Abstract
The present study investigated whether unemployment influences the importance and the realization of life goals and whether a reduced realization of life goals mediates the negative effect of unemployment on subjective well-being. A sample of 256 employed and unemployed German adults was studied with scales measuring six different life goal domains (power, achievement, variety, altruism, intimacy, affiliation). Only weak differences between unemployed and employed people were found for importance ratings of life goals. However, current realization of life goals, particularly of agency goals such as power, achievement and variety, was significantly lower among unemployed persons than among employed persons. Thus, unemployment did not change the goals people wanted to achieve in their lifetime, but it inhibited the success of these strivings. Furthermore, current realization of life goals was found to be a mediator of the detrimental effect of unemployment on life satisfaction and positive/negative affect.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bakan, D. (1966). The duality of human existence. An essay on psychology and religion. Chicago: Rand McNally.
Becker, T. E. (2005). Potential problems in the statistical control of variables in organizational research: A qualitative analysis with recommendations. Organizational Research Methods, 8, 274–289. doi:10.1177/1094428105278021.
Bender, R., & Lange, S. (2001). Adjusting for multiple testing—when and how? Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 54, 343–349. doi:10.1016/S0895-4356(00)00314-0.
Brandstätter, V., Herrmann, M., & Schüler, J. (2013). The struggle of giving up personal goals: Affective, physiological, and cognitive consequences of an action crisis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39, 1668–1682. doi:10.1177/0146167213500151.
Brunstein, J. C. (1993). Personal goals and subjective well-being: A longitudinal study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 1061–1070. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.65.5.1061.
Creed, P. A., & Klisch, J. (2005). Future outlook and financial strain: Testing the personal agency and latent deprivation models of unemployment and well-being. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 10, 251–260. doi:10.1037/1076-8998.10.3.251.
Creed, P. A., Lehmann, K., & Hood, M. (2009). The relationship between core self-evaluations, employment commitment and well-being in the unemployed. Personality and Individual Differences, 47, 310–315. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2009.03.021.
Diener, E., Emmons, R. A., Larsen, R. J., & Griffin, S. (1985). The satisfaction with life scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 49, 71–75. doi:10.1207/s15327752jpa4901_13.
Emmons, R. A. (1986). Personal strivings: An approach to personality and subjective well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 1058–1068. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.51.5.1058.
Fryer, D. (1986). Employment deprivation and personal agency during unemployment: A critical discussion of Jahoda’s explanation of the psychological effects of unemployment. Social Behaviour, 1, 3–23.
Fryer, D. (1997). Agency restriction. In N. Nicholson (Ed.), The Blackwell encyclopedic dictionary of organizational psychology (p. 12). Oxford, England: Blackwell.
Hayes, A. F. (2013). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis. New York, London: Guilford.
Holm, S. (1979). A simple sequentially rejective multiple test procedure. Scandinavian Journal of Statistics, 6, 65–70.
International Labour Office. (2014). Global employment trends 2014—where is the unemployment rate the highest? Retrieved April 23, 2014, from http://www.ilo.org/global/research/global-reports/global-employment-trends/2014/WCMS_233936/lang–en/index.htm
Krohne, H. W., Egloff, B., Kohlmann, C.-W., & Tausch, A. (1996). Untersuchung mit einer deutschen Form der Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) [A study with a German version of the positive and negative affectivity scale (PANAS)]. Diagnostica, 42, 139–156.
Kuenemund, A., Zwick, S., Doering, B. K., Conrad, N., Rief, W., & Exner, C. (2013). Decline in attainability of communion and agency life goals over 2 years following acquired brain injury and the impact on subjective well-being. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 23, 678–697. doi:10.1080/09602011.2013.801779.
Maxwell, S. E., Cole, D. A., & Mitchell, M. A. (2011). Bias in cross-sectional analyses of longitudinal mediation: Partial and complete mediation under an autoregressive model. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 46, 816–841. doi:10.1080/00273171.2011.606716.
McKee-Ryan, F. M., Song, Z., Wanberg, C. R., & Kinicki, A. J. (2005). Psychological and physical well-being during unemployment: A meta-analytic study. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90, 53–76. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.90.1.53.
