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reason, status inconsistency is a fertile ground for individualistic tendencies.

The concept of status inconsistency raises the concept of status crystallization, which was proposed by Lenski (1954) as a nonvertical dimension of social status. Strong or weak status crystallization refers to the degree of incongruence or coherence of a person’s ranking according to various criteria. A strong status crystallization implies that a person is rated consistently on all important criteria, whether the rating is high or low. Today, a large part of the population in Western societies finds itself in a situation of weak status crystallization. Solid social class can exist only if the majority of the population experiences strong status crystallization.

One of the most visible varieties of status incongruence occurs among schoolteachers, who are more numerous today than were workers in the heavy industry plants four decades ago. For many teachers there is a serious gap between the level of their education and their role in society and income level. The left-wing orientation of most teachers in European countries can be explained in terms of status incongruence, rather than class. Even some college professors experience this incongruence.

If one compares status incongruence today and in the past, two important categories have become prominent over the last two decades: the ‘‘intellectual proletarian’’ and the ‘‘ethnic achiever’’ (as opposed to the ‘‘skidder’’).

The spread of education in most advanced societies has highlighted the need of postindustrial economies for highly educated people. Today, two-thirds of people aged 18 are still in school. At the end of their college years, most of them do not find a job that corresponds to their expectations in terms of intellectual and economic rewards. It is in this category of the population—young educated people ‘‘with diplomas in their pockets’’—that the rate of unemployment is the highest in most west European countries. This overabundance of graduates results from the incapacity of a highly technological society to absorb them in ‘‘interesting’’ occupations, with the existing jobs being protected by unions. This imbalance between the level of education, the quality of the job, and the amount of income generates status incongruences for ‘‘overeducated’’ young people. An advanced

postindustrial society in search of productivity replaces people with machines, producing a new kind of educated proletariat that was born into the middle class. In western Europe in the last decade (except in Germany), one of every four or five young people under age 25 was unemployed, and others were pushed down into ‘‘degraded’’ jobs. Those who accept jobs beneath their abilities, ‘‘degraded jobs,’’ represent one of the most frequent varieties of status incongruence, a ‘‘reserve army’’ of alienated people.

The ethnic achiever is a new variety in western Europe and an old one in the United States. Status inconsistency can be found among ethnic and racial minorities in Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Austria. Immigrants of European origin in Europe are integrated and assimilated in a single generation, with the best example being the eight million French citizens of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, or Armenian origins. The children of these European immigrants are not normally in a position of status inconsistency. When language is combined with ethnicity and religion, as with immigrants from the southern rim of the Mediterranean, the integration process takes two generations and the younger generation often experiences status incongruence. When skin color skin is considered, the difficulties of integration are compounded. Many immigrants from southern Asia and Africa feel excluded from the host society. Nevertheless, a substantial minority are economically well integrated, and many climb the income ladder. They are ethnic achievers, more than completely assimilated immigrants. They are deeply rooted in status incongruences.

In Europe, these two varieties of status incongruence contrast with a social category of status crystallization at the bottom of society. According to a recent survey by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), almost one-fourth of the adult population in Western advanced societies is functionally semi-illiter- ate and coexists with a high proportion of functionally overeducated younger adults. Strong status crystallization arises from the fact that these semiilliterates are also those who receive the lowest salaries and perform the most menial work, and the large majority of them are of non-European origin. The status crystallization that occurs in

Europe has a similar and more deeply ingrained counterpart in the United States.

MINORITY STATUS AND STATUS

INCONGRUENCE

In many studies of electoral behavior (which are preferred because of the availability of statistics), particularly those conducted by means of survey research, the issue of social context has been neglected. Only the characteristics of individuals are taken into consideration, while the parameters of the social milieu are ignored. With some notable exceptions, too many sociologists have forgotten that the behavior of people is conditioned by their social context. This mistake has been denounced by the German sociologist Scheuch (1969) as the ‘‘individualistic fallacy,’’ a complement to the ‘‘ecological fallacy.’’ The direct consequence of ‘‘individualistic research’’ is the dismissal of the notion of a ‘‘minority’’ in spite of the fact that its importance has been demonstrated repeatedly. Examples are found in the contrasting behaviors of the same ‘‘unidimensional category,’’ whether they are a frustrated minority or a dominant majority. Examples include Irish Catholics who vote for the leftist party in Britain versus ‘‘good’’ Catholics who vote conservative in France or Catholics in Germany who vote for the Christian democratic party and industrial workers who live in densely populated working-class areas versus the same kind of workers who live in middle-class districts. These notions of ‘‘minority context’’ and ‘‘majoritarian context’’ are directly related to the issue of status incongruence, because in many places minorities live in a more or less hostile environment. In such cases, three concepts are involved: status incongruence, minority complex, and cross-pressure.

