Social Psychological Correlates Of Occupational Conditio

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, 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. Recently, the SSES has expanded its concerns to include the causal relationship of socioenvironmental conditions to physical health and related behaviors. We have now completed two papers dealing with this important concern. In Caplan and Schooler (under review) we examined the effects of three variables assessed in 1974 (intellectual resources and two aspects of perceived control/mastery;fatalism and self-confidence) on the subsequent development of illness and disability in 1994. Our findings generally support the hypotheses that fatalism predicts the occurrence of illness and that each of the three characteristics (i.e., intellectual resources, fatalism and self-confidence) predict the long-term likelihood and severity of life-limiting disability in older adults, net of illness. The effects are small in magnitude; nevertheless, they are impressive in occurring over a twenty-year period and provide new insights about the psychological aspects of the processes involved in the development of disease and disablement.In Mulatu and Schooler (2002), we explored the reciprocal relationships between socio-economic status (SES) and health status. In doing this, we estimated the degree to which health-related lifestyles and behaviors and psychosocial distress are mechanisms that mediate these relationships. As predicted, SES positively affects health, and health positively affects SES. Although the causal path from SES to health is stronger than the path from health to social status, our findings confirmed the hypothesis that both reciprocal paths contribute to social inequalities in health. More than a third of the overall SES-health relationship was accounted for by health-related lifestyles and behaviors and psychosocial distress while a notable part of the effect of SES on health is due to differences in psychological distress