Social Psychology at Work (Psychology Revivals)

Essays in honour of Michael Argyle

Peter Collett, Adrian Furnham, Peter Collett, Adrian Furnham

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134095902
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Social Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Social psychology has much to offer real world problems, especially in industrial and organizational settings. Originally published in 1995, in Social Psychology at Work leading researchers in their respective fields discuss recent findings and their implications for the commercial world of work.

All the contributors have been greatly influenced by the late Michael Argyle, to whom this book is dedicated. They examine aspects of the workplace from the perspectives of personality and individual difference, social psychology and organizational psychology. Subjects covered include the effects of age on work, leadership, productivity, how we are socialized for work, stress and anxiety, and the effect of the physical environment on working behaviour.

Social Psychology at Work is a rich source book of ideas, research findings and reviews at the interface of pure and applied psychology. It will be important and rewarding reading for all those such as students, consultants and managers and trainers who are interested in psychology at work.

1 Socialization for work

Nicholas Emler

INTRODUCTION

We are in the habit of regarding the sphere of work as belonging to adult life, contrasting this with a childhood which revolves around learning, education and play. The purpose of this chapter is not to make a point about the cultural and historical relativity of this contrast, though relative it is (cf. Aries, 1962), but rather to consider how childhood prepares individuals for adult work roles. For not only is the association of work with adulthood a contemporary, Western peculiarity, the structuring of adult roles and motivations within the economic life of society are similarly cultural phenomena. If human societies can be regarded as ‘open systems’ (cf. Katz and Kahn, 1978) the survival of which require the input of energy, or ‘work’, on the part of their members, there are none the less many different ways in which those inputs can be arranged. The collectivist economies of hunter-gatherers, the feudal systems of medieval Europe and pre-revolutionary China, and the slave economies of ancient Rome and the Ante-Bellum Confederacy are among some of the very different arrangements which have each proved viable.

The organization of work which characterizes contemporary Britain and many other societies has a number of distinctive features. Foremost among these is a sharp division between two systems of labour. On the one hand, work is provided for a financial reward, primarily in the context of employment relations. On the other hand, there is voluntary work, the most but not the only significant form of which is domestic labour. An interesting feature of this division is that these two systems are distinguished only by the motivations which sustain them, and not in terms of any intrinsic differences in the content or objectives of the work or the people involved.

Another distinctive feature of contemporary ways of organizing work is the degree to which work roles are specialized. In Britain at present more than 20,000 distinct kinds of job are recognized in employment statistics. In the domestic system, by contrast, the trend has, if anything, been the reverse so that there are now seldom more than two distinct roles and occasionally only a minimal specialization by person.

Related to the high levels of specialization prevailing in the employment system is the formalization of work roles and relationships, a feature which can be seen to be in part a consequence of the need to co-ordinate and integrate highly specialized activities. Historically also there has been a transition from a task to a time emphasis in work (Thompson, 1967), timetables and schedules assuming greater importance.

I have suggested that there is nothing in any way natural or inevitable about these particular ways of organizing labour. It is worth recalling, for instance, that when the basic principle of modern employment relations – selling one’s labour for a wage – was first introduced on a large scale as part of the factory system of manufacturing, it was considered so unnatural that only criminals and paupers could be induced to accept it (Hearn, 1978). And this was a mere 200 years ago. Today, perhaps 85 per cent of those who earn an income from their labour do so in the context of employment relations. Similarly in an African household, 4- and 5-year-olds may well have extensive responsibilities for tasks which many British adults are inclined to regard as the natural province of parents – doing household shopping, looking after and even tutoring younger family members.

So how are the systems of labour with which we are so familiar, and which we are perhaps so inclined to take for granted, reproduced and sustained across the generations? The aim of this chapter is to draw attention to some of the parameters of what must be one part of the answer, namely the economic socialization of the child. The starting point for this exercise is the observation that young people arrive at the verge of adulthood, not only apparently accepting these labour arrangements as entirely normal, but also prepared in many ways for their peculiar requirements.

The relevant preparation is both intellectual and moral, both motivational and technical, both general and specific. It is intellectual in that children are equipped with the various cognitive requirements for adult economic roles, notable among which are the skills of numeracy and literacy. Intellectual preparation shades into the moral in children’s understanding of the principles underpinning role relationships in the different systems. Thus, with respect to employment relations children may learn that level of pay varies as a function of job content but also that these contingencies are in some way right and just. The motivational preparation is well documented, for example in terms of the connection between the operation of a free-market economy and the socialization of an appropriate ‘work ethic’ (cf. Weber, 1930; McClelland, 1961; Furnham, 1990). But what is the motivational preparation for the domestic system? As we shall see, the motivational dynamics are less well understood here. Finally, socialization also has differentiating effects, preparing different children for different economic roles in both systems.

