References for Theme: Kohn-Schooler
- Aytac, Isik
- "Sharing household tasks in the United States and Sweden: A reassessment of Kohn's theory" (1990)
(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.
- "Sharing household tasks in the United States and Sweden: A reassessment of Kohn's theory" (1990)
(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...
- "Sharing household tasks in the United States and Sweden: A reassessment of Kohn's theory" (1990)
(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;...
- "Sharing household tasks in the United States and Sweden: A reassessment of Kohn's theory" (1990)
(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.
- "Sharing household tasks in the United States and Sweden: A reassessment of Kohn's theory" (1990)
- Hauser, Robert M; Roan, Carol L
- Kohn, M L
- "Occupational structure and alienation" (1976)
(p.111) Despite its ambiguity of meaning, alienation is an appealing concept, standing as it does at the intersection of social-structural conditions and psychological orientation. Certainly it has been the subject of a vast litera- ture (see Geyer 1972). On the structural side, there is the fundamental Marxian analysis, focusing on the meaning for the worker of loss of con- trol over his primary work role. On the psychological side, there is the extensive recent literature on all the ways in which estrangement from self and others can be expressed. But rarely are the social-structural and psychological aspects of alienation juxtaposed, and...
- "Occupational structure and alienation" (1976)
(p.112) Work that is "external" to the worker, in which he cannot "fulfill him- self," comes close to being the opposite pole of what Schooler and I have called "self-directed" work-that is, work involving initiative, thought, and independent judgment (Kohn 1969, pp. 139-40; Kohn and Schooler 1973).
- "Occupational structure and alienation" (1976)
(p.113) The intent of this analysis, then, is to appraise two related hypotheses suggested by Marx's analysis of the occupational sources of alienation. One hypothesis, emphasizing loss of control over the products of one's labor, posits that ownership and hierarchical position are of crucial im- portance with respect to alienation (and also ascribes an important, if secondary, role to division of labor). The other hypothesis, emphasizing loss of control over the process of labor, suggests that (at least within an industrialized, capitalist society) such determinants of occupational self- direction as closeness of supervision, routinization, and substantive com- plexity overshadow ownership, hierarchical...
- "Occupational structure and alienation" (1976)
(p.114) Before assessing the occupational sources of alienation, one must face the fact that in social-psychological usage, "alienation" is an extraordinarily vague and imprecise term. It refers to people's conceptions of the external world and of self, in other words, to their orientations. Most definitions agree that alienation involves estrangement from (or disillusionment with, or lack of faith in) the larger social world or oneself. But there is little agreement on how large a segment of the orientational domain "aliena- tion" should encompass. Lacking an adequate general definition, I follow Seeman's (1959) example, in his classic analysis of the historical uses...
- "Occupational structure and alienation" (1976)
(p.120) This pattern of relationships between occupational conditions and feelings of powerlessness is essentially repeated for self-estrangement and normlessness: Ownership per se is of minor importance at most, position in the supervisory hierarchy is of greater importance, division of labor (as inferred from bureaucratization) is negatively related to alienation, and the three conditions that impede the exercise of occupational self- direction are consistently related to feelings of alienation. In each instance, the conditions determinative of occupational self-direction are more strongly related to alienation than are ownership and hierarchical position. (Similar analyses, limited to the profit-making sector of the economy, yield identical...
- "Occupational structure and alienation" (1976)
- "Job complexity and adult personality" (1980)
- Kohn, M L; Schooler, C
- Kohn, Melvin L; Schooler, Carmi
- "Occupational Experience and Psychological Functioning: An Assessment of Reciprocal Effects" (1973)
(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 their personal requirements, it...
- "Occupational Experience and Psychological Functioning: An Assessment of Reciprocal Effects" (1973)
(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.
- "Occupational Experience and Psychological Functioning: An Assessment of Reciprocal Effects" (1973)
(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-...
- "Occupational Experience and Psychological Functioning: An Assessment of Reciprocal Effects" (1973)
(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.
- "Occupational Experience and Psychological Functioning: An Assessment of Reciprocal Effects" (1973)
(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.
- "Occupational Experience and Psychological Functioning: An Assessment of Reciprocal Effects" (1973)
- "Job Conditions and Personality: A Longitudinal Assessment of Their Reciprocal Effects" (1982)
(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...
- "Job Conditions and Personality: A Longitudinal Assessment of Their Reciprocal Effects" (1982)
(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...
- "Job Conditions and Personality: A Longitudinal Assessment of Their Reciprocal Effects" (1982)
(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.
- "Job Conditions and Personality: A Longitudinal Assessment of Their Reciprocal Effects" (1982)
(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.
- "Job Conditions and Personality: A Longitudinal Assessment of Their Reciprocal Effects" (1982)
- "Stratification, occupation, and orientation" (1983)
- Kohn, Melvin L; Slomczynski, Kazimierz M; Janicka, Krystyna; Khmelko, Valeri; Mach, Bogdan W; Paniotto, Vladimir; Zaborowski, Wojciech; Gutierrez, Roberto; Heyman, Cory
- "Social Structure and Personality under Conditions of Radical Social Change: A Comparative Analysis of Poland and Ukraine" (1997)
(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....
- "Social Structure and Personality under Conditions of Radical Social Change: A Comparative Analysis of Poland and Ukraine" (1997)
- Miller, Joanne; Schooler, Carmi; Kohn, Melvin L; Miller, Karen A
- "Women and Work: The Psychological Effects of Occupational Conditions" (1979)
(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...
- "Women and Work: The Psychological Effects of Occupational Conditions" (1979)
(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.
- "Women and Work: The Psychological Effects of Occupational Conditions" (1979)
(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...
- "Women and Work: The Psychological Effects of Occupational Conditions" (1979)
(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...
- "Women and Work: The Psychological Effects of Occupational Conditions" (1979)
- Schooler, C; Mulatu, M S; Oates, G
- Schooler, Carmi
- "Psychological effects of complex environments during the life span: A review and theory" (1984)
(p.259) This paper reviews findings supporting a theory about the psychological effects of environmental complexity. The theory is suggested by the results of a survey research program on work and adult personality. ~ It is supported not only by findings about the psychological effects of complex environments during the work years, but also by evidence from a wide variety of other sources, including research about environmental effects on children and the aged, as well as animal and social psychological experiments. According to the theory, the complexity of an individual's environment is defined by its stimulus and demand characteristics. The more diverse...
- "Psychological effects of complex environments during the life span: A review and theory" (1984)
(p.263) This analysis pointed to the importance for personality of the substantive complexity of work, the job condition most directly related to the complexity of environmental demands. Job conditions that facilitate occupational self-direction, particularly substantive complexity, increase men's intellectual flexibility and promote a self-directed orientation to self and society; jobs that limit occupational self-direction decrease men's intellectual flexibility and promote a conformist orientation to self and society. 6 To the extent that the necessity for using initiative, thought, and independent judgment represent complex environmental demands, these findings provide strong empirical support for the hypothesis that environmental complexity on the job increases...
- "Psychological effects of complex environments during the life span: A review and theory" (1984)
- Spenner, Kenneth I
- "Social Stratification, Work, and Personality" (1988)
(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...
- "Social Stratification, Work, and Personality" (1988)
(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,...
- "Social Stratification, Work, and Personality" (1988)
(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)....
- "Social Stratification, Work, and Personality" (1988)
(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...
- "Social Stratification, Work, and Personality" (1988)
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