Contradictory propositions have been suggested concerning the political effects of upward and downward mobility in terms of status incongruence. According to some scholars, upward mobility favors a conservative orientation, and downward mobility a liberal-leftist tendency. Others scholars have arrived at the opposite conclusion. This confusing situation can be explained by the neglect of the social context by those who extrapolate at the national level the results obtained at the local level. Most studies of status incongruence have been conducted in individual

cities (including Lenski’s 1954 and 1966 studies). It is misleading to generalize from a series of local monographs that do not represent a truly national sample: ‘‘Consistency theory seeks to show that predictable effects result from the combination or interaction of statuses, and that these effects differ from the effects of several independent variables’’ (Rossides 1976, p. 87). However, in practice it is difficult to weigh the importance of each variable in the social context. In one case, it may be a question of race; in another, income; and in still another, professional position. Extrapolated at national level, these variables conceal important variations across local social contexts.

STATUS INCONGRUENCE AND

INDIVIDUALISM

Most frequently, status inconsistency refers to individuals, not to collectivities. Incongruence of status is a characteristic of a relationship between individuals. When an individual cannot raise the lower factors of the incongruence, he or she tends to avoid people who react to them (Malewski 1963, p. 306). He or she makes an individual move. If an individual can raise the lower factor, ‘‘he has a natural tendency to think of himself in terms of that status or rank which is highest, and to expect others to do the same, [but] others, who come in contact with him, have a vested interest in doing just the opposite, that is, in treating him in terms of the lowest status or rank’’ (Lenski 1966, p. 87). Even in this case, the relationship is between individuals. Vertical mobility separates ascending individuals from nonmobile peers who remain in their status of origin. A high rate of individual upward mobility breaks the unity of the social class by effectively promoting certain people and generating in the minds of others expectations of moving out of the class and into a better one. As Dahrendorf has noted, a high rate of upward mobility favors individualism to the detriment of class consciousness.

However, high rates of downward mobility may have the opposite effect, favoring, as Marx emphasized, the spread of class consciousness. In that case, the tendency is not to leave the group but to identify oneself with others in the same situation of incongruence of status. In some social contexts that aggregate individuals, such as large factories, mines, railways, working-class suburbs, and ghettos in large cities, the phenomenon of

individual status incongruence blooms into a collective social consciousness and a ‘‘minority complex.’’

CONFIGURATIONS OF STATUS

INCONGRUENCES

The amount of status inconsistencies depends on the configuration of three dimensions that may be dichotomized for analytic purposes.

1.Culturally homogeneous societies versus heterogeneous societies. In recent decades, immigration in Western countries has differed from that of former times. In most cases, immigrants coming from Western Europe to the United States and Canada require only two generations for complete assimilation into the dominant culture. More recent immigrants in Western countries came from the southern rim of the Mediterranean and Africa. Not only are their distinctive characteristics are not only religious and linguistic, they also differ in skin color. Their integration requests more than two generations, and many of them manifest a preference for multiculturalism, that is, for a recognition and institutionalization of ethnic diversity. Such diversity is currently a source of status inconsistencies but may have different effects in the future.

2.Segmented versus fluid societies. Heterogeneous countries may be segmented or fluid. Segmented societies are divided into religious or linguistic communities, as in Belgium and Northern Ireland, or into ‘‘pillars,’’ as in the Netherlands until the middle of 1980s (Lijphart 1977). In these societies, there is little room for ethnic status inconsistency. By contrast, in fluid societies, the crossing of vertical and transversal cleavages is relatively common and generates incongruences.

3.High versus low vertical mobility. Another dichotomy is related to the amount of vertical social mobility on the economic scale, which may be relatively high or relatively low. The fact that high vertical mobility, either upward or downward, increases the frequency of incongruence of statuses is well established.

These three factors have a cumulative effect on the proportion of people who experience incongruence of status.

