Herman, Ginette
[UCL]
Bourguignon, David
[UCL]
Desmette, Donatienne
[UCL]
Guinote, Ana
[London University College]
Larue, Geoffroy
[Université de Liège]
The effect of unemployment on mental health has been under scrutiny since many decades. Recent meta-analyses (McKee-Ryan, Song, Wanberg, & Kinicki, 2005; Paul & Moser, 2009) have shown that the negative effect of unemployment on mental health is a rather broad one: it can be detected on a large range of mental health indicators (mixed symptoms of distress, depression, anxiety, psychosomatic symptoms, subjective well-being, and self-esteem). Furthermore this effect has been stable throughout the last 30 years: in other words, societies do not ‘‘habituate” to high unemployment rates.
How to explain the deleterious effect of unemployment? At the core of a jobless experience lays processes such as lack of power and perceived exclusion. As exclusion has been often applied to unemployment context (Castel, 2009), lack of power which could be related to exclusion is less documented. Yet we know that both these variables negatively impact on self-esteem (Wojciszke & Struzynska-Kujalowicz, 2007; Leary, Cottrell, & Phillips, 2001). They also negatively affect projection into the future: lack of power thwarts goal setting (Guinote, 2007) and exclusion impedes future time orientation ((Twenge, Catanese & Baumeister, 2003).
This presentation aims to clarify the relations between exclusion, power, time orientation and self-esteem, and particularly to propose a general model that predicts the latest variable. 197 jobless people attending a public work integration agency have answered a questionnaire. Data have been analysed through structural equation modeling (LISREL). Partly according to our predictions, power and time orientation mediate the relationship between exclusion and self-esteem. The results are discussed in line with a general model about power and raise some implications on the wellbeing of unemployed people and work integration.
Bibliographic reference |
Herman, Ginette ; Bourguignon, David ; Desmette, Donatienne ; Guinote, Ana ; Larue, Geoffroy. Exclusion and lack of power at the core of unemployment self-esteem.9th Conference of the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology (Rome, Italy, du 29/03/2010 au 31/03/2010). |
Permanent URL |
http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/69327 |