(p.1443) Whether considered the scourge of the century, a passing problem or debilitating illness, suffering in the workplace is a phenomenon whose knowledge is still, today, in full evolution (Lhuilier, 2010). Considering the accelerated restructuring experienced by enterprises – downsizing, reliance on outsourcing, and temporary work contracts (Cooper et al., 2001), in particular within a context of economic crisis – researchers are encouraged to investigate the processes that result in individual suffering on the job.

(p.251) Occupation may be particularly interesting with respect to examining the potential association between intellectual stimulation and subsequent dementia, because people generally spend a substantial portion of their adult years at work. Along the lines of the use it or lose it hypothesis (Katzman, 1995; Orrell & Sahakian, 1995), occupations with high mental demands may provide a form of mental exercise that supports brain function further into older adulthood. Mental exercise provided by frequent engagement in intellectually demanding activity at work may facilitate the maintenance of inherent cognitive reserve, leading to more sophisticated cerebral networks in old age (Churchill et al.,...

(p.252) Using data from a population-based twin registry, we explored the association between occupation and risk for all types of dementia and for AD only. We coded each occupation to reflect three types of intellectual demands at work—complexity of work with data, with people, and with things. These measures, called ‘‘worker functions,’’ have been used as basic indicators of complexity (Miller, Treiman, Cain, & Roos, 1980). We expected that high complexity of work, particularly on the dimensions of work with data and people, would be associated with reduced risk of dementia and AD. We expected to find less relevance of complexity...

(p.255) We found that, when we took age, gender, and level of education into account, higher complexity of work with people in main lifetime occupation was associated with a reduced risk of all types of dementia and AD only. Controlling for age, gender, and level of education, we found that the association between lower complexity of work with things and a reduced risk of dementia was marginally significant ( p ¼ .05) but not significant for AD only. When we added complexity of work with data and things into the same model, higher complexity of work with people was protective against...

(p.256) Our principal finding was that a higher complexity of work with people in the main lifetime occupation was associated with a reduced risk of AD and all types of dementia combined later in life, independent of age, gender, and level of education. The effect was sustained when we also controlled complexity of work with data and things, and when we analyzed data in a cotwin-control design that partially accounted for unmeasured genetic and familial factors shared by twins. In addition, a higher complexity of work with things was associated with a marginal increase in risk of dementia in case-control analyses;...

Our findings indicated that the average amount won among those who chose to continue working was relatively high ($2.59 million), suggesting a relatively high monetary threshold for discontinuing work, and even among these high winners, a sizable number still continued working. For instance, a 64-year-old bus driver who won $20 million dollars stated (in the open-ended section of the questionnaire) that the “lottery is just a bonus that came my way, it has not or will not affect my work habits and goals in life.” (p. 415-6)

(p.357) The extent to which husbands share family work has been an important issue in sociological gender research, especially with larger numbers of women entering the labor force. Previous research has used various theoretical perspectives (e.g., role differentiation, exchange theory, sex-role ideology theory, resource theory, exploitation theory, and time availability theory) to explain husbands' absolute or relative share of the family or household work. Although these different approaches have added to our understanding of how domestic labor is shared, the majority of them share a common weakness: the inadequate treatment of women's labor-force participation.

(p.358) Kohn and Schooler's (1983) work allows us to formulate a theoretical link in the relationship between work characteristics and the division of labor at home. If, as Kohn and Schooler asserted, work conditions can resocialize individuals, then the acquisition of new norms and values may affect domestic roles as well. Seccombe (1986), in an application of Kohn's theory, examined the effect of occupational conditions on the division of household labor (for a detailed discussion of Kohn's work, see Seccombe 1986, p. 840). Using a path model, she analyzed the influence of various work characteristics on housekeeping roles. The results showed...

(p.360) This resocialization via work roles is especially important for women given their early socialization. In general, men and women are socialized into two separate roles due to the sextyped socialization process started at birth among family members and continued by teachers, peers, mass media, and books (Weitzman 1984). Through this sex-typed socialization, men and women acquire very different skills and behavioral styles. Men learn to be more independent, dominant, aggressive, rational, and cool. Women learn to be more dependent, submissive, passive, and emotional and other oriented. Because a large proportion of working women are in lowskill, low-paid jobs (Beller 1982;...