STATUS INCONGRUENCE AT THE

ELITE LEVEL

What is missing in Pareto’s ‘‘circulation of elites’’ is the concept of status incongruence. This is surprising in the writings of someone who emphasized the importance of upward and downward social mobility. If the concept of status incongruence was applied to the highest levels of society, elite studies would be enhanced. The psychological portrait of some of the world’s most famous painters could be better understood in the light of status inconsistency. The biographies of masters such as Michelangelo, Bellini, Bosch, Goya, van Gogh, and Toulouse Lautrec could be enriched by an interpretation in terms of status incongruence. Many novelists, including Dostoievsky, Tolstoy, Stendhal, Balzac, de Lampedusa, Proust, and Dumas, have analyzed the psychological aspects of status inconsistency even if they have not used that sociological term. One of the main themes of The Red and the Black and The Leopard is status inconsistency. The most common case is that of the rich man’s daughter who becomes enamored of a young man of lower status. No sociologist has explored the hundreds of cases of status incongruence described by famous writers, starting with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

The concept of status incongruence should be applied even to saints. The best analyses of the personality of the evangelist Paul have been written by theologians and religious historians, who have used the notion of status inconsistency implicitly. The subtitle of Dieter Hilbrand’s SaulPaul: A Double Life is significant. Baslez insists on the status incongruence of Saint Paul: Born as a Roman citizen but at the periphery, in Syria; he was a stranger in Ephesus; a polyglot Jew, an apostate, and the son of a Pharisiee, he was rejected as a missionary in many communities. Paul accumulated many incongruencies. Moses, as the nephew of the pharaoh, and Muhammad, as the poor husband of a rich wife, are examples of status inconsistencies.

The use of the concept of status incongruence is appropriate for a better understanding of political leaders from Spartacus to Robespierre and

from Trotsky to Castro. There are numerous examples of the status incongruence of athletes, clergymen, businessmen, politicians: poets, and movie stars, but this notion has been insufficiently used to explain the metamorphosis of labor leaders. The concept could even be applied to sociologists for a better understanding of the theories and motivations of scholars such as Pareto, Michels, Veblen, Sorokin, Mills, and Lazarsfeld.

THE RELEVANCE OF STATUS

INCONGRUENCE TODAY

The incidence of status incongruence in advanced societies today is many times higher than it was in earlier generations. This upsurge is a result of increasing upward and downward economic mobility, the increasing ethnic heterogeneity of Western societies (as a consequence of massive nonEuropean immigration), and a better perception of inequalities and the spread of ‘‘multiculturalism’’ as opposed to the doctrine of the melting pot, particularly among the so-called second generation, which is composed of the sons and daughters of immigrants.

Four decades ago, status incongruence was usually a question of an imbalance between education, income, occupation, religion, and gender. Today it originates primarly in ethnic and racial intermingling. Religious differences have become less prominent.

In most Western societies on both sides at the Atlantic, a homogeneous majority no longer exists. Any conceivable majority is necessarily composed of multiple minorities of all kinds. An advanced society is a multidimensional society that includes many parallel hierarchies. The political game consists precisely in building coalitions of minorities to crystallize a temporary and unstable political-electoral majority. In almost all these countries, the leftist party has become the party of amalgamated minorities, of those who experience frustrations generated by status incongruences and the psychological complex of belonging to a minority. In the United States, the electorate of the Democratic Party is much more ethnically heterogeneous than is its adversary. It is a conglomerate of minorities. In France, the leftist coalition has officially adopted the label ‘‘plural majority.’’ Without the concept of status incongruence, it would be difficult to explain its electoral success.

Projections of demographic trends suggest that Western societies are becoming increasingly diversified along a noneconomic axis and that the amount of status incongruence nourished by ethnic and racial characteristics will increase.

A mountain of statistics has been collected showing that objective inequality and social consciousness explain only a relatively small part of the variance in studies of social stratification. What must be added is an interpretation in terms of status congruence–incongruence.

REFERENCES

Barber, Bernard 1957 Social Stratification. New York:

Harcourt Brace.

Bendix, Reinhard, and Seymour M. Lipset, eds. 1966

Class, Status, and Power. Free Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre 1978 ‘‘Classement, Déclassement, Reclassement.’’ Actes de la Recherche in Sciences Sociales 24:2–22.

