Personal Identity Processes from Adolescence Through the Late 20s: Age Trends,Functionality, and Depressive Symptoms

Personal identity formation constitutes a crucial developmental task during the teens and 20s. Using a recently developed five‐dimensional identity model, this cross‐sectional study (N = 5834) investigated age trends from ages 14 to 30 for different commitment and exploration processes. As expected, results indicated that, despite some fluctuations over time, commitment processes tended to increase in a linear fashion. Exploration in breadth and exploration in depth were characterized by quadratic trends, with the highest levels occurring in emerging adulthood. Further, the functionality of these identity processes, and especially of exploration, changed over time. Exploration in breadth and exploration in depth were strongly related to commitment processes especially in adolescence and emerging adulthood, but these exploration processes became increasingly associated with ruminative exploration and depressive symptoms in the late 20s. Theoretical implications and suggestions for future research are outlined.     

A New Perspective on Job Lock

This paper analyses the situation when employees fail to adapt to overall job dissatisfaction. By combining the existing knowledge in economics on job lock and in psychology on employees’ feeling of being ‘stuck’ at work, the paper explains why some employees fail to adapt when dissatisfied with their job. Thus, the paper aims to expand our understanding of why some employees are job locked or are ‘stuck’ at their work even though dissatisfied. Using the British household panel survey, the possibility of falling in a job-lock state is analyzed to outline a set of factors that explain why employees differ in the way they adjust to job dissatisfaction. We divide these factors into socio-demographic features, personality attributes, type of occupation, employment conditions, type of sector, and work-related contextual features. Based on results of probit regression analysis, we provide evidence that all these group of factors can jointly predict the state of job dissatisfaction, the absence of job turnover and job lock (being ‘stuck’ at job). Moreover, our results suggest that the adaptation to job dissatisfaction could be better understood if personality attributes (such as self-esteem) are included in the analysis. Thus, this study expands our understanding of how and why employees might feel ‘stuck’ at work and fall in a state of job lock.     

Coming Closer in Adolescence: Convergence in Mother,Father, and Adolescent Reports of Parenting

Parent–child relationships change during adolescence. Furthermore, parents and adolescents perceive parenting differently. We examined the changes in perceptions of parental practices in fathers, mothers, and adolescents during adolescence. Furthermore, we investigated if fathers', mothers', and adolescents' perceptions converge during adolescence. Following 497 families across six waves (ages 13–18), we investigated the development of parental support and behavioral control using mother and father self‐reports, and adolescent reports for mothers and fathers. We found curvilinear decrease for support and control. Parent–adolescent convergence emerged over the 6 years: those with higher intercepts had a steeper decrease, whereas correlations among parent and adolescent reports increased. This multi‐informant study sheds light on the development of parent–adolescent convergence on perceptions of parenting.     

Inclusiveness and exclusion: trust networks at the origins of European cities

In Western Europe, cities grew fast between 1000 and 1300. This article looks at how the migrants moving to these emerging cities melded into communities and defended their collective rights in violent and hostile environments. It discusses a number of trust networks that were developed to meet the successive collective needs of particular social layers in rapidly changing urban societies. When a trust network became well-established and too large to allow face-to-face relations among all its members, institutions were created that operated under different rules.     

The informed society: an analysis of the public's information-seeking behavior regarding coastal flood risks

Recent flood risk management puts an increasing emphasis on the public's risk perception and its preferences. It is now widely recognized that a better knowledge of the public's awareness and concern about risks is of vital importance to outline effective risk communication strategies. Models such as Risk Information Seeking and Processing address this evolution by considering the public's needs and its information-seeking behavior with regard to risk information. This study builds upon earlier information-seeking models and focuses on the empirical relationships between information-seeking behavior and the constructs of risk perception, perceived hazard knowledge, response efficacy, and information need in the context of coastal flood risks. Specific focus is given to the mediating role of information need in the model and to the differences in information-seeking behavior between permanent and temporary residents. By means of a structured on-line questionnaire, a cross-sectional survey was carried out in the city of Ostend, one of the most vulnerable places to coastal flooding on the Belgian coast. Three hundred thirteen respondents participated in the survey. Path analysis reveals that information need does not act as a mediator in contrast to risk perception and perceived knowledge. In addition, it is shown that risk perception and perceived hazard knowledge are higher for permanent than temporary residents, leading to increased information-seeking behavior among the former group. Implications for risk communication are discussed.     

A Longitudinal Analysis of Job Satisfaction During a Recession in the Netherlands

Social Indicators Research - Between 2008 and 2013, the Netherlands was confronted by a severe recession. This recession may have affected the job satisfaction of workers. Currently, little is...     

College Education and Social Trust: An Evidence-Based Study on the Causal Mechanisms

This paper examines the influence of college education on social trust at the individual level. Based on the literature of trust and social trust, we hypothesize that life experience/development since adulthood and perceptions of cultural/social structures are two primary channels in the causal linkage between college education and social trust. In the first part of the empirical study econometric techniques are employed to tackle the omitted-variable problem and substantial evidence is found to confirm the positive effect of college education. In the second part contemporary information is used to examine the hypothetical mechanisms in the causal inference. That life experience is a primary channel via which college education promotes social trust fails to find support in our examination, while individual perceptions of cultural and social structures explain up to 77% of the causal effect.     

Welfarism and the multidimensionality of welfare state legitimacy: Evidence from The Netherlands, 2006

Oorschot W van, Meuleman B. Welfarism and the multidimensionality of welfare state legitimacy: evidence from The Netherlands, 2006 Is it possible that citizens who support a substantial role for government in the provision of welfare are, at the same time, critical about specific aspects of such provision? Based on confirmatory factor analyses, and using a 2006 Dutch survey, this study shows that welfare state legitimacy is indeed multidimensional, i.e. that opinions tend to cluster together in several dimensions referring to various aspects of the welfare state. There is partial evidence for the existence of a single, underlying welfarism dimension which consists basically of views regarding the range of governmental responsibility, as well as of the idea that these governmental provisions do not have unfavourable repercussions in economic or moral spheres. However, the separate dimensions cannot be reduced entirely to this overall welfarism dimension. This is illustrated by the finding that the various attitude dimensions are affected differently by socio‐structural position and ideological dispositions.