groups of their birth niche until some force turns them in a new
direction. First, individuals are not apt to spend the effort and risk
the consequences of venturing too far afield as long as their niche is
“good enough.” In addition, people tend to glean information about
their options from people in close proximity and who thus populate
their birth niche, which constitutes a recipe for minor adjustment
rather than major change. It should come as no surprise, then, that
people’s adult niches tend to resemble their birth niches, that chil-
dren re-create the society—and social inequalities—of their elders.
The more pertinent question may therefore be, Why do some peo-
ple venture further away from their birth niche toward more con-
genial ones? If stability is the norm, what accounts for mobility?
The likelihood of movement depends, first, on degree of fit with
the birth niche. Many people can be quite happy remaining in the
social circumstances of their birth. Only when the fit between in-
dividuals and their actual or expected environments becomes un-
comfortable are they likely to envision or seek a more congenial
environment. The shift is likely to be more dramatic, however,
when individuals encounter something new (for example, a partic-
ular hero, book, activity) to which they resonate powerfully or
when they behave in ways (illegal, duplicitous, obnoxious) that
evoke protest from their niche-mates.
Second, even when people recognize that they face a poor fit,
they differ in their ability and willingness to seek more congenial cir-
cumstances. As described earlier, and as the two arrows extending
from the first row to the last row in Figure 4.8 indicate, both inter-
nal (personality) and external factors (degree of personal freedom)
govern the subset of options we have and exploit. For instance, al-
though we might possess the necessary ability and personality for
some particular vocational interest, we may not know this if we
never have—or make—the opportunity to experience the pertinent
activities. Without that formative experience, we may never recon-
sider suitable occupations that we unreflectively rejected many years
before but that might be accessible if we now took appropriate
action. Lack of self-knowledge acts much like social barriers; by lim-
132 CAREER CHOICE AND DEVELOPMENT