Personality Types and the Division of Labor

Abstract

The objects of occupational selection are persons most of whom have been reared in families in which they have inherited sets of social objects and attitudes more or less common to the community. The division of labor operates on these persons, in an urbanized world, by mobilizing them from their milieu natal (Durkheim) and making them available at the points where competition will give them a place. The completeness of this mobilization varies in different types of occupations: the completeness of personality change of those who enter the occupation varies with it. Sometimes the mobilization of the person is of another sort, involving conversion, long professional training, and development of esoteric skill and interests. The more mobile and esoteric the occupational type, the more completely are familial and local ties and mores left behind. The person finds a "life-organization" in the occupational group, social objects and attitudes, and definitions of his whishes. A division of labor may be sacred or secular. In a caste system one is born to a station and a sacred set of prerogatives; his personality is a stereotype. In our world but few are born to their stations. A man's trade thus becomes more important than his family. Each occupation tends to have its peculiar realm of sacred and secular objects. The sacred objects are its interests and prerogatives. Its secular objects are within the realm of its technique. Classification of persons into types by these objective criteria is perhaps more significant for an understanding of modern social organization than are such general classifications as represented by the familiar Philistine, Bohemian classification. A classification of personality types according to divisions of labor must be supplemented by further classification within each unit. Certain types move easily and almost necessarily from one occupation to another. But the persons who do so become themselves a distinct type.