Work status and the quality of life

The general thesis from which this paper derived is that objective conditions are related to perceptions and evaluations of those conditions, but that such relationships are mediated by personal characteristics such as expectation and aspiration levels, and other motivational factors. The specific relationship examined is that between work status and overall life satisfaction among women. Although there is little difference in average levels of life satisfaction expressed by housewives and by women working outside the home, substantial differences emerge when women are distinguished by their motivation with respect to paid work: among women who want jobs, working women are more satisfied with their lives than are housewives; while among those who would prefer not to work, housewives are more satisfied. Evidence is also found in support of a hypothesis that work tends to be less central to the overall quality of women's lives than is true for men.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43690/1/11205_2004_Article_BF00353134.pd

The Psychology of Social Movements

xv,274 hal,;ill,;25 c

Public connection through media consumption: between oversocialization and de-socialization?

This article reviews the ongoing contribution of Personal Influence to our understanding of media' social consequences from the perspective of recent research (the London School of Economics “Public Connection” project, 2003-2006, conducted by the authors and Sonia Livingstone) into the extent to which shared habits of media consumption help sustain, or not, U.K. citizens' orientation to a public world. As well as reviewing specific findings of the Public Connection project that intersect with themes of Personal Influence(particularly on citizens' networks of social interaction and the available discursive contexts in which they can put their mediated knowledge of the public world to use), the article reviews the methodological similarities and differences between this recent project and that of Katz and Lazarsfeld. The result, the authors conclude, is to confirm the continued salience of the questions about the social embeddedness of media influences that Katz and Lazarsfeld posed