In the remainder of this chapter I will consider some of ways in which children are prepared for adult economic roles. I shall look first at the distinction between the employment and domestic/voluntary systems, then at domestic socialization and finally at employment socialization.

PAID AND UNPAID WORK

When and how do children learn that some work is paid work and some is not? How do they learn to distinguish the two? Partly, it is a matter of intellectual development. The study of children’s understanding of the means of production and the relationship between work and money has revealed a fairly stable developmental sequence between 4 and 11 years (Danziger, 1958; Jahoda, 1979; Furth, 1980; Berti and Bombi, 1988). The youngest children usually fail to draw a connection between employment and wages. They may realize that many adults go to work and that money is required to buy food and other goods but think that work is a voluntary activity and that money comes from change in shops or banks or even God.

By 6 or 7 years they recognize that money is obtained by working and often make a dramatic distinction between the working ‘rich’ and unemployed ‘poor’. Their understanding of the process of production, however, is still very naive. For example, they do not connect the sale of goods with income for the producers. They may think that factory owners are given money by the government or banks to pay the workers or even that the factory owner has to earn money elsewhere, in another job. They may imagine that teachers’ wages come directly from pupils’ parents, that bus drivers’ wages are the fares they receive or that bosses earn less than workers because ‘nobody pays them’ (Dickinson, 1986; Berti and Bombi, 1988).

At 8 to 9 years they begin to understand that there is an exchange relationship between the boss and the worker and to assume a simple relationship between the amount of money earned and the amount of work done. The next two or three years see a growing awareness that the relationship between the amount of work and the amount of money is less straightforward and that different types of jobs receive different pay.

Insight into the relationship between employment and money entails some degree of co-ordination between knowledge of three different aspects of work: production of goods, selling of goods and exchange of labour for wages. Furth (1980), Jahoda (1984) and Berti and Bombi (1988) have all argued that the development of insight into economic relations is dependent upon cognitive growth and that the ability to make connections between different aspects of production is restricted by the child’s ability to make inferences and integrate pieces of knowledge.

This makes for similarities in the sequence of development, at least across cultures with money-based economies, but the rate of progress can be affected by experience and the availability of information. For example, children whose fathers run small businesses show accelerated development of the understanding of the exchange of goods for money (Jahoda, 1983; Berti and Bombi, 1988) while children further removed from work often retain early misconceptions. Jahoda (1979) found that the children of unemployed parents were likely to think everyone’s income came from social security. Berti and Bombi (1988) found that Italian middle-class children thought all money was handed out by the bank or council, whereas working-class children, whose fathers worked in the local Fiat factory, attributed a similar omnipotent role to Fiat. The rate of development can also vary between economic spheres. Berti, Bombi and Lis (1982) found that the children of factory workers understood much more about factory production than agricultural production.

Duveen and Shields (1985) found that pre-schoolers did make a clear distinction between domestic work and employment; at this age this is more likely to be a distinction between domestic and public spheres of work than an understanding of the distinction between paid and unpaid work. Goodnow and Warton (1991) suggest children learn the distinction as part of learning about social relationships: unpaid work is an appropriate expression of a particular kind of personal relationship.

THE DOMESTIC SYSTEM

One of the most salient features of the household economic system in contemporary society is the gender-based division of responsibilities. Despite much interest in the emergence of ‘egalitarian’ marriages with undifferentiated responsibilities, it remains the norm for adult males and females to contribute very different kinds of labour to their domestic partnerships. Moreover, the characteristic division of labour is established very rapidly. Atkinson and Huston (1984) found that a sample of young American couples, surveyed within a few months of marriage, already had an established gender-based pattern: male partners were more likely to undertake repairs and renovations to the house, the females were more likely to take on the routine tasks of household shopping, preparing meals and cleaning. It is also clear from this and other research that husbands and wives contribute labour which differs quantitatively as well as qualitatively: wives contribute far more.