(p.367) Historically, economic dependency and patriarchal authority have limited the power of women. The results of this study, although based on a cross-sectional analysis, suggest that the traditional division of labor at home may change as wives gain more power in the workplace.

(p.3) Accompanying an aging population is a major concern for age-related declines in cognitive functioning. Recent estimates of the prevalence of dementia, for example, indicate that across most of the world about 5%–7% of individuals more than 60 years are afflicted, and the number of people suffering from dementia is expected to double about every 20 years (Prince et al., 2013). Thus, brain health in older age is of paramount concern. A variety of risk factors for dementia have been investigated, including cardiovascular disease, hypertension, smoking, obesity, and lack of exercise. Moreover, Barnes and Yaffe (2011) produced estimates from a simulation...

(p.4) In other words, fluid cognitive abilities (Gf: reasoning and thinking) decline in late adulthood, while crystallized cognitive abilities (Gc: acquired knowledge and experience) increase over the lifespan and may compensate for losses in Gf (Ng & Feldman, 2008). Declines in cognitive functioning, in turn, can be driven by a series of brain structural, functional, and metabolic processes.

(p.5) Age-related changes in cognitive performance and brain health affect work performance and successful aging at work, which includes the motivation and capacity to continue working (Fisher, Chaffee, Tetrick, Davalos, & Potter, 2017). The focus of this traditional line of occupational health research is the cognitive capacity and the resulting productivity of older workers. A reduction of occupational hazards and an increase in occupational stimulation are means to maintaining older workers’ productivity and ability to work. However, the relationship between occupation and cognitive aging can also be viewed from a public health perspective. In this view, occupational exposures are means to...

(p.13) There is ample evidence to expect that exposure to chronic occupational stress may have long-lasting negative effects on brain structure, function, vasculature, and metabolism, via a number of inter-related molecular and physiological mechanisms that induce inflammation, metabolic and circadian dysregulation, hypertension, and cortisol neurotoxicity. The research discussed in this section supports the stress component in the BOSS model, in which stress may oppose or modulate the positive effects of occupational stimulation on neurocognitive aging. Although there is a paucity of research that examines the direct link between chronic occupational stress and brain health in older age (as opposed to cognitive...

(p.393) What does it tell us about the organization and ethics of societies when people elect suicide as their ultimate career terminus?

doi: 10.1177/0959354311419253

(p.34) ‘The 1994 study explains that the INTJ lawyer type makes sense. Most of what lawyers do involves introverted activity: quiet, concentrated work, reading, writing, researching and analyzing cases, reviewing and drafting legal documents, and thinking through fact situations and strategies. Although extroversion would be useful in trials and meetings, the majority of most lawyers’ days are spent in solitary and concentrated work. When lawyers solve clients’ complex problems, learn new areas of case law with each new client, feel intellectually stimulated by their work, and fit the client’s problem into the big picture, they are engaging in intuitive activities. Logically...

(p.6) Organizational theorists employ Lacan’s concepts in various different ways, but most of them make one key point: neoliberal market-based ideology seduces workers at an affective level by responding to their search for recognition and fulfillment.

(p.19) The originality of Dejours’ approach is that it illuminates the affective, subjective, and embodied experience of working, focusing particularly on the affect of suffering—as a consequence of the encounter of the subject with what Dejours calls the ‘real of work’—and the way in which this affect can—or cannot—be sublimated. This framework also articulates the role of the work organization and the significance of the work collective in creating and/or transforming such affect. Dejours’ theory is much needed in psychoanalytically inspired research in organization studies because it points out the centrality of work in human life and, as we will see,...

(p.21) In contrast to the perspectives inspired by the Tavistock Institute (such as Menzies Lyth, 1991 and followers), Lacanian scholars hold a pessimistic (or ambiguous) position with regards to the role of work in the health of subjects. These researchers focus rather on ideological and fantasmatic discourses on work (see in particular the chapters in the edited book by Cederström and Hoedemaekers, 2010).2 Affective discourses of boundaryless careers, creativity, personal development, self-fulfillment, and freedom subtly control workers, especially when such discourses match objectives of production and efficiency (Bloom, 2015; Bloom and Cederström, 2009). Ekman (2013) understands passion and emotional devotion to...

