Papers by Martin J Tomasik
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 08870440802311314, Nov 4, 2008
Zeitschrift Fur Sozialpsychologie, Mar 5, 2015
Die Entwicklung von Konzepten zur sozialen Ungleichheit und des Verständnisses von beruflichem Pr... more Die Entwicklung von Konzepten zur sozialen Ungleichheit und des Verständnisses von beruflichem Prestige ist ein bedeutsamer Aspekt der ökonomischen Sozialisation von Kindern und Jugendlichen. Dieses sozial vermittelte Wissenssystem steht in direkter Abhängigkeit zu Werten und Normen der sozialisatorischen Instanzen (z.B. Eltern oder Lehrer und Lehrerinnen). Es wird argumentiert, dass die Wahrnehmung und Beurteilung beruflichen Prestiges, genau wie bei anderen sozialen Phänomenen, zum Teil auch von der sozialen Position des Beurteilenden geprägt ist. Im empirischen Teil dieses Artikels werden Prestigeurteile Jugendlicher mit niedrigem und mittlerem sozialen Hintergrund sowie im Ost-West-Vergleich vorgestellt. Den Annahmen entsprechend unterscheiden sich diese Urteile merklich von gesamtgesellschaftlich aggregierten Prestigemaßen und zwischen Gruppen mit unterschiedlichem sozialisatorischen Hintergrund. STICHWORTE: Prestigeskala, berufliche Sozialisation, Berufsprestige, Schichtungstheorie, soziale Wahrnehmung 2 Sozialprestige von Ausbildungsberufen -Abstract The development of concepts of social inequity and the understanding of occupational prestige is a significant aspect of children's and adolescents' economic socialization. This socially transmitted knowledge base is subject to values and norms of the socializing institutions (family, school). It is argued that the perception and judgment of occupational prestige are in part shaped by the social position of the perceiver. The empirical section of this article presents prestige judgments of East and West Berlin adolescents from lower and middle social backgrounds. In line with hypotheses, judgments significantly differ from measures obtained by cross-societal aggregation and vary with different social origin.
Motivation and Emotion, Aug 13, 2010
This paper investigates how individuals deal with demands of social and economic change in the do... more This paper investigates how individuals deal with demands of social and economic change in the domains of work and family when opportunities for their mastery are unfavorable. Theoretical considerations and empirical research suggest that with unattainable goals and unmanageable demands motivational disengagement and self-protective cognitions bring about superior outcomes than continued goal striving. Building on research on developmental deadlines, this paper introduces the concept of developmental barriers to address socioeconomic conditions of severely constrained opportunities in certain geographical regions. Mixed-effects methods were used to model cross-level interactions between individual-level compensatory secondary control and regional-level opportunity structures in terms of social indicators for the economic prosperity and family friendliness. Results showed that disengagement was positively associated with general life satisfaction in regions that were economically devastated and has less than average services for families. In regions that were economically well off and familyfriendly, the association was negative. Similar results were found for self-protection concerning domain-specific satisfaction with life. These findings suggest that compensatory secondary control can be an adaptive way of mastering a demand when primary control is not possible.
Developmental Psychology, Jan 16, 2012
Globalized labor markets confront many adults, both employed and unemployed, with demands arising... more Globalized labor markets confront many adults, both employed and unemployed, with demands arising from career uncertainty that have the potential to jeopardize occupational planning. This paper investigated how individuals in different regions of Germany, which are characterized by different economic opportunities, negotiate such demands in order to pursue a career. The central hypothesis is that under unfavorable economic conditions, disengagement from demands of career planning, in terms of reducing commitment to their mastery, will predict positive changes in subjective well-being. This was tested using a sample of N = 806 adults living in 91 regions of Germany. Results suggest that disengagement predicts increased subjective well-being, but only if individuals report a very high load of demands of career planning and live in regions characterized by particularly poor opportunities for goal striving. We conclude that disengagement can be an adaptive way of mastering occupational planning under particularly disadvantageous circumstances.
Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, Aug 1, 2013
Religiousness has been found to act as a protective factor against the adverse effects of stresso... more Religiousness has been found to act as a protective factor against the adverse effects of stressors originating from a variety of sources. Despite ample precedent in sociological theories of religion, however, the potential stress-buffering role of religiousness in relation to stressors arising from macrolevel societal trends has not received empirical scrutiny. Recent psychological conceptualizations of social and economic change (SEC) suggest that such change manifests itself in people's lives in the form of perceived demands that act as individual-level stressors and impinge on subjective well-being (SWB). Building on this line of research, we examined whether religious attendance and subjective religiosity buffered the negative association between perceived work-related demands of SEC and depressive symptoms, life satisfaction, and work satisfaction in a sample of 1,581 Polish adolescents and adults aged 16 to 46 years. Analyses revealed that both dimensions of religiousness were positively related to SWB and buffered the impact of work-related demands on depressive symptoms. Contrariwise, no buffering effect of religiousness on either life or work satisfaction was found. Taken together, results partly confirm religiousness as a protective factor for SWB in relation to SEC but underscore the importance of taking the multifaceted nature of the construct into account in evaluating the interplay of stressors and religiousness.
