SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF OCCUPATIONAL CONDITIONS

National Institute Of Mental Health

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Abstract

This project investigates how socio-environmental conditions affect the psychological functioning of the elderly. It tests hypotheses about how, as one grows older, such social-structurally determined environmental conditions such as complexity affect cognitive functioning, autonomous self-directed orientations and one's feelings about oneself and one's circumstances as well as mental and physical health. The data come from a follow-up survey of 707 respondents originally selected in 1964 as part of a nationally representative sample picked for an investigation of how occupational conditions affect psychological functioning. Findings in a paper completed this year demonstrate that having substantively complex leisure time activities both affects and is affected by intellectual flexibility throughout the lifespan. Leisure time activities thus provide one of the mechanisms through which the environment affects the stability of intellectual functioning. While also demonstrating the significance of the reciprocal effect that good health leads to higher SES, other analyses completed this year confirm that even over the long term, relatively high socioeconomic status (SES) leads to relatively good health. These analyses also indicate that about a third of the SES effect on health is mediated through SES differences in sleep, diet and psychological distress.