Clark, T. N., and S. M. Lipset 1991 ‘‘Are Social Classes Dying?’’ International Sociology 6(4):397–410.

Dogan, Mattei 1995 ‘‘Erosion of Class Voting and of the Religious Vote in Western Europe.’’ International Social Science Journal 146:525–538.

——— 1999 ‘‘Marginality.’’ In Encyclopedia of Creativity, vol. I. London: Academic Press.

Esping-Andersen, Costa 1992 ‘‘Post-Industrial Class Structures: An Analytical Framework,’’ working paper, Madrid: Juan March Institute.

Goldthorpe, John H. 1996 ‘‘Class Analysis and the Reorientation of Class Theory.’’ British Journal of Sociology 47(3):481–505.

Feagin, Joe 1997 ‘‘The Future of U.S. Society in the Era of Racism, Group Segregation and Demographic Revolution.’’ The Heritage and Future of Sociology in the North American Region. International Sociological Association.

Lenski Gerhard E. 1954 ‘‘Status Crystallization: A NonVertical Dimension of Social Status.’’ American Sociological Review 19:405–413.

——— 1966 Power and Privilege. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Lijphart, Arend 1977 Democracy in Plural Societies. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Universtity Press.

Lipset, S. M., and R. Bendix 1959 Social Mobility in Industrial Society. University of California Press.

——— and H. Zetterberg 1956 ‘‘A Theory of Social Mobility.’’ In Reinhard Bendix and Seymour M. Lipset, eds., Class, Status, and Power. New York: Free Press.

Lopreato, Joseph, and Lawrence Hazelrigg 1972 Class, Conflict, and Mobility. San Francisco: Chandler.

Malewski, Andrej 1963 ‘‘The Degree of Status Incongruence and its Effects.’’ In Reinhard Bendix and Seymour M. Lipset, eds., Class, Status, and Power. New York: Free Press.

Paugam, S. 1994 La Disqualification Sociale: Essai sur la Nouvelle Pauvreté. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Rossides, Daniel 1976 The American Class System. Boston:

Houghton-Mifflin.

Scheuch, Erwin 1969 ‘‘Social Context and Individual Behavior.’’ in M. Dogan and S. Rokkan, eds., Quantitative Ecological Analysis in the Social Sciences. Cambridge, Mass.: M. I. T. Press.

Thelat, Claude 1982 Tel Père, Tel Fils: Position Sociale et Origine Familiale. Paris: Dunod.

Turner, Frederick 1992 Social Mobility and Political Attitudes. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

Wilenski, Harold L., and Hugh Edwards 1959 ‘‘The Skidders: Ideological Adjustments of Downwardly Mobile Workers.’’ American Sociological Review

24:215–231.

MATTEI DOGAN

STEREOTYPES

See Attitudes; Discrimination; Prejudice.

STRESS

NOTE: Although the following article has not been revised for this edition of the Encyclopedia, the substantive coverage is currently appropriate. The editors have provided a list of recent works at the end of the article to facilitate research and exploration of the topic.

The theoretical interest in social epidemiology, the study of effects of social conditions on the diffusion of distress and diseases in the population, can be traced to Durkheim’s study of suicide in 1897 (1951). Since then, theory and research have elaborated on the associations among the various forms of social integration and psychiatric disorder. Among the classic works are Faris and Dunham’s study of the ecology of mental disorders in urban areas (1939), Hollingshead and Redlick’s research on social class and mental illness in New Haven (1958), the midtown Manhattan studies (Srole et al. 1962; Langner and Michael

1962; Srole 1975), the Sterling County studies by the Leightons and their colleagues (A. H. Leighton 1959; C. C. Hughes et al. 1960; D. Leighton et al. 1963) and the British studies by Brown and his associates (Brown and Harris, 1978). Each study illuminates the linkage between social conditions and distress and advances theories, hypotheses and empirical evidence in the specification of the relationships.

A parallel theoretical development has also taken place, over the past thirty-five years, in the formulation of the life stress paradigm in social psychiatry. The birth of this paradigm can be dated to the work of Hans Selye (1956) whose study of the undifferentiated response (physiological and psychological) that is generated by diverse external stimuli (stressors) linked sociological constructs to the internal individualistic responses made by individuals to their environment. This stress-distress model provided impetus for a convergence between the earlier sociological concerns with consequences of social integration and the physiological modeling of internal responses to the external environment.