The Journal of Early Adolescence
ABSTRACT
The significance of the paper lies not only in its contribution to our understanding of how varia... more The significance of the paper lies not only in its contribution to our understanding of how variations in the demands of social change can be mapped, but also in the challenges it makes to approaches that assume social changes affect whole populations in similar fashions. The insights the paper offers into the processes that link macro-level social change with individual-level adaptation and development provide some new points of departure for researchers seeking creatively to combine the macro-, meso-and micro-level approaches that structure the LLAKES Centre"s three strands of inter-disciplinary activity. Moreover, research approaches that can systematically connect individual adaptation and social change over time promise findings of long-term significance to policy-makers at national and international levels.
The paper presents a theoretical framework for research on effects of social change on individual... more The paper presents a theoretical framework for research on effects of social change on individual development. As components, the theoretical model includes the level of social change experienced, resources, coping processes, and outcomes. These variables differ between ecological systems (such as East and West Germany). The components interact with each other, and may themselves change over time. Social change alters the availability and functionality of concrete forms of goal pursuit and developmental pathways. Based on the theoretical framework, the paper analyzes specific demands individuals face due to globalization, growing individualization, and pluralization of biographical trajectories, and demographic change of our society. A theoretical model for coping with these demands is introduced, followed by a discussion of psychosocial resources for coping with social change, and of developmental outcomes that may be influenced by social change. The methodological design of an ong...
Im Rahmen des Sonderforschungsbereichs "Gesellschaftliche Entwicklung nach dem Systemumbruch... more Im Rahmen des Sonderforschungsbereichs "Gesellschaftliche Entwicklung nach dem Systemumbruch: Diskontinuität, Tradition, Strukturbildung", in dessen Kontext der erlebte soziale Wandel in Deutschland zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts (etwa Wiedervereinigung, Globalisierung) untersucht wird, werden Ergebnisse einer Studie zum persönlichen Umgang mit sozialem Wandel berichtet. Befragt wurden 2523 Personen im Alter von 16 bis 42 Jahren aus vier Bundesländern: Baden-Württemberg, Schleswig-Holstein, Thüringen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Aufbauend auf der Lebensspannentheorie der Kontrolle von Heckhausen und Schulz wurde ein Verfahren entwickelt, dass speziell den Umgang mit wandelbezogenen Anforderungen erfassen soll. Es zeigte sich, dass die Personen mit wandelbezogenen Anforderungen in den Bereichen Arbeit, Familie und Freizeit/öffentliches Leben überwiegend ähnlich umgehen, also dass jene Befragten, die sich in einem Bereich aktiv-zupackend verhalten, auch in den anderen Bereichen ...
Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung
This paper reviews five recent contributions that empirically investigate the interaction between... more This paper reviews five recent contributions that empirically investigate the interaction between changing socio-historical contexts and individual adaptation and development. The contributions by John Bynner, Rand Conger and colleagues, Cigdem Kagitcibasi, Jungsik Kim and colleagues and Ingrid Schoon are discussed against the backdrop of a generic model of social change and human development. It is argued that research on social change has to consider the larger political and social context and needs to identify and to study conditions that represent the processes of macro-micro-interaction. Such research will not only enrich the scientific inquiry in this field and promote theorizing about development-in-context, but also is of relevance for social policies in times of rapid social change.
Changing social structures produce uncertainty and require individuals to decide which developmen... more Changing social structures produce uncertainty and require individuals to decide which developmental paths to follow and which to give up. Previous research has demonstrated cross-sectionally that the adaptiveness of engagement and disengagement is a function of the opportunities provided by the social ecology: When opportunities for engagement are very limited, disengagement strategies such as self-protective attributions or even quitting commitment turned out to be associated with higher subjective well-being. Under these circumstances, disengagement seems to be the most adaptive strategy of negotiating uncertainty because it protects the individuals' motivational and emotional resources and prevents these resources from being wasted into unpromising action domains. We provide evidence for the beneficial effect of disengagement strategies using either cross-sectional or longitudinal data from two countries (Germany and Poland) and two age cohorts (younger adults aged 16-43 yea...
A par:cularly high load of demands in work and family life was reported by adult individuals who ... more A par:cularly high load of demands in work and family life was reported by adult individuals who --were not in employment, --were divorced or did not have an in:mate partner, and --had lower educa<onal aQainment (only for the work domain).
Social change at the macro level (such as globalization) has an impact on individual development ... more Social change at the macro level (such as globalization) has an impact on individual development via cascaded changes in the more proximal contexts of development. For the individuals this chain of effects results in perceived uncertainties or “demands” that require adaptation beyond routine action to the new pressures. A case in point is facing a higher risk of a lay-off in the course of an economic crisis. Such demands manifest themselves in the various micro contexts of individual development (such as work or family life) and represent a potential threat to individual adaptation and development, especially when many demands cumulate at the same time. We hypothesized that a high load of demands in the domain of work is associated with a more precarious occupational and marital status, lower education, and residence in districts that are characterized by lacking economic opportunities. Furthermore, we were interested in the interaction between individual and regional characteristic...
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Papers by Martin J Tomasik