which they may as yet be only dimly aware. Young people circum-
scribe their options before they fully understand them.
Principles of Circumscription. The delineation of one’s self-concept
and associated social space (the zone of acceptable alternatives)
proceeds by five principles:
- Increasing capacity for abstraction
- Interactive development of self and aspirations
- Overlapping differentiation and incorporation
- Progressive elimination of options
- Taken for granted and lost for sight
1.Increasing capacity for abstraction. With age, children become
increasingly able to apprehend and organize complex, abstract infor-
mation about themselves and their world. They progress from mag-
ical and intuitive thinking to recognizing highly concrete elements
of the world (gender differences in clothing, occupations with uni-
forms, gross motor activity) and then to perceiving the more abstract
(personality traits, values). Children progress through this sequence
at different rates because they differ in mental ability. By early ado-
lescence, some youngsters will function mentally like college stu-
dents but others more like children in the fourth grade or below.
2.Interactive development of self and aspirations.Self-concept and
vocational preferences develop closely in tandem, each influencing
the other as children understand more about both. Occupational
preferences reflect an effort to both implement and enhance the
self-concept. Occupational preferences are so tightly linked with
self-concept because individuals are very concerned about their
place in social life, and occupations are a major signal and con-
straint in the presentation of self to society.
3.Overlapping differentiation and incorporation.Children appre-
hend and integrate information about self and occupations in order
of complexity. They begin to catch on to the more complex distinc-
94 CAREER CHOICE AND DEVELOPMENT