The stress research enterprise gained further momentum when Holmes and Rahe, and subsequently other researchers, developed measures of life experiences that require social adjustments, known as inventories of life events (Holmes and Rahe 1967; Dohrenwend and Dohrenwend 1974, 1981; Myers and Pepper 1972). The life events schedules provide a convenient instrument that can be applied to a wide range of populations and administered with ease. The instrument has shown a high degree of validity and reliability relative to many measures of distress across populations and time lags.

In general, the research shows that life stressors, as measured by the life events schedules, exert a significant but moderate influence on mental and physical well-being. In a simple zero-order correlation, the relationship between life stressors and well-being (e.g., depressive symptoms) ranges between .25 and .40 (Rabkin and Struening 1976). This figure is somewhat less for physical health (House 1981; Wallston et al. 1987; Ensel 1986). The magnitude of this relationship seems to hold up when other factors are taken into account (e.g., general socioeconomic status measures; age; gender; psychological resources such as self-esteem,

personal competence, and locus of control; physical health; and prior mental state).

MODIFICATIONS AND EXTENSIONS–THE

MEDIATION PROCESSES

Modifications of the stressors-distress paradigm have taken several directions. In one direction, the conceptualization of stress as undifferentiated response has been modified so that the nature of stressors entails further specification. For example, in the analysis of life events, desirability, controllability, and importance are identified as dimensions exerting differential effects on distress (Thoits 1981; Tausig 1986). Research has shown that when only self-perceived undesirable life events are considered, the effect of the stressor instrument on distress increases marginally but significantly. It has also been shown that when items pertaining to psychological states (sleeping and eating problems) or illnesses are deleted, the magnitude of its effect is only marginally reduced (Ensel and Tausig 1982; Tausig 1982, 1986).

Conceptualization and operationalization of stressors have also been extended to include role strains (Pearlin and Schooler 1978) and daily hassles (Lazarus and Folkman 1984). Generally speaking, these stressors have demonstrated consistent but moderate effects on mental health, with zeroorder correlations with various measures of mental health ranging from .15 to .35.

Another direction focuses attention on factors mediating or buffering the stressors-distress relationship. Researchers have identified three major components involved in the stress process: stressors, mediating factors, and outcome variables. Pearlin et al. (1981) viewed these constructs as multifaceted. Mediators consist of both external coping resources (i.e., social support) and internal coping resources (i.e., mastery and self-esteem). Outcome factors consist of psychological and physical symptomatology.

Social support, for example, has been considered a major candidate variable, and the cumulative evidence is that it exerts both direct and indirect effects on mental health (Cobb 1976; Cassel 1974, 1976; Nuckolls, Cassel, and Kaplan 1972; Dean and Lin 1977; Lin et al 1979; Turner 1981; Barrera and Ainlay 1983; Aneshensel and Huba 1984; Sarason and Sarason 1985; Kessler

and McLeod 1985; Lin, Dean, and Ensel 1986; Berkman 1985; Cohen and Wills 1985; House, Umberson, and Landis 1988). Coping has also received substantial research attention and been found to be an effective mediator (Pearlin et al, 1981; Wheaton 1983, 1989; Lazarus and Folkman 1984). This type of research has served as the prototype for the sociopsychological study of stress in the 1980s (Pearlin, 1989). Emphasis has been placed on the mechanisms by which social resources, provided or called upon in the presence of a stressor, operate to alter the effect of the stressor (House, Umberson, and Landis 1988; Kessler, Price, and Wortman 1985; Thoits 1985).

DEVELOPMENT OF INTEGRATIVE AND

TIME-LAGGED MODELS

While conceptual analysis and research attention have been given to life stress, resources (social support and coping), and psychological stress for their potential effects on health and mental health, only recently have specific proposals emerged in integrating these elements into a coherent theoretical framework. Dohrenwend and Dohrenwend (1981) summarized various formulations of life stress processes involving stressors (life events) and the psychological and social contexts in which they occurred. These formulations were synthesized into six hypotheses, each of which was shown to provide viable conceptual linkages between stressors (life events) and health outcomes and to have received some empirical support. The hypotheses in these models share two common features: (1) The ultimate dependent variable is adverse health or adverse health change rather than mental health problems or disorders, and (2) each hypothesis delineates and explains the possible empirical association between life events and health. Some of the hypotheses affirm the primary role of life events as causing health problems, while others incorporate mediating factors to explain health problems. The Dohrenwends (1974) proposed that these hypotheses should be examined together for their relative merits. Golden and Dohrenwend (1981) outlined the analytic requirements for testing these causal hypotheses.