Norton, D. L. (1976). Personal destinies: A philosophy of ethical individualism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton university press.
Novacek, J., & Lazarus, R. S. (1990). The structure of personal commitments. Journal of Personality, 58, 693–715. doi:10.1111/1467-6494.ep9103184274.
Paul, K. I., & Batinic, B. (2010). The need for work: Jahoda’s latent functions of employment in a representative sample of the German population. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 31, 45–64. doi:10.1002/job.622.
Paul, K. I., Hassel, A., & Moser, K. (in press). Individual consequences of job loss and unemployment. In E. A. J. van Hooft & U. C. Klehe (Eds.), Oxford handbook on job loss and job search. Oxford: University Press.
Paul, K. I., & Moser, K. (2006). Incongruence as an explanation for the negative mental health effects of unemployment: Meta-analytic evidence. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 79, 595–621. doi:10.1348/096317905X70823.
Paul, K. I., & Moser, K. (2009). Unemployment impairs mental health: Meta-analyses. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 74, 264–282. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2009.01.001.
Perneger, T. V. (1998). What’s wrong with Bonferroni adjustments. British Medical Journal, 316, 1236–1238. doi:10.1136/bmj.316.7139.1236.
Pöhlman, K. (2001). Agency- and communion-orientation in life goals: Impacts on goal pursuit strategies and psychological well-being. In P. Schmuck & K. M. Sheldon (Eds.), Life goals and well-being: Towards a positive psychology of human striving (pp. 68–84). Hogrefe & Huber: Ashland, OH.
Pöhlmann, K., & Brunstein, J. C. (1997). GOALS: Ein Fragebogen zur Messung von Lebenszielen [GOALS: A questionnaire for assessing life goals]. Diagnostica, 43, 63–79.
Preacher, K. J., & Hayes, A. F. (2008). Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models. Behavior Research Methods, 40, 879–891. doi:10.3758/BRM.40.3.879.
Rothman, K. J. (1990). No adjustments are needed for multiple comparisons. Epidemiology, 1, 43–46. doi:10.1097/00001648-199001000-00010.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2001). On happiness and human potentials: A review of research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 141–166. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.141.
Ryff, C. D. (1989). Happiness is everything, or is it? Explorations on the meaning of psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 1069–1081. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.57.6.1069.
Ryff, C. D., & Singer, B. H. (2008). Know yourself and become what you are: A Eudaimonic approach to psychological well-being. Journal of Happiness Studies, 9, 13–39. doi:10.1007/s10902-006-9019-0.
Schumacher, J., Klaiberg, A., & Brähler, E. (2003). Diagnostische Verfahren zu Lebensqualität und Wohlbefinden [Diagnostic measures for quality of life and well-being]. Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe.
Spector, P. E., Zapf, D., Chen, P. Y., & Frese, M. (2000). Why negative affectivity should not be controlled in job stress research: Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 21, 79–95. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1099-1379(200002)21:1<79:AID-JOB964>3.0.CO;2-G.
Ström, S. (2003). Unemployment and families: A review of research. The Social Service Review, 77, 399–430. doi:10.2307/30013425.
Vastamäki, J., Moser, K., & Paul, K. (2009). How stable is sense of coherence? Changes following an intervention for unemployed individuals. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 50, 161–171. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9450.2008.00695.x.
Vinokur, A. D., Price, R. H., & Caplan, R. D. (1996). Hard times and hurtful partners: How financial strain affects depression and relationship satisfaction of unemployed persons and their spouses. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 166–179. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.71.1.166.
Watermann, A. S. (1993). Two conceptions of happiness: Contrasts of personal expressiveness (eudaimonia) and hedonic enjoyment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 678–691. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.64.4.678.
Watson, D., & Clark, L. A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 1063–1070. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.54.6.1063.
Wicker, F. W., Lambert, F. B., Richardson, F. C., & Kahler, J. (1984). Categorical goal hierarchies and classification of human motives. Journal of Personality, 52, 285–305. doi:10.1111/1467-6494.ep7391098.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Paul, K.I., Vastamäki, J. & Moser, K. Frustration of Life Goals Mediates the Negative Effect of Unemployment on Subjective Well-Being. J Happiness Stud 17, 447–462 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-014-9603-7
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-014-9603-7