RESUMEN
Marie Jahoda's latent deprivation model proposes that unemployed people have a worse mental health compared to employed people. This is because they suffer not only from a lack of the manifest function of employment (earning money), but also from a lack of five so-called latent functions of employment: Time structure, social contact, collective purpose (i.e., the sense of being useful to other people), status, and activity. In order to test the basic assumptions of this theory, a study based on meta-analytic methods was conducted. Results showed that employed people reported higher levels on all five latent functions, as well as on the manifest function, compared to unemployed people. They also report more latent functions than people who are out of the labor force (OLF). Moreover, OLF-people reported more manifest and latent functions than unemployed people. Specific analyses for three OLF-subgroups found retired people to be almost as deprived of the latent functions (but not the manifest function) as unemployed people, while students were more similar to employed people but still experienced some manifest and latent deprivation. For homemakers, the effect sizes pointed in the expected direction, but they were not significant. Thus, the proposition that employment is the best provider of the latent functions was generally endorsed, although homemakers need further scrutiny in future studies. All latent functions, as well as the manifest function, emerged as significant independent predictors of mental health, when the influence of the other manifest and latent functions was controlled. Together, the dimensions in the model explained 19% of variation in mental health.
RESUMEN
This 6-wave study addresses the psychological meaning of employment by examining the psychological need mechanisms predicting psychological distress during unemployment and reemployment. According to the deprivation model, unemployed people suffer, as unemployment deprives them of the latent functions of employment (i.e., time structure, social contact, status, activity, and collective purpose), which reflect psychological needs that are important for mental health. We tested whether the latent functions of employment, the manifest function of employment (i.e., one's financial situation), and the additional psychological need functions of competence and autonomy mediate the associations between unemployment and distress. At Time 1, N = 1,061 participants, who were either unemployed or lost their jobs during the course of the study, took part. At Time 6, after two and a half years, 45.4% of the respondents were employed. Multilevel mediation analyses showed that reemployment predicted gains in each of the original latent and manifest functions, which, in turn, predicted reductions of distress. Collective purpose was found to be the most important latent function. The findings endorse the validity and robustness of the deprivation model. Additionally, they demonstrate that the neglected psychological need function of competence (but not autonomy) also is a latent function of employment that should be incorporated into the deprivation model. Contrary to the predictions of the deprivation model, we found that poverty also plays an important role for the distress associated with unemployment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).