The Development of Identification with an Occupation

Abstract

Interviews with graduate students in physiology, philosophy, and mechanical engineering indicate that changes in social participation in the course of graduate work lead to the acquisition or maintenance of specific kinds of occupational identities. Such participation affects identity through the operation of the social-psychological mechanisms of development of interest in problems and pride in skills, acquisition of idelogies, investment, the internalization of motives, and sponsorship. This mode of analysis may have more general utility in the understanding of changes in individual identity in the course of experience in groups.