The Development of Identification with an Occupation

Students typically begin graduate work in physiology without having done their undergraduate work in the field. This is true partly because the department faculty prefers students with a firm background in one of the sciences physiology draws on, such as chemistry or zoology, to those who would have to unlearn painfully the half-truths necessarily taught in undergraduate courses. The engineers have made a firm choice of occupation long before reaching graduate school; college and, in some cases, industrial experiences attendant on this choice have produced a very strong identification with engineering. The philosophy students typically choose their field of graduate work as being the least bad among a set of undesirable possibilities. Sometime during college, and in some cases even earlier, they have chosen as an important basic identification that of the "intellectual." This mechanism of development of interest and acquisition of skill thus operates to produce identification in the area of task commitment.

Biology · Identification (biology) · Psychology · Social and Educational Sciences