Social Causes of Psychological DistressTransaction Publishers - 320 Seiten A core interest of social science is the study of stratification--inequalities in income, power, and prestige. Few persons would care about such inequalities if the poor, powerless, and despised were as happy and fulfilled as the wealthy, powerful, and admired. Social research often springs from humanistic empathy and concern as much as from scholarly and scientific curiosity. An economist might observe that black Americans are disproportionately poor, and investigate racial differences in education, employment, and occupation that account for disproportionate poverty. A table comparing additional income blacks and whites can expect for each additional year of education is thus as interesting in its own right as any dinosaur bone or photo of Saturn. However, something more than curiosity underscores our interest in the table. Racial differences in status and income are a problem in the human sense. Inequality in misery makes social and economic inequality personally meaningful. There are two ways social scientists avoid advocacy in addressing issues of social stratification. The first way is to resist projecting personal beliefs, values, and responses as much as possible, while recognizing that the attempt is never fully successful. The second way is by giving the values of the subjects an expression in the research design. Typically, this takes the form of opinion or attitude surveys. Researchers ask respondents to rate the seriousness of crimes, the appropriateness of a punishment for a crime, the prestige of occupations, the fair pay for a job, or the largest amount of money a family can earn and not be poor, and so on. The aggregate judgments, and variations in judgments, represent the values of the subjects and not those of the researcher. They are objective facts with causes and consequences of interest in their own right. This work is an effort to move methodology closer to human concerns without sacrificing the scientific grounds of research as such. The authors succeed admirably in this complex and yet worthwhile task. This is a work that could be helpful to those in all branches of the social sciences that take up issues relating to inequality and the uneven distribution of the social goods of a nation. John Mirowsky and Catherine E. Ross are professors in the Department of Sociology and Population Research Center at the University of Texas. |
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... relationships among forms of psychological symptoms . The galaxy hypothesis says that symptoms of the same type ( e.g. , depression ) gener- ally appear together and symptoms of different forms ( e.g. , depression versus schizophrenia ) ...
... relationships , and the frequency of contact . Social support is the corresponding sense of being someone important in the eyes of oth- ers , being cared for and loved , being esteemed and valued as a person , and having someone who ...
... relationship are distressed by it , equity theory is distinct in predict- ing that the exploiters also are distressed by ... relationships also may be less productive than cooperative ones . Victims often resist and frustrate the will of ...
... relationship : fair and caring . These three conditions help people control their own lives and promote psychological well - being for themselves and others . Humans are social . We think . We feel . These things come from the organism ...
... relationship between physical and mental health created a second reasons for the switch . Some studies suggest that malaise may indicate physical health problems as well as emotional ones , particularly in aging populations ( Johnson ...
Inhalt
3 | |
23 | |
RealWorld Causes of RealWorld Misery | 54 |
37 | 113 |
New Patterns | 130 |
An Abandoned Explanation | 159 |
Alienation | 171 |
Authoritarianism and Inequity | 230 |
Why Some People Are More Distressed Than Others | 253 |
50 | 263 |
Description of Data Sets and Measures | 278 |
References | 289 |
54 | 292 |
Index | 313 |
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Social Causes of Psychological Distress John Mirowsky,Catherine E. Ross Eingeschränkte Leseprobe - 2003 |