Further elaboration of these hypotheses formed the basis of an integrative life stress paradigm in which stressors and resources in three environ- ments—social, psychological, and physiological—

are considered as the factors impinging on wellbeing (Lin and Ensel 1989). This model specifies the enhancing (resources) and detrimental (stressing) forces in each environment. These stressors and resources in the three environments interact in affecting one’s physical and mental health. Empirical evidence suggests that social resources tend to mediate the stress process involving mental health, whereas psychological resources are more prominent in mediating the process involving physical health.

Another integrative attempt incorporates multidisciplinary and multilevel variables in the study of life stress. For example, Lazarus and Folkman (1984) and Trumbull and Appley (1986) have conceptualized cognitive mechanisms involved in the stress process. Lazarus and Folkman proposed a model in which three levels of analysis (social, psychological, and physiological) are conducted to understand the antecedent, mediating, and immediate as well as long-term effects on distress. Trumbull and Appley (1986) proposed the simultaneous assessment of the physiological system, psychological system, and social system functioning. These functionings have both intrasystem and intersystem reciprocal relationships and exert joint effects on distress. In the later paradigms, emphasis has been placed on personality factors and coping skills. Additionally, the importance of linking social, psychological, and physical factors in the study of the stress process has been noted. Causal antecedents of both depressive and physical symptomatology are viewed as coming from social, psychological, and physiological sources and are hypothesized to be mediated by a variety of coping factors and perceived social support.

Pearlin and Aneshensel have proposed a synthesized paradigm (Pearlin 1989; Pearlin and Aneshensel 1986) in which health behaviors and illness behaviors have been incorporated into the basic stress process and in which equal attention has been given to the potential mediating and moderating roles of social and psychological resources. Thus, in addition to mediating the effect of stressors on illness outcomes, coping and social support are viewed as having the potential to mediate health and illness behaviors. An important element of this synthesizing paradigm is the recognition that physical illness creates life problems that are reflected in an increase in undesir-

able life events—that is, in addition to stressors affecting physical illnesses, physical illness also has the potential to bring about the occurrence of stressors. In such a synthesized paradigm, stressors embedded in social structure (e.g., role strains and problems) interact with illness behavior and illnesses. These interactions are mediated by coping and social support.

Finally, growing attention has been given to the need for studying the stress process over time (Wheaton 1989). Not only have there been concerns with causal interpretations of cross-sectional data, but more importantly, a call for longer lags in the panel design to capture the stress process in the life course more realistically (Thoits 1982). Some of the earlier panel studies, such as the midtown Manhattan study (Srole and Fischer 1978), the Kansas City study (Pearlin et al. 1981), the New Haven study (Myers, Lindenthal, and Pepper 1975), and the Cleveland GAO study (Haug and Folmar 1986) have all made significant contributions to understanding the stress process in urban communities. More current efforts, incorporating prevailing models and variables, would substantially add to the knowledge about stress in the life course. Current panel studies, such as those mounted by Aneshensel in Southern California; House and his associates on a national sample; Berkman in New Haven; Murrell in Kentucky; and Lin, Dean, and Ensel in upstate New York have the potential to expand research programs into investigations of the life-course process of stress.

(SEE ALSO: Mental Illness and Mental Disorders; Personality

Theories)

REFERENCES

Aneshensel, Carol S. 1992 ‘‘Social Stress: Theory and Research.’’ Annual Review of Sociology 18:15–38.

Aneshensel, C. S., and G.J. Huba 1984 ‘‘An Integrative Causal Model of the Antecedents and Consequences of Depression over One Year.’’ In James R. Greenley, ed., Research in Community and Mental Health. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press.

Avison, William R. and Ian H Gotlib (eds.) 1994 Stress and Mental Health: Contemporary Issues and Prospects for the Future. New York: Plenum Press.

Barrera, M., and S. L. Ainlay 1983 ‘‘The Structure of Social Support: A Conceptual and Empirical Analysis.’’ Journal of Community Psychology 11:133–143.