(p.22) Dejours’ theory is really centered on what working does psychically to the subject, how it affects him or her. For Dejours, some level of suffering is inevitable in all types of work (even though, admittedly, some categories of work are more painful than others). Nevertheless, and fundamentally, work can contribute to subjective and social enrichment. The underlying assumption is that human beings generally want to work well, and they gain satisfaction when given the opportunity to do so (Dejours, 1980, 1998)

(p.31) The originality of Dejours’ perspective is that it is, to our knowledge, the only one that extensively illustrates the affective and embodied experience of working, by demonstrating how the subject needs to answer to the real at work. Specifically, depending on the work organization, the subject at work may experience pleasure or pathological suffering. The implication of this is vast.

(p.132) As with Frankfurt School theorists (e.g., Honneth, 2009), health from this perspective is seen as the capacity for the development of autonomous subjectivity and a sense of self-worth (Dejours, 2015b). In this context, therefore, health does not mean the absence of illness, but rather the constant struggle to maintain a stable conception of the self, which can be derived from being able to do proper and good quality work, and from recognizing oneself in the product of one’s work, as well as having one’s work recognized by peers (Dejours, 2015b). The extent to which workers are able to develop this...

(p.163) The most important practical lesson that follows from the more dominant normal causal relationship between the DCS characteristics and mental health is that interventions directed at decreasing job demands, and increasing job control or social support of supervisors may improve the mental health of employees (see also Kompier & Taris, 2004; Semmer, 2003). However, the reciprocal relationships found between work and mental health indicate that, in general, professionals in the field of work and organizational psychology should bear in mind that well-being may affect work characteristics as well. Scientifically, our results revealed that the associations between work characteristics and health...

(p.159) Emotional competencies refer to individual differences in knowledge, skills, and abilities to effectively deal with own and others’ emotions (Brasseur, Gregoire, Bourdu, & Mikolajczak, 2013; Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2008). The most widely studied emotional competencies are emotion perception, emotion understanding, and emotion regulation ( Joseph & Newman, 2010). Importantly, these competencies have been shown to substantially impact a variety of positive work outcomes such as job performance, job satisfaction, and leader and teamwork effectiveness (Farh, Seo, & Tesluk, 2012; O’Boyle, Humphrey, Pollack, Hawver, & Story, 2011; Sy, Tram, & O’Hara, 2006). Several researchers and journalists have asserted that emotional...

(p.170) For the working lifespan, we can safely conclude that older workers generally function equally well as young workers on most emotional competencies, and in some areas slightly better (i.e., regulating one’s own emotions and understanding others’ emotions). For those working beyond retirement age, the evidence suggests similar trends, except for some deficits in other-related emotion perception that may become apparent in workers above age 65. In light of age-related declines in physiological and cognitive capacities, these age trends suggest that on the whole, emotional competencies indeed represent a resource of older workers.

(p.171) Third, for most competencies the evidence suggests maintenance of competencies across the (working) lifespan or only small positive age trends. This may raise the question of the meaningfulness of age differences in emotional competencies for work outcomes. It is important to note, however, that even maintenance of, or slight gains in emotional competencies with age is an important conclusion, given the robust negative age trends found in other domains, such as fluid cognitions (Salthouse, 2012). The findings of the present review are in stark contrast to the predominant portrayal of age as a period of decline that has manifested in...

(p.97) Our thesis is that adult occupational experience has a real and substantial impact upon men's psychological functioning. This argument, although famil- iar to social science at least since Marx's early writings, has never to our knowledge been empirically appraised. A widely-be- lieved contrary argument is that all corre- spondence between men's occupations and personalities results from processes of selec- tive recruitment and modification of the job to meet incumbents' needs and values. This view seems to underlie, for example, the logic of personnel testing, where the object is to select job applicants whose personalities match those of successful job incum-...

(p.98) The key to this analysis is our focus on dimensions of occupation. By contrast, the main tradition in the sociology of work has been to focus on a particular occupation, explicitly or more often implicitly compar- ing it to all other occupations or to those occupations believed to highlight its unique characteristics.

(p.99) Although our principal interest is in the possible effects of the job on off-the-job psychological functioning, we include two in- dices of men's subjective reactions to their jobs. We see these phenomena as a sort of way-station between the concrete realities of the job and men's orientations to non- occupational realities. If occupational ex- perience has psychological pertinence, we should certainly expect it to affect men's views of the job itself.

