Social Psychological Correlates Of Occupational Conditions

National Institute Of Mental Health

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Abstract

This project centers on analyses of an extensive SSES designed longitudinal survey of a nationally representative U.S. sample, interviewed in 1964, 1974 and 1994. We test hypotheses about how, as one grows older, social-structurally determined environmental conditions, such as complexity, continue to affect cognitive functioning, autonomous self-directed orientations, one's feelings about oneself and one's circumstances, as well as mental and physical health. Taking advantage of the data from 1994 interviews, we confirmed that, even late in life, self-directedness of work has a positive effect on intellectual functioning and self-directedness of orientation (defined by the degree to which ones views of oneself and others reflect the importance of the autonomy and efficacy of the individual). Further recent findings indicate that dealing with cognitively complex environmental demands while doing housework or carrying out cognitively demanding leisure time activities has similar effects on cognitive functioning. We also examined socioenvironmental effects on older individuals non-cognitive psychological responses to housework, coping with financial problems and willingness to ask their children for personal or financial help. Other analyses elucidated the pattern of social-structural and behavioral interrelationships underlying the striking positive gradient between position in the social-structural hierarchy and physical health. Almost all of our completed analyses provide evidence that the different psychological effects of the differing environments to which people in different social-structural positions are exposed increase disparities between the advantaged and disadvantaged. We hypothesize that the same general pattern will hold in two ongoing sets of analyses: one examining how the social-structural and psychological characteristics of individuals in 1974 predict anxiety and depression in 1994, the other how these characteristics predict mortality through 2001. Our findings have direct implications both for the theoretical understanding of psychological aging processes and for developing effective interventions to counteract some of its negative effects.