Turning to the last row in Figure 4.8, people act on their self-
perceptions, accurate or not, to position themselves in the social
world. When perceptions are inaccurate, fit may be impeded. The
core theory describes, in particular, how young people compare their
perceptions of certain aspectsof self (such as academic ability) to
their perceptions of parallel aspectsof the occupational world (jobs’
intellectual demands) in order to identify a range of occupational
niches that is suitable for themselves (their social space, or zone of
acceptable alternatives). As indicated in Figure 4.8, visualizing this
zone is part of the broader, increasingly self-conscious process of
moving from a birth niche toward a congenial adult niche.
Individual-Level Differences
Circumscription refers to the fact that youngsters never seriously
entertain the full menu of niches that a culture offers but rather
begin eliminating whole segments from consideration as soon as
they are able to perceive essential distinctions among people and
lives. Their zone of acceptable alternatives is the submenu of life
niches that individuals perceive as fitting for themselves. This sub-
set, however, largely reflects the person’s birth niche, that is, the
mélange of beliefs, expectations, activities, roles, and opportunities
characteristic of the near environment into which the person is
born. During the first three stages of circumscription, it is as if chil-
dren were downloading successive bundles of the nearest cultural
software as their mental hardware grows in capacity—first on adult
roles, then sex roles, then the social hierarchy. Most children, more-
over, seem to download it with the standard options (expectations),
as it were, and only gradually customize their social space as they
come to recognize its deficiencies for someone like themselves.
Moreover, they seldom seriously question that social space as
long as it serves them “well enough.” As the earlier principles of cir-
cumscription, compromise, and accessibility indicate, inertia and
economy of effort keep individuals oriented to the major reference
GOTTFREDSON’S THEORY OF CIRCUMSCRIPTION, COMPROMISE, AND SELF-CREATION 131