Search

In this paper we extend the analysis of social structure and personality heretofore generally limited to the class positions and social-stratification levels of the employed, to encompass the nonemployed as well. We do this in a comparative study of Poland and Ukraine during an early period of their transformations from socialism to nascent capitalism. The analysis involves the systematic comparison of the nonemployed segments of the adult populations of these countries-those who were unemployed and looking for work, housewives, pensioners, and students-with the employed and with each other The relationships between "structural location" and personality are statistically significant and nontrivial in magnitude, both for men and for women in both countries. Some of these relationships appear to reflect the extent of job loss and the resulting social compositions of the nonemployed segments of the population. The relationships result also, in substantial part, from the conditions of life experienced by the nonemployed segments of the population. Some of the nonemployed (most of all, the involuntary housewives) were subjected to economic duress, resulting in a sense of distress. Moreover, the conditions of life of unemployed and pensioned Poles (we do not have comparable data for Ukraine) were not as conducive to, or requiring of complex activity as are those of gainfully employed men and women. This finding helps explain their relatively low levels of intellectualflexibility and self-directedness of orientation.

In a comparative analysis of Poland and Ukraine, we extend the often-confirmed hypothesis that the substantive complexity of work in paid employment substantially affects (and is affected by) fundamental dimensions of personality. The extended hypothesis encompasses not only the complexity of work, whether in paid employment or in the household, but even the complexity of activities of the unemployed and pensioners. We hypothesize that the complexity of activities in any important realm of life is substantially related to personality. We test this hypothesis under conditions that pose a particularly exacting test-conditions of radical social change. We find that complexity of activities in all these realms is substantially and significantly related to intellectual flexibility, self-directedness of orientation, and a sense of well-being or distress for both men and women. The consonance of these findings with those of earlier longitudinal and simulated longitudinal analyses of the complexity of work and personality strongly implies that the relationships of the complexity of activities and personality are similarly reciprocal, even if the activities are not ordinarily thought of as "work."