(p.108) Although our principal interest is in the possible effects of the job on off-the-job psychological functioning, we include two in- dices of men's subjective reactions to their jobs. We see these phenomena as a sort of way-station between the concrete realities of the job and men's orientations to non- occupational realities. If occupational experience has psychological pertinence, we should certainly expect it to affect men's views of the job itself.
[On the following page, p.109, this line of reasoning continues, concluding with]
The evidence consistently suggests that, although men undoubtedly do choose and mold their jobs to fit...

(p.117) A man's job affects his perceptions, values, and thinking processes primarily because it confronts him with demands he must try to meet. These demands, in turn, are to a great extent deter- mined by the job's location in the larger structures of the economy and the society. It is chiefly by shaping the everyday realities men must face that social structure exerts its psychological impact.

doi: 10.1086/226739

(p.1258) With longitudinal data, using confirmatory factor analysis and linear structural equations causal analysis, we did a prototypic longitudinal anal- ysis of the reciprocal effects of the substantive complexity of work and intellectual flexibility (Kohn and Schooler 1978). That analysis provided convincing evidence that the substantive complexity of work both affects and is affected by this one, obviously important, facet of psychological functioning. In the present analysis, we enlarge the causal model to take into account not only a broader range of job conditions (as we did in Kohn and Schooler 1981) but also a broader range of psychological variables. The...

(p.1261) We define the substantive complexity of work as the degree to which performance of the work requires thought and independent judgment. Substantively complex work by its very nature requires making many de- cisions that must take into account ill-defined or apparently conflicting contingencies. Detailed questioning of each respondent in 1964 and again in 1974 (see Kohn 1969, pp. 153-55, 271-76; or Kohn and Schooler 1978) provides the basis for seven ratings of the substantive complexity of each job: appraisals of the complexity of the man's work in that job with things, with data, and with people; an overall appraisal of...

(p.1281) ... this analysis does take us considerably beyond our original approach (Kohn and Schooler 1969; Kohn 1969), which allowed us only to assume that class-associated conditions of life affect the psychological functioning of individuals. We now have strong evidence that job conditions actually do affect personality, and also that personality affects job conditions. Moreover, these reciprocal pro- cesses are embedded in an intricate and complex web in which job conditions also affect each other and some aspects of personality affect others.

(p.1282) These findings provide strong empirical support for the interpretation that class-associated conditions of work actually do affect personality. The longitudinal analysis also provides evidence of other job-to-personality effects, the most important being that oppressive work- ing conditions produce a sense of distress. Implicit in all these findings is the consistent implication that the principal process by which a job affects personality is one of straightforward generalization from the lessons of the job to life off the job, instead of such less direct processes as compensation and reaction formation.

(p.614) For the dimensions of social structure we consider here-social class and social stratification-the most pertinent conditions are apt to be occupational. Thus, an advanta- geous class position or a high position in the social stratification hierarchy affords greater opportunity to be self-directed in one's work, that is, to work at jobs that are substantively complex, are not subject to close supervi- sion, and are not routinized. The experience of occupational self-direction, in turn, leads to a high valuation of self-direction for one- self and one's children, to greater intellectual flexibility, and to a more self-directed orientation to self and society.

(p.820) Occupations with high mental demands may represent a form of mental exercise that supports brain function in older adulthood, as expressed by the ‘‘use it or lose it’’ hypothesis (5, 6), and may thus affect cognitive performance in older adults. People spend a considerable part of their adult life in their occupation, making intellectual stimulation inherent to occupation of particular interest. Complex work environments that reward cognitive effort and require decision making may motivate individuals to continue to develop their intellectual capacities (15, 16).

(p.828) Maintenance of cognitive reserve (43, 44) by mental stimulation may be an underlying mechanism explaining the relation of higher complexity of work with people and things to lower risk of dementia found in our study. According to this hypothesis, intellectually demanding activities at work may provide a type of exercise contributing to more sophisticated cerebral networks in old age (45, 46) or make it possible to tolerate dementia neuropathology for a longer period during disease progression (7, 14). A study by Stern et al. (14) tested work complexity within the concept of cognitive reserve by using factor scores reflecting substantive...

(p.829) In conclusion, high complexity of work with people and things may protect against dementia and its subtypes. This effect may be stronger with prolonged exposure, but high complexity with data may increase risk for those being exposed to it for most of their working life. It will be important to examine these observations in studies carried out in other settings, including detailed assessments of occupational complexity, physical effort at work, and work and lifestyle characteristics such as social networks, job strain, and other occupational exposures.

