might become. Over time, adolescents should gradually translate
their vocational self-concept into a vocational identity—one sub-
stantiated by “the tangible promise of a career” (Erikson, 1963,
pp. 261–262). Society presents this task to individuals in the con-
crete form of expectations to make an occupational choice. As
indicated by its name, the chief coping behavior of this stage is voca-
tional exploration, that is, attempts to acquire information about the
self and about occupations in order to make the matching choices
that construct a career. This information-seeking behavior provides
experiences and expertise for dealing with the three vocational
development tasks that move an individual from occupational day-
dreams to employment in a job: (1) crystallization, (2) specification,
and (3) actualization.
Crystallization. The first task of the exploration stage—crystalliz-
ing vocational preference—requires that individuals explore broadly
to form tentative ideas about where they fit into society. Explo-
ration-in-breadth is a quest for a more complete sense of self—a
search that also develops the attitudes, beliefs, and competencies
needed to crystallize a vocational self-concept. Tiedeman and O’Hara
(1963) explain that vocational exploration propels a process of dif-
ferentiation by which one conceptualizes new distinctions about
role-related self-attributes. When individuals look at their own
“me,” they develop their self-concepts. Each look invites further
differentiation of self-percepts. Self-differentiation is fostered by
educational and leisure experiences and can be accelerated by psy-
chometric testing that helps individuals draw an objective portrait
of their vocational interests, occupational abilities, and work val-
ues. During adolescence, differentiation expands the number and
increases the abstractness of dimensions used for self-description.
In due course, the differentiated percepts and identifications must
be integrated into a stable and consistent structure.
As self-clarity increases, so should clarity about the world. The
formation of occupational conceptions follows the same develop-
mental course as self-perceptions, which Neimeyer (1988) charted
172 CAREER CHOICE AND DEVELOPMENT