The Effect of Employment Status Change on Self-Attitudes

Abstract

A theoretical model of the effect of status change on selfattitudes is developed. The model predicts that the effect is conditional upon (1) the amount of concomitant change in social role performance, (2) the relative importance of the status change to the individual, and (3) the individual's attribution of cause for the status change. Using data from a national panel survey, a longitudinal analysis of the effect ofjob loss on satisfaction with self produces results consistent with the modeVs predictions. Becoming does lead to greater dissatisfaction with self. This dissatisfaction is accentuated by (1) concomitant change in familial role performance (indicated by level ofhousework activity and relative contribution to family income), (2) the unavailability of alternative roles and prior achievements, and (3) the lack of an external locus of cause to which to attribute job loss (level oflocal area unemployment). Furthermore, with reemployment, the decrement in satisfaction with self initially experienced with unemployment is removed, after taking into account residual effects ofunemployment on familial role performance. An analysis ofthe effect of employment status change on attitudes toward self requires an understanding of the process by which an individual translates a change in his objective environment into a subjective judgment of self-worth. At the center of this process is a change in self-concept, the attitudinal object. Whether this change in self-concept from employed worker to unemployed produces a negative self-attitude depends on several cognitive factors. First, the effect is conditional upon the relative importance of employ? ment status in the individual's selfconcept. Although there is undoubtedly idiosyncratic variation in the importance of employment status among individuals, we may expect systematic differences in the importance of this particular component of the self-concept. Such systematic differences between subgroups of the population result from (1) differences in