(p.195) The specific goal of the psychodynamics of work (Dejours, 2000) is to identify these defensive strategies, which are often collective, through group deliberation work. These strategies reflect a relatively structured and organized intentionality that finds its source in the organization of work, in this case, student work. Studies based on this approach that were conducted in different workplaces, for example, schools, health institutions, plants, and union organizations (Carpentier-Roy & Vezina, 2001) show that work organization can be both a source of health, when it is possible to strengthen the subject's identity, and a source of mental health pathologies, when it...

(p.196) According to the psychodynamics of work, there is always a gap between prescribed work organization and real work organization, a gap that individuals seek to fill through their subjective investment in the production activity. In the context of university training, the prescribed work organization refers to the training requirements to which students are subject: progress prescribed in the curricula, programs, course contents, pedagogical methods, and evaluation methods. On the other hand, the real work organization corresponds to the strategies used by students to educate themselves in their own way and to deal with the constraints of the prescribed work organization,...

(p.363) In our discussion on the division of the subject, we stressed that the dimension of thelack, and the dissatisfaction it entails, need to be thought of as structural andinsatiable. As we now apply these ideas to issues of human work and organizationalchange, this idea remains crucial. From the Lacanian point of view, we claim that theactivity of work (as a typical human occupation) is also structurally non-satisfying.This means that it is structurally impotent in providing specific satisfactions to those who engage in work. The idea that work could provide the subject with fulfilling added value is an illusory product of...

(p.1287) In the literature on occupational psychology and ergonomics, jobs involving poor cognitive activities have often been suspected of generating some forms of cognitive decline. This idea of a possible detrimental (or favourable) effect of the job on the worker’s psychological functioning, even on basic cognitive processes, has long been formulated in human and social sciences (e.g. Friedman 1964). Although this idea is both appealing and popular, there has so far been little empirical evidence to support it, from the viewpoint of impact on cognition. One exception is the study by Schooler et al. (1999, see also Kohn and Schooler 1978),...

(p.1288) There is clearly still conflicting evidence as to whether engaging oneself in mentally stimulating activities is associated with higher cognitive functioning and predicts more favourable cognitive development in adulthood. Evidence is even scarcer, as stated above, when specifically considering the effects of occupational cognitive experiences. Having data on this issue, however, would be highly desirable in order to understand how a person’s job contributes to the development or alteration of cognitive efficiency and to formulate intervention strategies that minimise detrimental consequences of work organisation on the individual. Working life covers more than 40 years of adult life and represents a...

(p.1295) Mental stimulation received in the workplace appeared to be a strong predictor of cognitive functioning, as assessed by a composite measure of cognitive performance. There was also found to be a significant relationship between cognitive performance and cognitive SOW and a measure combining stimulation both at work and outside work. However, it cannot be determined from this outcome whether higher mental stimulation is the cause or the consequence of a higher level of cognitive functioning, as people initially exhibiting higher functioning are also more likely to be found in cognitively demanding jobs.

(p.66) Our hypothesis is that women's job conditions are substantially related to their psychological functioning. In particular, we hypothesize that job con- ditions offering challenge and opportunity for self-direction will be related to favorable self-conceptions, flexible social orientations, and effective intellectual functioning, while job conditions subjecting women to pressure or uncertainty or constraining their opportunities for self-direction will be re- lated to less favorable self-conceptions, more rigid social orientations, and less effective intellectual functioning. Moreover, we hypothesize that such relationships between conditions of work and personality are not solely the result of the selective entry of women into psychologically appropriate jobs...

(p.82) We believe that we have thus far demonstrated that the structural im- peratives of women's jobs are strongly related to their psychological func- tioning. These relationships are not simply a function of education or of other social characteristics that affect the processes by which women are recruited into their jobs. Furthermore, these relationships are essentially the same for all types of employed women. Our preferred interpretation is that there is a continuing interplay between job and woman, in which job condi- tions both affect and are affected by a woman's psychological functioning.

