Laura Upenieks

Putting Sex Into Context in Later Life: Environmental Disorder and Sexual Interest Among Partnered Seniors

Background and Objectives This study examines whether neighborhood and household disorder is associated with sexual interest among partnered seniors. Research Design and Methods Analyses use dyadic data from Wave 2 of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP), a nationally representative sample of community-dwelling older adults (2010-2011). Measures of environmental disorder were conducted by trained interviewers. Survey data were also linked to census tract information from the 2009 American Community Survey. We used actor-partner interdependence models to estimate the likelihood of reporting low sexual interest. Results There was no observed association between neighborhood context (physical disorder or census tract socioeconomic disadvantage) and sexual interest, but husbands were more likely to report low sexual interest if they lived in more disorderly households. High marital quality protected against low sexual interest, but these evaluations did not mediate or moderate the putative effect of household disorder. Discussion and Implications Regardless of the broader neighborhood context, helping older adults maintain an orderly home space may help sustain sexual functioning. Future research should consider how various features of the environment matter for additional aspects of late-life sexuality.

The Age-Graded Nature of Advice Distributional Patterns and Implications for Life Meaning

Drawing from life course, social networks, and developmental social psychology scholarship, this article considers how advice transmission varies across age groups and examines the age-contingent associations between advice-giving and life meaning. Binomial and ordered logistic regression using the 2006 Portraits of American Life Study (n = 2,583) reveal that adults in their twenties are most likely to report offering advice to multiple social targets. Notably, however, the connection between advice-giving and life meaning is most pronounced for late-middle age adults—even as changes during this part of the life course reduce the odds of advice exchange. Consistent with developmental theory and the mattering perspective, we argue that advice is a mechanism for contributing to others’ welfare and for cultivating life meaning. Yet opportunity structures for advice transmission also shift over life course, leaving adults in late-middle age and beyond with fewer opportunities to engage in such generative practices.

Beyond America: Cross-national Context and the Impact of Religious Versus Secular Organizational Membership on Self-rated Health

Studies using data from the United States suggest religious organizational involvement is more beneficial for health than secular organizational involvement. Extending beyond the United States, we assess the relative impacts of religious and secular organizational involvement on self-rated health cross-nationally, accounting for national-level religious context. Analyses of data from 33 predominantly Christian countries from the 2005–2008 World Values Survey reveal that active membership in religious organizations is positively associated with self-rated health. This association’s magnitude is higher than the magnitude of associations between many memberships in secular organizations and health. The positive association between involvement in religious organization and self-rated health is moderated by national levels of religious pluralism such that positive associations are primarily found in nations high in religious diversity. These results replicated in a sample of 21 majority-Christian nations from the 2010–2014 World Values Survey.

An expanded model of the moral self: Beyond care and justice

Most research on moral identities conceptualizes morality exclusively in terms of care and justice, but work from across the social sciences indicates that these represent only a corner of the moral landscape. Emphasizing care and justice alone severely restricts the scope of moral identity models, and risks under-estimating the influence of moral self-processes. To address this, we develop and validate measures of moral identity focused on group loyalty, authority, and purity, three additional facets of morality highlighted in Moral Foundations Theory. Although the loyalty identity is remarkably similar to the care/justice identity, the authority and purity identities are distinct, and demonstrate adequate convergent, divergent, and nomological validity. These identities also predict a wide range of behaviors that traditional care/justice focused moral identities miss. Taken together, our work indicates that the moral self is more complex - and has a much wider scope of influence - than previously supposed.

Disorderly Households, Self-Presentation, and Mortality: Evidence From a National Study of Older Adults

This article examines whether disorderly household conditions and bodily self-presentation predict mortality, above and beyond four sets of variables conceptually linked to both death and disorder. Data come from 2005/2006 and 2010/2011 waves of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project. We used naturalistic observation of respondents’ homes and bodies, along with a diverse range of additional covariates, to predict probability of death. Older adults living in disorderly households were at highest risk of death over 5 years, primarily because they confronted high levels of frailty. Disorderly bodily self-presentation was also related to mortality risk, but this association could be only partially explained by demographic factors, health conditions, frailty, and low social connectedness. Findings suggest that disorder in the residential context—dress and hygiene in particular—is a strong predictor of mortality. Support providers should be mindful of changes in bodily presentation among community-dwelling older adults.

“Stuck in the Middle with You?” Supervisory Level and Anger about Work

Although sociologists have long been interested in the stratification of emotions, the occupational stratification of anger has been investigated in only a few general population studies. Through analyses of data representative of workers in Toronto, we evaluate the hypothesis that workplace hierarchical position, defined by supervisory level, has an inverted u-shaped association with the frequency of anger about work. We also evaluate the more specific hypothesis that the difference in work-related anger between front-line supervisors and nonsupervisory workers will be relatively larger among workers in the commodified services sector than other sectors. Results are generally consistent with our hypotheses. We find that both front-line supervisors in the commodified services sector, and secondary supervisors in all employment sectors, report more frequent anger about work than do nonsupervisory workers. In contrast, higher level supervisors report anger about work at about the same frequency as nonsupervisory workers. These associations are only slightly reduced by controls for work stress and stressors. We discuss how supervisory relations might explain differences in anger about work among workers at different levels in organizational hierarchies.

Supervisory Level and the Impulse to Harm a Coworker: Advancing a Bourdieusian Perspective

Abstract Purpose The malicious impulse is a phenomenon that lies in the theoretical and ontological space between emotion and action. In this chapter, we probe this space. In the empirical part of this work, we evaluate the hypothesis that middle-level supervisors will be more likely than non-supervisory workers and top-level supervisors to report an impulse to “hurt someone you work with” (i.e., maliciousness). Methodology/approach Data are from a cross-sectional survey of a representative sample of employed Toronto residents in 2004–2005. Findings Results from logistic regression analyses show that when job characteristics are controlled, the estimated difference between middle-level supervisors and workers in other hierarchical positions reporting the impulse to harm a coworker is statistically significant. Moreover, the difference between middle-level supervisors and other workers persist after controls for anger about work and job-related stress. Social Implications In discussing our results, we focus on factors that might generate the observed associations, and on how Bourdieusian theory may be used to interpret the social patterning of impulses in general, and malicious impulses in particular. We also discuss the implications of our findings for emotional intelligence in the workplace.