It is tempting to view this pattern in terms of a more general gender division of economic roles: the assumption by wives of primary responsibility for the domestic sphere complements their husbands’ assumption of primary responsibility for income generation on behalf of the family, a responsibility discharged by the latter’s participation in the employment system. However, it would be a mistake to conclude that participation in the two systems is simply balanced out in this way or that the domestic division could be generated and sustained by the straightforward internalization of such a definition of gender roles. There is, it turns out, little evidence for any direct balancing of roles: many married women also participate in the employment system, many do so on a full-time basis, and women are also sometimes the principal income generators in the family. Moreover, none of these tendencies is associated with a gender reversal of domestic responsibilities (e.g. Witherspoon, 1985).

Atkinson and Huston (1984) suggest two ways in which the observed gender division might be generated so rapidly in marriage. Partners come to the marriage with established beliefs about appropriate sex roles in the family, and they also divide responsibilities according to perceived skill differences. However, there are reasons to doubt that this provides a completely satisfactory explanation. First, it begs questions both about origins of perceptions of skill differences and about the origins and reality of the differences to which these perceptions relate. Second, perceptions of one’s own and one’s partner’s skills accounted for very little of the variance that Atkinson and Huston observed in the distribution of domestic work. The same was true of sex-role beliefs.

We have explored the development of sex-role beliefs in late adolescence and their ability to predict contributions to household labour (Emler and Abrams, 1989; Emler and Hall, in press). Our data indicate that such beliefs can predict some of the variance in the level of such contributions, but only among males and only while they remain in their parents’ homes. In effect, 16–20-year-old males are more likely to contribute to traditionally female areas of household labour if they develop egalitarian beliefs about sex roles generally. In contrast, whatever beliefs females develop about gender roles have no consequences for the level or extent of their contributions in these areas.

Perhaps the most important preparation that childhood provides for adult economic roles in the domestic system is not assimilation of sex-role ideologies or even the opportunity for observational learning in which their parents provide role models, but rather direct practice in these roles and the explicit teaching which accompanies this (Warton and Goodnow, 1991). From relatively early in life, children are contributors to the household economic system and by late adolescence their contributions are often quite extensive, including money as well as labour. But even at this level the participation is not a simple rehearsal of different roles for males and females, in which the former primarily contribute money and the latter labour; in fact, adolescent females are likely to contribute proportionately more of any earned income than are their male counterparts (Emler and Hall, in press).

Initially, children contribute self-care labour which might, for example, take the form of tidying their own rooms. But progressively they become more involved in doing work for the family (Goodnow, 1988). This latter kind of work is also gender-differentiated: almost from the beginning girls and boys are expected to perform different kinds of work around the house. Thus, by 8 years children already have a well-developed sense of the ‘ownership’ (cf. Warton and Goodnow, 1991) of various domestic responsibilities. Additionally, boys are more likely than girls to be paid for jobs around the home, perhaps in the process learning to regard their own labour as a commodity to be sold. Certainly for males household work appears to belong more to the category of ‘voluntary’ contributions and is more strongly associated with the generally ‘altruistic’ inclinations of the individual (Emler and Hall, in press). The contributions of females are more directly governed by the immediate expectations of others (Emler, 1993).

SOCIALIZATION FOR EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS

What does a modern economy, and particularly one based extensively on employment relations, require of economic socialization? The answer is probably ‘rather a lot’. Here I focus on just four areas: cognitive skills, distributive justice, legal-rational authority and occupational selection.

Specific cognitive skills

The most conspicuous cognitive skill among adults in an employment culture is literacy. When Max Weber (1947) argued that the dominant organizational form in the modern world would be the bureaucracy, he meant that organization would be centred on the bureau or office as a place where the instruments of organizational control are decisions recorded in writing. He thus assumed that this kind of organization would depend on staff capable of making and referring to written records. He did not specify what proportion of the staff would require this ability but research on industrialization gives us some clues.

Industrialization, mass urbanization and bureacratization of economic institutions have been correlated trends. In a survey of seventy-three countries, Lerner (1958) was able to show that these processes are in turn closely related to levels of literacy within a population. Thus, once urbanization has reached about 10 per cent, literacy becomes closely correlated with urbanization. It is as if such forms of social organization cannot function unless a large proportion of the population can read and write. Postman and Weingartner (1969) note that the recreational reading of most adults is limited to the tabloid press and the occasional comic, only a small percentage regularly read books and an even more minute percentage write novels or poems, even unpublished ones. More relevant, Postman and Weingartner say, is the capacity literacy...