Unemployment Flashcards
History
post-war and pre-war comparison
- post-war, more jobs available, therefore rate of unemployment decreased,
- more women in employment, less men in employment
- changes the way of work
- scales are retrospective, and when looking at individuals is cheaper and easier to ask pps individually, therefore can be unreliable
- more recently, there has been research looking at the connection with mental health
How is unemployment typically researched?
- psychologists - IV, the cause of attitudes towards unemployment
- sociologists - DV, how age ect. effects
Jahoda’s wokrk
psychological response, not looking at economic value/ disadvantages, but looking at how it effect people socially, and mental health
- emotional state
- personal relationships with the family
- social interests and activities
- political activities
The function of work
- social
- monetary gains
- something to fill up your time
- something to work towards
- something to heighten motivation
- mastery
- a sense of purpose
Paul & Moser (2009)
meta-analysis
- 87 studies
- found that men with blue-collared jobs were more distressed by unemployment compared to women with white-collared jobs were
- negative effect of unemployment was stronger in countries where there were weak levels of economic development
- unemployment therefore causes distress, it is not just correlational
Stage theory of unemployment
Eisenberg & Lazarsfeld (1938) - pre-war
- shock
- active hunt for a new job - at this point is optimistic and encouraged
- when fails becomes pessimistic and feels hopeless, as though they will never find a job. Loses motivation to continue looking
- fatalistic - adapts to fate, but has broken hope.
still agrees with now by Harrison (1976)
Briar (1977)
- shock
- optimism
- self-blame
- depression
- inertia - hard to change the way that you feel
Frustration theory
Dollard et al. (1939) - frustration leads to aggression, and aggression presupposes the existence of frustration. Part of being unemployed. Means can be harder to get a job
Life span developmental theory
Erikson (1959) - what happens in life predisposes an individual to developing a negative outlook on unemployment
What happens in your past can set you up for your future mentality. E.g. work ethic - determination for future job hunting. Rejection, trust, autonomy, guilt
Relative deprivation theory
Feldman et al. (1997) - a discrepancy between an individuals actual status, and the status in which they feel entitled to.
- perception of violate measures
- judgement as to the legitimacy of the violation
Income inequality
Wlikinson (1996) - increased income inequality has more negative health consequences. Can cause stress (motivation as a monetary reward)
Catalano (1998)
- main concern should be other people’s concern over their financial security. In America in 1996, 37% of households admitted that they were economically insecure, and 43% with an income of 50,000 were worried that one of them would be laid off in the next 3 years
Aggregate Studies
- examine data collected in a community or a nation over a long period of time
- can look at relationships between different communities and different problems
- Brenner (1973) - 1910-1967 - no. of people being admitted into mental hospitals and unemployment correlation
- optimum lag
- figures may be confound of diet change or medical care
- ecological fallacy - not generalised to individual processes
Individual studies
case studies, cross sectional studies, longitudinal studies
Archival studies
looking at past data and correlating. cannot say there’s a cause and effect relationship
Owen & Watson (1995)
correlation between mental health and unemployment - but cannot provide a direct, causal relationship. Could have used as a scapegoat to seek an explanation.
Warr’s vitamin theory (1987)
- mental health is influenced by the environment in a manner analogous to the effect of vitamins on physical health
- C+E are beneficial to a certain degree and then benefits decease (physical conditions and interpersonal contact)
- A+D are beneficial to a certain degree and then goes down in excess (control, job variety and workload)
- benefits of work such as variety, social contact, structure, mastery, valued social position, purpose, money)
- mental health is broad, hard to find things that relate to all aspects of mental health
- paucity of empirical evidence
- looks specifically at the effects of job characteristics, and not individual differences
Hammarstrom & Janbert (2002)
- cohort of men and women, tested at 16 and 30
- no correlation between early unemployment and smoking
- correlation between early unemployment and psychological symptoms and smoking
Feather & O’Brein (2011)
- unemployment in youth is blamed on the recession, lending a reduced motivation in young people.
- however, are personality constructs seen as school that could be predeterminates of unemployment. therefore, maybe mental health is not a result of unemployment, bust could have been a triggering factor. Look at pps internal locus of control nd PWE