Berkman 1985 ‘‘The Relationship of Social Networks and Social Support to Morbidity and Mortality.’’ In S. Cohen and S. L. Syme, eds., Social Support and Health. New York: Academic Press.

Brown, G. W., and T. Harris 1978 Social Origins of Depression: A study of Psychiatric Disorder in Women. New York: The Free Press.

Cassel, J. 1974 ‘‘An Epidemiological Perspective of Psychosocial Factors in Disease Etiology.’’ American Journal of Public Health 64:1040–1043.

——— 1976 ‘‘The Contribution of the Social Environment to Host Resistance.’’ American Journal of Epidemiology 104:107–123.

Cobb, S. 1976 ‘‘Social Support as a Moderator of Life Stress.’’ Psychosomatic Medicine 38:300–314.

Cohen, S., and T. A. Wills 1985 ‘‘Stress, Social Support, and the Buffering Hypothesis.’’ Psychological Bulletin 98(2):310–357

Coyne, James C. and Geraldine Downey 1991 ‘‘Social Factors and Psychopathology: Stress, Social Support, and Coping Processes.’’ Annual Review of Psychology

42:401–425.

Dean, Alfred, and Nan Lin 1977 ‘‘The Stress Buffering Role of Social Support.’’ Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 165(2):403–13.

Dohrenwend, B. S., and B. P. Dohrenwend 1974 Stressful Life Events: Their Nature and Effect. New York: Wiley.

——— 1981 ‘‘Life Stress and Illness: Formulation of the Issues.’’ In B. S. Dohrenwend and B. P. Dohrenwend, eds., Stressful Life Events: Their Nature and Effects. New York: Prodist.

Durkheim, Emile 1951 Suicide. Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press.

Ensel, Walter M. 1986 ‘‘Measuring Depression: The CES-D scale.’’ In Nan Lin, Alfred Dean, and Walter M. Ensel, eds., Social Support, Life Events, and Depression. Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press.

———, and Mark Tausig 1982 ‘‘The Social Context of Undesirable Life Events.’’ Presented October 11– 12 at the National Conference on Social Stress, DurHam, N.H.

——— and Nan Lin 1991 ‘‘The Life Stress Paradigm and Psychological Distress.’’ Journal of Health and Social Behavior 32:321–341.

Faris, Robert E. K., and H. Warren Dunham 1939

Mental Disorders in Urban Areas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Fernandez, Maria E., Elizabeth J. Mutran, and Donald C. Reitzes 1998 ‘‘Moderating the Effects of Stress on Depressive Symptoms.’’ Research on Aging 20:163–182.

George, Linda K. 1993 ‘‘Sociological Perspectives on Life Transitions.’’ Annual Review of Sociology 19:353–373.

Golden, R. R., and B. S. Dohrenwend 1981 ‘‘Teating Hypotheses about the Life Stress Process: A Path Analytic Method for Testing Causal Hypotheses.’’ In B. S. Dohrenwend and B. P. Dohrenwend, eds.,

Stressful Life Events: Their Nature and Effects. NY: Prodist.

Gotlib, Ian H. and Blair Wheaton, eds. 1997 Stress and Adversity over the Life Course: Trajectories and Turning Points. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Haug, M. R., and S. J. Folmar 1986 ‘‘Longevity, Gender, and Life Quality.’’ Journal of Health and Social Behavior 27:332–346.

Hollingshead, August, and Fredrick Redlick 1958 Social Class and Mental Illness. New York: Wiley.

Holmes, T., and R. Rahe 1967 ‘‘The Social Readjustment Rating Scale.’’ Journal of Psychosomatic Research

11:213–218.

House, James S. 1981 Work Stress and Social Support. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.

———, Karl R. Landis, and Debra Umberson 1988 ‘‘Social Relationships and Health.’’ Science 241 ( July 29):540–545.

——— 1988 ‘‘Structures and Processes of Social Support.’’ Annual Review of Sociology 14:293–318.

Hughes, C. C., M. A. Tremblay, et al. 1960 People of Cove and Woodlot, vol. 2 of the Sterling County Study. New York: Basic Books.

Kessler, R. C., and J. McLeod 1985 ‘‘Sex Differences in Vulnerability to Undesirable Life Events.’’ American Sociological Review 49 (5):620–631.

