Shoes and boyfriends

I'm coming up with a new theory. It might not yet be sufficiently fully formed to grace the pages of the Journal of Vocational Behavior, but I'm sure it has potential.

There is a huge gap in our understanding of how exactly people choose their careers. There are certain things that we know about some bits of our career decision making processes, such as the impact of our nearest and dearest, and we also know that there is far too much information about careers for our little brains to be able to process. What we don't quite know is how exactly we make the leap from these kinds of processes to an actual decision.

Brower and Nurius proposed the idea of schemas and niches for different occupations. The schema is your brain's own personal shorthand for everything it knows about a particular occupation, and the niche is the equivalent short hand for the lifestyle, choices and values that go along with that role. In one tiny spot, your brain wraps up a whole load of information relating to a particular job. The schema and niche are individual stereotypes which are based on social learning and continue to change as your experience of the world changes.

It seems to be easier for people to come up with detailed niches than detailed schemas for occupations: whilst many of us could picture a PR exec in our mind's eye (female, 28, polished, trendy, lives in London, travels by taxi, enjoys skiing, reads Grazia, studied English, quite posh), which of us could build up such a detailed picture of what this fabled woman actually does during the day at work?

My theory proposes that this niche is quite influential in people's career decision making. When considering different career options, people conjure up the niche of a PR exec and imagine themselves in that role, they try it on in their imagination, and see if they want to live that life. And whilst they do spend some time thinking about the day job that keeps this PR exec in Jimmy Choos, this is only one part of the possible self that they are playing with, and they find it harder to really drill down to the detail of the 9 - 5 than they do the weekend activities. So my suggestion is that the sorts of factors that really make the difference are things like what shoes they'd wear and what kind of boyfriend they'd come home to at the end of the day. If they feel that this lifestyle is the one that they aspire to and could really see themselves living, then they're more likely to give the job some serious consideration.

Now that's all a bit flippant, but I think there's something in it. What do you think?