Leonard I. Pearlin

Social Class and Self-Esteem Among Children and Adults

The literature on the relationship of social class to self-esteem is riddled with contradictions, showing positive, null, and inverse relationships. Two studies examinig this relationship are compared-one, a sample of children aged 8-18; the other, a sample of adults aged 18-65. The results indicate virtually no association for younger children, a modest association for adolescents, and a moderate association for adults. Four principles of self-esteem development are advanced to account for these conditional relations-social comparison processes, reflected appraisals, self-perception theory, and psychological centrality. It is suggested that these principles apply equally to adults and children and that the identical principles help to explain why social class should have different effects on the self-esteem of children and adults.

Economic Strains and the Coping Function of Alcohol

Some of the social and psychological antecedents of the use of alcohol to control emotional distress are examined. Interconnections are shown to exist among economic hardship, anxiety, and drinking for the relief of distress. These relationships are especially close among intensely anxious people having little sense of mastery and possessing low self-esteem. The results indicate that some functions of drinking stem from experiences and feelings rooted in basic features of social and economic organization.

Sources of Resistance to Change in a Mental Hospital

The resistance of nursing personnel to proposed changes in the care of hospitalized mental patients is examined from questionnaires and from information about the wards to which personnel are assigned. Among those in higher positions, resistance is aroused when the changes are seen as interfering with desired relations with patients. Lower placed personnel view change from a different framework; this group opposes change when it is seen in conflict with the performance of ward maintenance functions. Resistance is least likely to be found on those wards where there is some advanced patient-care policy coupled with a leadership friendly to change.

Unintended Effects of Parental Aspirations: The Case of Children's Cheating

Cheating represents a large class of behavior whose a acquisition is the unintended consequence of unrecognized conditions. Observations were made of seventy-nine working-and middle-class boys and girls while engaged at two achievement tasks, one with their mothers and the other with their fathers. Children were most likely to cheat when their parents exerted pressure on them to succeed. Parental pressure, in turn, comes about when parents entertain high aspirations for their children coupled with limited resources. Neither high aspirations with more ample material resources nor limited resources with more modest aspirations are as apt to result in parental pressure and its consequent cheating by children. Cheating can thus be an unwitting result of striving after culturally valued goals under conditions of limited opportunity.