Melvin L. Kohn

Job Conditions and Personality: A Longitudinal Assessment of Their Reciprocal Effects

In earlier work, we assessed a longitudinal causal model of the reciprocal effects of the substative complexity of work and intellectual flexibility. In this paper, we greatly expand the causal model to consider sumultaneously several structural imperatives of the job and three major dimensions of personality-ideational flexibility, a self directed orientation to self and society, and a sense of distress. The analysis demonstrates that the structural imperatives of the job affect personality. Self-directed work leads to ideational flexibility and to a self-directed orientation to self and society; oppressive working conditions lead to distress. These findings strongly support a learning generalization model. Personality, in turn, has important consequences for an individuals place in the job structure and in the system of social stratification. In particular, both ideational flexibility and a self-directed orientation lead, over time, to more responsible jobs that allow greater latitude for occupational self-direction.

Occupational experience and psychological functioning: An assessment of reciprocal effects.

The central issue of this paper is whether mens adult occupational experiences affect or only reflect their psychological functioning. Our analysis isolates a small set of occupational conditions, twelve in all, which defines the structural imperatives of the job. These occupational conditions are found to be substantially related to mens psychological functioning, off as well as on the job. We argue that the relationships between occupational conditions and psychological functioning result from a continuing interplay between job and man, in which the effects of job on man are far from trivial. This argument is borne out by an assessment of the reciprocal effects of the substantive complexity of the work (a critically important occupational condition, for which we have the requisite longitudinal data) and several facets of psychological functioning. Substantive complexity has a decidedly greater impact on psychological functioning than the reverse.

Position in the Class Structure and Psychological Functioning in the United States, Japan, and Poland

This article conceptualizes and indexes social class for a Western capitalist country (the United States), a non-Western capitalist country (Japan), and a socialist country (Poland). The idea that social classes are to be distinguished in terms of ownership, control of the means of production, and control over the labor power of others is adapted to the historical, cultural, economic, and political circumstances of each country. It is hypothesized that men who are more advantageously located in the class structure of their society are more likely to value self-direction for their children, to be intellectually flexible, and to be self-directed in their orientations than men who are less advantageously located. The hypothesis that occupational self-direction plays a crucial role in explaining the psychological effect of social class in all three countries is also confirmed. There was no firm basis for hypothesizing the relationships between social class and a sense of distress. The pattern is cross-nationally inconsistent, in part because occupational self-direction does not have the cross-nationally consistent effect on the sense of distress that it has on other facets of psychological functioning.

Occupational Structure and Alienation

This paper appraises two related hypotheses suggested by Marxs analysis of the occupational sources of alienation-one emphasizing control over the product of ones labor, the other emphasizing control over the work process. Using data from a sample survey of U.S. males employed in civilian occupations, it concludes that, in this large-scale, capitalist system, control over the product of ones labor (ownership and hierarchical position) has only indirect effect on alienation, whereas control over work process (closeness of supervision, routinization, and substantive complexity) has an appreciable direct effect on powerlessness, self-strangement, and normlessness.

Women and Work: The Psychological Effects of Occupational Conditions'

For employed women, job conditions that encourage self-direction are related to effective intellectual functioning and an open, flexible orientation to others, while those tha constrain opportunities for self direction are related to ineffective intellectual functioning and a rigid social orientation. Moreover, several types of job pressures and uncertainties are related to less effective intellectual functioning, unfavorable evaluations of self, or a rigid social orientation. These relationships do not result from social selection, pay, status, or social circumstances and personal preferences, and they are of magnitudes similar to those for men. Causal analysis demonstrates that job conditions not only correlate with but actually affect psychological functioning. For women, as for men, occupational conditions have a decided psychological impact.

Social structure and self-direction : a comparative analysis of the United States and Poland

Introduction - a rationale for cross-national inquiry into the relationship of social structure and personality the methodology of the research social class and social stratification in capitalist and socialist societies class, stratification and psychological functioning occupational self-direction as a crucial explanatory link between social structure and personality issues of causal directionality in the relationships of class and stratification with occupational self-direction and psychological functioning social structure and the transmission of values in the family interpreting the cross-national differences a re-evaluation of the thesis and its implications for understanding the relationship between social structure and personality.

The Effects of Social Class on Parental Values and Practices

My thesis is straightforward and relatively simple: that there are substantial differences in how parents of differing social-class position raise their children; that these differences in parental practices result chiefly from class differences in parents’ values for their children; and that such class differences in parental values result in large measure from differences in the conditions of life experienced by parents at different social-class levels. This essay attempts to spell out this thesis more concretely and explicitly.1 Without getting into technical aspects of methodology, it also attempts to give some idea of the type of empirical evidence on which the generalizations are based.

Social structure and personality under conditions of radical social change : A comparative analysis of Poland and Ukraine

Does the relationship between social structure and personality during times of apparent social stability obtain as well under conditions of radical social change ? There are good reasons to think that it might not. To find out, the authors conducted surveys in Poland and Ukraine during 1992-1993, with dramatic results. In those respects in which the socialist Poland of 1978 had shown a pattern of relationships similar to that of the capitalist United States and Japan (notably, the relationship of social structure to self-directedness of orientation), the pattern remains the same; but where socialist Poland in 1978 had differed from the United States and Japan (notably, in the relationship of social structure to a sense of distress), Poland now fully exemplifies the capitalist pattern. Ukraine seems to be following a similar trajectory, albeit at a slower pace

Continuity of Learning-Generalization: The Effect of Job on Men's Intellective Process in the United States and Poland'

Data from both the United States and Poland show that the effect of occupational self-direction on intellective process is similar for younger, middle-aged, and older workers. Multiple-regression analyses of cross-sectional data consistently indicate that the job conditions determinative of occupational self-direction, the substantive complexity of work in particular, have as great an effect on the ideational flexibility and authoritarian conservatism of older as on those of younger and middle-aged workers in both countries. Longitudinal analyses of U.S. data demonstrate that the reciprocal effects of the substantive complexity of work and intellective process are as great for older as for younger workers. All the evidence supports the conclusion that job conditions continue to affect, and be affected by, intellective process with undiminished force throughout adult life.

The Ecological Approach in Social Psychiatry

The search for differences in the frequency of mental illness in population groups ecologically defined is based upon a number of assumptions which are not wholly tenable yet not completely lacking in validity. The distributions found in ecological research may be explained in terms of three divergent frames of reference: the genetic, the interactional (as exemplified by the hypothesis of social isolation), and the cultural (exemplified in the view that social classes represent subcultures which differ with respect to both child socialization and types of stress), The major problem for futher research is to establish under what circumstances factors involved in any of these hypotheses actually contribute to the production of mental illness.