Melvin Seeman

On The Meaning of Alienation

The problem of alienation is a pervasive theme in the classics of sociology, and the concept has a prominent place in contemporary work. This paper seeks to accomplish two tasks: to present an organized view of the uses that have been made of this concept; and to provide an approach that ties the historical interest in alienation to the modern empirical effort. Five alternative meanings of alienation are identified: powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, isolation, and self-estrangement. The derivation of these meanings from traditional sociological analysis is sketched, and the necessity for making the indicated distinctions is specified. In each case, an effort is made to provide a viable research formulation of these five alternatives.

Religiosity/spirituality and health: A critical review of the evidence for biological pathways

The authors review evidence regarding the biological processes that may link religiosity/spirituality to health. A growing body of observational evidence supports the hypothesis that links religiosity/spirituality to physiological processes. Although much of the earliest evidence came from cross-sectional studies with questionable generalizability and potential confounding, more recent research, with more representative samples and multivariate analysis, provides stronger evidence linking Judeo-Christian religious practices to blood pressure and immune function. The strongest evidence comes from randomized interventional trials reporting the beneficial physiological impact of meditation (primarily transcendental meditation). Overall, available evidence is generally consistent with the hypothesis that religiosity/spirituality is linked to health-related physiological processes--including cardiovascular, neuroendocrine, and immune function--althogh more solid evidence is needed.

Health behavior and personal autonomy: a longitudinal study of the sense of control in illness.

This study documents the wide-ranging significance for health of the persons sense of control, i.e., the sense of mastery vs. fate-orientation. Health behavior is examined in three domains: (1) preventive care; (2) health knowledge and perspectives; and (3) physical status, e.g., acute and chronic illness. A representative metropolitan sample was interviewed at the beginning (1976) and at the close (1977) of a year-long investigation that included telephone call-backs at six-week intervals to trace health-related incidents. A sense of low control is shown to be significantly associated with (I) less self-initiated preventive care; (2) less optimism concerning the efficacy of early treatment; (3) poorer self-rated health; and (4) more illness episodes, more bed confinement, and greater dependence upon the physician. These relationships are also shown to be discriminating, e.g., meaningfully different for men and women, and hence are unlikely to be instrument-generated effects. The results are interpreted in the light of the recent congruence in psychology and sociology on the importance of the sense of control.

Organizations and Powerlessness: A Test of the Mediation Hypothesis

The theory of mass society proposes that organizations mediating between individual and state serve as a bulwark against the development of alienation. An empirical test of this proposition is presented, focusing on perceived powerlessness as a critical form of alienation. As predicted, members of work-related organizations are generally lower in powerlessness than non-members; this difference is sustained under appropriate controls for socio-economic status and mobility. The clearest associations between non-membership and powerlessness are found among the mobility-minded workers. Systematic exceptions to the mediation thesis are noted; and the problem of causal imputation (organization leads to a sense of mastery) is reviewed.

Alienation and alcohol: the role of work, mastery, and community in drinking behavior.

The correlates of drinking behavior, and of drinking problems, are examined, using a sample of some 450 employed males in a metropolitan community. Multiple indices bearing on three domains of alienation-work experience, powerlessness, and social isolation-are employed to predict drinking habits and problems. Regression and covariance analyses establish that: (1) the sense of low control (high powerlessness) is consistently associated with heavier drinking and with drinking problems; (2) contrary to predictions that derive from an emphasis on the centrality of work, none of the work experience indices (e.g., job satisfaction, substantive complexity, or the level of intrinsic reward in work) is significantly associated with drinking phenomena; and (3) the hypothesis that social integration might serve as a buffer (ameliorating the negative impact of high powerlessness or of alienated work) is not supported since high social involvement correlates positively with heavier drinking. An analysis of the interaction among the three forms of alienation indicates that though powerlessness has the most consistent main effect, engagement in alienated work and involvement in social networks combine with powerlessness to yield distinctive drinking patterns.

Powerlessness, Work, and Community: A Longitudinal Study of Alienation and Alcohol Use

This study is a replication and a refinement of an earlier work which examined the bearing of three varieties of alienation-powerlessness, work alienation, and social isolation-on the use and abuse of alcohol. A sample of some 500 male respondents, composed of both a recaptured group (interviewed after a four-year interval) and a newly interviewed group, exhibits essentially the same findings as in the original study: 1) powerlessness is related directly to drinking and to drinking problems, while work alienation and network (friendship) integration are not; and 2) the latter variables interact with powerlessness to produce distinctive outcomes. The longitudinal design allows us to demonstrate further that 1) change in powerlessness is associated with change in drinking, and 2) intervening stress experience (but not unemployment in particular) is associated with increased drinking problems. The discussion focuses on 1) the limited generalization of alienated labor to nonwork settings, 2) the significance of network norms in tracking the effects of social support, and 3) the importance of more analytical approaches to situational analysis.

Powerlessness, health and mortality: A longitudinal study of older men and mature women

National samples of older men (age 45-59 in 1966) and mature women (30-44 in 1967), surveyed periodically over more than a decade, establish the association over time between the sense of powerlessness and various indices of health status (chiefly, psychosocial symptoms and limits on physical activities). The results are basically coordinate for men and women, and they are replicated for initially healthy and initially impaired sub-samples. The results show that: (1) in each year, powerlessness is associated with greater activity limits and more psychosocial symptoms; (2) powerlessness also provides prospective prediction, since high initial powerlessness scores are associated with health problems observed five and ten years later, with initial health controlled; (3) increasing powerlessness accompanies deterioration in health (with stringent controls on prior health); and (4) for a sub-sample of men, mortality between 1976 and 1981 is also associated with initially high powerlessness scores (with prior health controlled). These results are discussed for their import in relation to the steadily growing interest in social psychological factors in health.

ALIENATION, MEMBERSHIP, AND POLITICAL KNOWLEDGE: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

This study will especially interest students of public opinion formation, social learning, and the mass society. Of special significance are findings regarding the relation to learning of the sense of powerlessness and reliance on experts. This demonstration of compatability between mass society and learning theories on a comparative basis presents many promising research cues. Dr. Melvin Seeman is Professor of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles.

Social status and biological dysregulation: The “status syndrome” and allostatic load

Data from a national sample of 1255 adults who were part of the MIDUS (Mid-life in the U.S.) follow-up study and agreed to participate in a clinic-based in-depth assessment of their health status were used to test the hypothesis that, quite part from income or educational status, perceptions of lower achieved rank relative to others and of relative inequality in key life domains would be associated with greater evidence of biological health risks (i.e., higher allostatic load). Results indicate that over a variety of status indices (including, for example, the persons sense of control, placement in the community rank hierarchy, perception of inequality in the workplace) a syndrome of perceived relative deprivation is associated with higher levels of biological dysregulation. The evidence is interpreted in light of the well-established associations between lower socio-economic status and various clinically identified health morbidities. The present evidence serves, in effect, both as a part of the explanation of how socio-economic disparities produce downstream morbidity, and as an early warning system regarding the ultimate health effects of currently increasing status inequalities.

The Problem of Leadership: An Interdisciplinary Approach

A paradign for the analysis of leadership is presented. The model stresses the fact that the group and individual variable commonly examined in leadership studies may be viewed in five ways: as results of the leaders behavior; as concomitants, determiners, or conditioners of the leaders behavior; and as criteria for evaluation. Ten major questions about leadership are stated in the paradigm, and their application to research is illustrated.