(p.90) The evidence we have presented indicates that employed women's conditions of work are meaningfully and substantially related to their psycho- logical functioning. We believe that these relationships result not only from the selective processes by which women enter into jobs that meet their own and their employers' requirements but also from the powerful effect of women's work experience on their self-conceptions, social orientations, and even intellectual functioning. In support of this interpretation, we have shown that the relationships between occupational conditions and psycho- logical functioning do not simply reflect education or other social characteristics that influence the processes of job...

(p.91) Our findings should also dispel the notion that the relationships between occupational conditions and psychological functioning are not as strong for women as for men. Not only are the overall magnitudes of the relationships we have studied at least as great for women as they are for men but, with interesting variations on the general pattern (see n. 6), the structural imperatives of the job have effects of roughly similar magnitude for women as for men. No matter what the sex of the worker, job conditions that directly or indirectly encourage occupational self-direction are conducive to effective intellectual functioning and...

(p.270) There are reasons to expect that persons in different phases of the life course wUl react differently to their work experiences, given their different orientations to work, prior experiences, and phases of psychological development, It is sometimes aUeged that employment in adolescence has relatively little developmental impact because of its marginal and transitory character, If after-school jobs are seen as merely a way to earn extra spending money, and as having little relevance for subsequent work lives, the influence of work experience on the adolescent could be minimal, Another line of reasoning supports the proposition that even part-time employment is...

(p.272) Comparing those who were employed at any time during their years in high school and those who reported no work experience revealed that those who did not work had significantly higher grade point averages, more positive academic self-concepts, higher aspirations for the future, and higher educational attainment five years after high school, They were disadvantaged in one respect, however: those not employed during high school had lower incomes early in their work careers (five years after high school graduation). When we considered the duration of work experience during the high school years by comparing students employed zero, one, two, or...

(p.278) Thus we find evidence for both of the processes thought to underlie the pattern of aging stability, The fact that both work conditions and psychological orientations become increasingly stable over time is consistent with the notion that psychological change is a function of the degree of stability of environmental conditions, Second, we find that differences in job conditions (especially work autonomy) have a stronger impact upon the psychological development of younger workers than that of older workers. This pattern of findings supports the hypothesis that the psychological orientations of younger people are more responsive to whatever variation exists in their...

(p.206) Do experiences in work change our personality as we move from the pressures of starting a career iti young adulthood to the responsibilities of maintaining a career in midhfe? Two positions on personality change are relevant to this question. The plaster hypothesis holds that personality does not change after young adulthood (approximately age 30; e.g., Costa & McCrae, 1988). The obvious conclusion one would draw from this position is that occupational experiences that occur after young adulthood cannot influence that which refuses to change. The second position is more optimistic about the malleability of personality dispositions. Many adult developmental researchers...

(p.208) If occupational experiences are associated with personality development at any time in adulthood, what are the mechanisms and processes through which work would affect psychological functioning? Several mechanisms categorized under the term "socialization processes" are thought to underlie personality change. For example, individuals often change their behavior as they leam the norms associated with their work roies (Tumer, 1974). People also leam role-appropriate behavior through identification with, or emulation of, a role model such as a mentor or supervisor (Bandura, 1969). Individuals also change their identity by observing how coworkers and supervisors perceive them, and redefine their self-perceptions according to...

(p.211) The age at which personality change covaries with work experience is intrinsic to testing the plaster and plasticity models as previously set forth. According to the plaster hypothesis (personality sets at age 30), we would expect work experiences to be as.sociated with individual differences in personality change disproportionately in young adulthood (from age 21 to 27) and not at all from young adulthood to early midlife (age 27 to 43). In contrast, the plasticity position proposes that personality change can happen at any age in adulthood. Thus, according to the plasticity model we might find personality change to be associated...

(p.226) This study attempted to address why and when people change at different times in adulthood, that is, whether dispositional change is associated with work experience and if so, when over the course of young and middle adulthood the change occurs. Interestingly, work experiences were not associated with women's personality change in young adulthood, but were in early midlife. This pattem of associations between personality change and work experience contradicted the predictions of the plaster hypothesis and provided support for the plasticity model of adult development, which states that personality change can happen at any age in adulthood.

(p.582) How do work experiences affect change in personality traits? The sociogenic model, which assumes that social structure shapes personality functioning (Inkeles & Levinson, 1963), is most often used as a guiding framework to address this question. Change in personality is thought to result from a person’s ongoing participation in social roles and the social interactions entailed therein (Aldwin & Levenson, 1994; Roberts & Caspi, in press). Individuals are assumed to change their behavior as they learn the norms associated with their work roles (Hogan & Roberts, 2000, Sarbin, 1964). Moreover, individuals forge their self-perceptions on the basis of feedback from...