Kessler, R. C., R. H. Price, and C. B. Wortman 1985 ‘‘Social Factors in Psychopathology: Stress, Social Support, and Coping Processes.’’ Annual Review of Psychology 36:531–572.

Langner, T. S., and S. T. Michael 1962 Life Stress and Mental Health. New York: The Free Press.

Lazarus, Richard S. 1991 ‘‘Psychological Stress in the Workplace.’’ Journal of Social Behavior and Personality 7:1–13.

———, and S. Folkman 1984 Stress, Appraisal, and Coping. New York: Springer.

Leighton, A. H. 1959 My Name Is Legion. New York: Basic Books.

Leighton, D. C., et al. 1963 The Character of Danger. New York: Basic Books.

Lin, Nan, Alfred Dean, and Walter M. Ensel 1986 Social Support, Life Events, and Depression. Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press.

Lin, Nan, and Walter M. Ensel 1989 ‘‘Life Stress and Health: Stressors and Resources.’’ American Sociological Review 54:382–399.

Lin, Nan, Ronald Simeone, Walter M. Ensel, and Wen Kuo 1979 ‘‘Social Support, Stressful Life Events, and Illness: A Model and an Empirical Test.’’ Journal of Health and Social Behavior 20 (1):108–119.

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Myers, J. K., J. J. Lindenthal, and M. P. Pepper 1975 ‘‘Life Events, Social Integration, and Psychiatric Symptomatology.’’ Journal of Health and Social Behavior 16:421–429.

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NAN LIN

STRIKES

See Labor Movements and Unions; Industrial

Sociology.

STRUCTURAL EQUATIONS

See Causal Inference Models; Correlation and Regression Analysis; Multiple Indicator Models.

STRUCTURAL LAG

The concept of structural lag originally was suggested by the observation that in the late twentieth century there was a discrepancy between the growing number of older healthy people and the meaningful roles available to them. This simple empirical observation is only one instance of a more general phenomenon: a mismatch between the numbers and kinds of people of a given age and existing patterns in the social structures into which people must fit. This mismatch occurs because changes in people’s lives and changes in social structures typically are not synchronic. When social structures fail to adapt to new cohorts with characteristics different from those of previous cohorts, there is a situation of structural lag (Riley et al. 1994).

PREMISES ABOUT AGE AND SOCIETY

How and why structural lags emerge and how they are dealt with can be better understood by considerating the underlying principles of age as both an individual and a social phenomenon and its relationship to social change.

1.Age not only is a characteristic of people but is built into social structures in the form of criteria for entering or leaving social roles, expectations about behavior in those roles, and resources and rewards for role performance. Formal and informal rules govern the age at which children enter and stay in school, age patterns in the family such as the appropriate age at first marriage, and age of entry into and retirement from the work force. Age norms influence behavior and orientations in these roles, and conformity is but-

tressed by material rewards and social approval.

2.Both the process of aging from birth to death and social structures related to age are subject to change. The aging process is not the same for all cohorts, since members of each cohort (those born in the same period) grow up and grow older under unique social, political, and environmental circumstances. For example, cohorts of people born around the beginning of the twentieth century differ from those born a half century later in level of education, exposure to illness, size of the family, job skills, the likelihood of being married and divorced, and attitudes and worldviews. Cohorts born at the end of the twentieth century will differ from their predecessors in still other ways. For example, the birth weight of newborns in the 1980s and 1990s was greater than that of babies born in earlier times, and this undoubtedly will influence the way that members of those cohorts develop. Further, as the more recent cohorts grow up, it is likely that they will to benefit from new medical advances. Age patterns in social structures have changed as well. To cite two examples, schools have raised the school-leaving age, and government and corporate policies have encouraged a decline in the typical age of retirement.

3.Changes in patterns of aging and in social structures affect each other; they are interdependent. As an example, by altering long-standing employment practices, restructuring, downsizing, and mergers of large firms in the United States have led to a shift in the work lives of employees. Thus, compared to previous cohorts of workers, fewer workers now can look forward to lifetime employment in one firm; many have to make multiple career changes, and some have to make do with temporary and part-time employment at some time in their working lives. In turn, new patterns of careers over the life course are likely to have an impact

on societal institutions. Firms are likely to reduce their commitment to training workers, with educational institutions as-