for minimally acceptable sextype is met (avoid g), compromises
will sacrifice increased compatibility of sextype (corf) to avoid
losses in either prestige (bord) or interests (aore). Moderate com-
promise in prestige (d) will be avoided before moderate compromise
of interests (e). If that threshold for prestige is met (avoid d), then
trade-offs will favor greater compatibility in interests (a) rather than
in either prestige (b) or sextype (c). To summarize, if compromises
are severe, protect sextype; if compromises are moderate, sextype is
good enough so favor prestige; if compromises are minor, that
means both sextype and prestige are good enough, so favor interests.
These successive thresholds lead to the following predictions
about priorities in compromise. They reflect a reversal in priorities
(in salience) as severity of compromise increases and different
thresholds of concern are crossed.
- When individuals are trading off small discrepancies from
their ideal field of interests (a), prestige (b), and sextype (c),
they give highest priority to interests (avoiding arather than b
orc); the latter two are good enough to indulge the former.
104 CAREER CHOICE AND DEVELOPMENT