(p.583) Research informed by the sociogenic framework has shown that work experiences are related to personality change. Unfortunately, much of the research inspired by the sociogenic perspective overlooks the reciprocal relationship between personality and work (cf. Kohn & Schooler, 1982). For example, longitudinal studies show that early-emerging traits, detectable in the first decade of life or in adolescence, also influence what people do for a living as adults (Caspi, Elder, & Bem, 1987, 1988; Helson, Elliott, & Leigh, 1989; Judge, Higgins, Thoreson, & Barrick, 1999). The association between personality and work is thus likely to reflect two mutually supportive life-course dynamics:...

(p.591) ...the findings suggest that work experiences have the potential to modify basic personality dispositions. We discovered that work experiences were associated with personality changes in young adulthood, even after controlling for adolescents’ prework personalities. In fact, the modal effect size of the association between work experiences and personality change was approximately equal to the predictive association from prework personality to work experiences.

(p.120) Is there empirical evidence that resources positively affect work engagement that, in its turn, positively affects resources? Or, is there evidence for the existence of “resources caravans” or gain processes? To date, six independent longitudinal and diary studies have been carried out that are suggestive of gain spirals.

(p.122) Job and personal resources are reciprocal, because individuals, through learning experiences, may form stronger positive evaluations about themselves and in turn, they comprehend or create more resourceful work environments (Kohn & Schooler, 1982). Moreover, job resources and personal resources have a positive impact on work engagement, which, in its turn, seems to reinforce both types of resources. This dynamic, reciprocal relationship between resources and engagement as described by COR theory is compatible with and partly supports the notion of gain spirals.

(p.126) ... work engagement, as an indicator of positive psychological well-being (Schaufeli & Salanova, 2007), may be a direct or indirect outcome of positive emotions. The view of work engagement as a direct outcome of positive emotions suggests that engagement may explain why positive emotions, by broadening cognitive functions, build resources. Frequent experiences of positive emotions in the workplace may lead to a more persistent, positive affective state, namely work engagement. Indeed, Salanova et al. (2008) showed that work and task engagement was predicted by positive emotions such as (individual and collective) enthusiasm, satisfaction, and comfort. Similarly, Schaufeli and Van Rhenen...

(p.364) In the opening pages of The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith describes how pins are made in a factory: "One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it,"' and so on to eighteen distinct operations. Some workers may perform two or three of these tasks; many repeatedly execute only one operation. In contemporary industrial societies, many people work at analogues of Smith's jobs: jobs in which persons are hired to perform series of set actions such as assembly line work, keypunching, or being a clerk on an automated checkout line.2 These routine...

(p.86) In this study, we tested the universality of this occurrence by comparing two types of kibbutz founders: those who remained and worked on the kibbutz for 30 years, and those who left the kibbutz and moved to cities in Israel or North America, where they worked for a nearly equal length of time. Social class (based on occupation and education) was expected to be significantly associated with moral and ego development for founders who had become workers in the capitalistic economic systems of North America or in the mixed economy of Israel. The work of developmental psychologists (Kohlberg, 1984; Piaget,...

(p.87) Kohn (1977) demonstrated that the primary psychological impact of a job results not from the status attached to the job, the income earned, the work relationships formed, or whether one works with things, data, or people, but rather from mastering complex tasks. According to Kohn, the substantive intellectual complexity of work is central to the psychological impact of work. He noted that variations in work complexity cut across social classes; a blue-collar automobile factory employee's work with things (e.g., setting up), data (e.g., diagnosis and testing), or people (e.g., mentoring) potentially may be as complex as a white-collar university employee's...

(p.88) What is the relationship of moral and ego development with work complexity and social class (including occupation and education)? We expected that psychological development would not be significantly associated with measures of social status among kibbutz workers but that the typical association would be replicated among Israeli city and North American workers. In contrast, we expected that psychological development would be more strongly associated with work complexity among kibbutz workers than among Israeli city or North American workers. As communities founded on principles of socioeconomic equality and self-government, kibbutzim provide a work environment that tests the inevitability of the link...

