Life Tasks and Daily Life Experience
ABSTRACT This article explores the assumption that the goals on which an individual works structure the experience of daily life. One set of important goals are those consensual tasks that reflect the age‐graded expectations of a living environment (e.g., the task of being on one's own at colle...
Saved in:
Published in | Journal of personality Vol. 59; no. 3; pp. 425 - 451 |
---|---|
Main Authors | , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Oxford, UK
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
01.09.1991
Blackwell Duke University Press |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
Cover
Loading…
Summary: | ABSTRACT This article explores the assumption that the goals on which an individual works structure the experience of daily life. One set of important goals are those consensual tasks that reflect the age‐graded expectations of a living environment (e.g., the task of being on one's own at college). Whereas most members of a common age group share these consensual life tasks, individuals in a group differ in the relative importance they place on different tasks and in their appraisals of them. In the present study of 54 women living in a college sorority, the importance of a life task was associated with increased relevance of the task to daily life events, as revealed in experience sampling. The women were more emotionally involved in events that they saw as highly relevant to their life tasks than in less relevant events and, for each person, positive affect and emotional involvement in task‐relevant events were related to her initial life task appraisals. |
---|---|
Bibliography: | istex:AE277D4F57B314B25AFB86A8D8C8E3B6AEC74D1C ArticleID:JOPY425 ark:/67375/WNG-82TVZ7HS-9 We are pleased to acknowledge the technical assistance of Nancy Exelby and the comments on this article by Michele Acker, Robert Harlow, Susan Jenkins, Hazel Markus, the editors of this special issue, and two anonymous reviewers. This research was supported in part by Grant BNS 87‐18467 (to Nancy Cantor and Julie Norem) from the National Science Foundation, as well as a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship (to William Fleeson). ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23 ObjectType-Article-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 |
ISSN: | 0022-3506 1467-6494 |
DOI: | 10.1111/j.1467-6494.1991.tb00255.x |