accelerates reality testing, because hobbies lay halfway between play
and work (Freud, 1965). Of course, schoolwork also contributes
mightily to the growth of vocational self-concepts, particularly
through the influence of one’s student-role self-concept.
Classification of Self-Concepts
Super worked to make more precise and operational the overly mys-
tical language of phenomenology used in traditional discourse on self-
concept. Devising a scientific lexicon for vocational self-concepts
made his theory more useful because it identified different aspects of
self-concepts and organized them into a taxonomy. Super (1963)
started by describing the self-concept as a “picture of the self in some
role, situation, or position, performing some set of functions, or in
some web of relationships” (p. 18). Then he asserted that people have
multiple self-concepts, not just one self-concept, thus distinguishing
between a self-concept and a self-concept system. Within their multi-
dimensional self-concept system, or self-structure, individuals have
conceptions of self in each life role they enact. These distinct self-
concepts, which are activated in different roles, remain stable in par-
ticular types of situations and relationships, and facilitate information
processing during decision making (Tunis, Fridhandler, & Horowitz,
1990).
Having articulated the self-concept system in general, Super con-
centrated next on a particular self-concept. He defined a vocational
self-conceptas the conception of self-perceived attributes that an indi-
vidual considers relevant to work roles. Finally, he devised a taxon-
omy to classify the elements that constitute vocational self-concepts.
One important outcome of this taxonomic work was the dis-
tinction between, on the one hand, attributes called self-concept
dimensions (for example, gregariousness and dogmatism) and, on
the other hand, characteristics called self-concept metadimensions
(for example, consistency and stability) that describe the arrange-
ment and structure of self-concept dimensions. The usage typical of
writers on self-concept can be criticized for confusing dimensions
A DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY OF VOCATIONAL BEHAVIOR 163