(p.92) From the perspective of workplace theory, the social profitability suggested by this study parallels the high level of economic profitability of kibbutzim documented by previous studies. Kibbutzim, that is, have a higher rate of economic growth than do comparable factories and farms in Israel, Europe, and the United States despite the fact that kibbutzim also have no wage differentials whatsoever (Barkai, 1979; Don, 1977; Kanovsky, 1966; Melman, 1970; Tannenbaum, Kavcic, Rosner, Vianello, & Wieser, 1974). The findings of this study and the results of prior research provide further evidence for the ideas of Kohn (1977): The kibbutz returns control over...

(p.71) The Kohn-Schooler approach has become the dominant approach to the study of work, personality, and social stratification, and one major approach to the study of social structure and personality, comprising a core of knowl- edge and method. A growing body of research constitutes replication or extension of, or reaction against, the Kohn-Schooler approach. The Kohn- Schooler approach offers a framework for reviewing other research de- velopments, for example, social class and age variations in self-esteem (Rosenberg & Pearlin 1978), or work and stress (LaRocco et al 1980, Pearlin et al 1981). In its strengths and weaknesses, the Kohn-Schooler model helps...

(p.73) In short, the Kohn-Schooler approach features multiple dimensions of work and personality cast in a larger theoretical framework that links social stratification position to structural imperatives of jobs, which in turn are linked to components of personality. The analytic strategy uses structural equation models, estimated with two-stage least squares on cross-sectional data in several of the earlier papers and with maximum likelihood methods on longitudinal data in more recent papers. The models permit estimates under a set of assumptions (Bielby & Hauser 1977) of lagged and contemporaneous reciprocal effects between conditions of work and personality dimensions-in this case, with nonexperimental,...

(p.75) Kohn & Schooler interpret the effects of work conditions on personality in terms of the logic of "learning generalization," in which people learn from their jobs in direct fashion and generalize the lessons to off-job realities. In other words, rather than using more complicated psychological mechanisms of compensation, displacement, or processing in cognitive schema, the structural imperatives of jobs affect worker's values, orientations to self and society, and cognitive functioning through a direct process of learning from the job and selected "generalization" of what has been learned, consistent with psychological theories of reinforcement and social learning (Kohn 1987: note 3)....

(p.89) Consider the microreality of work-personality interactions. Much of our knowledge comes from survey designs in which the time frame for an explanation covers months, years, or a decade or more. Telescope down to the smaller intervals of time and space in which a structural feature of a job actually makes a change in a worker's personality. If learning-generalization operates as hypothesized, what does that mean? Is the learning part of the process as straighforward as implied in the textbook images of operant conditioning, reinforcement psychology, and social learn- ing theory? Our survey designs typically assume and rarely observe, specify, or...

(p.443) Psychosocial work characteristics imply risk factors involved with psychological processes linked to the so- cial environment of work that may be important in the causation of illness.

(p.444) ...thus the combination of putting in high effort at work, which may be both intrinsic ef- fort including innate competitiveness and hostility, to- gether with high extrinsic work demands, similar to Karasek's job demands, and receiving, by implication, in return, little reward in terms of salary, promotion, or esteem is a powerful risk factor for ill health.

(p.454) The combination of high psychological demands and low decision latitude (job strain) and the combination of high effort at work and low reward (effort-reward imbalance) both demonstrate a consistently increased risk for common mental disorders. The odds ratios for common mental disorders in association with decision authority, decision latitude, job demands, social support, and job insecurity are more modest and may be partly confounded by earlier mental ill health. The heterogeneity of the odds ratios for social support and psycho- logical demands among men is unexplained although the different meaning and burden of demands according to social status may contribute...

(p.2) In this paper, we argue that a more encompassing and comprehensive model is needed to explain how vocational experiences exert influence on traits through people’s careers. To this end, we develop a broader theoretical model concerning the pathways and mechanisms by which vocation-related experiences influence personality development and change. Our key premise is that a more comprehensive model of personality development and change should deal with normative personality development, and change prompted by unique experiences of environments that could be a fit but also misfit with a person’s traits, where traits may or may not have selected people into those...

(p.8) The presence of corresponsive and noncorresponsive effects suggests that the selection of work environments is important with respect to long term personality development, something that those entering the workforce may be unlikely to consider. As such, our work has bearing on how individuals might approach important career decisions and suggests that more longitudinal research focusing on this question is needed.