This study aimed at assessing the relationships between the structures of the teaching occupation and teacher training institutions and the personality characteristics of teachers in Israel. The hypothesis considered was that recruitment by self-selection would promote an image of conservatism by bringing into teaching people with matched personality traits. Testing was done with samples of student teachers compared with a normative general group, rather than with inservice teachers, since the hypothesis is based on occupational image and the self-selection process. The student teacher samples (n=1882) were compared with a general population on the 16PF. Profile and discriminant analyses revealed that student teachers share common traits, such as submissiveness, conformism, adaptability, sensitiveness, and conservatism, and differ in these traits from the normative group. These results seem to suggest a type of natural selection following some occupational image rather than of any preconceived or predicted kind. It seems reasonable to conclude that the absence of a programmatic recruitment system with preconceived selection procedures does not assure the selection of a diverse group of people. Rather the lack of selection procedures (or selection based on a single attribute such as intelligence or scholastic ability) creates a process of self-selection based on one's (or society's) image of the chosen occupation. (MB)