hurnaI of Economic Psychology f <1986175-85 North-Holland

75

REDUCING UNEMPLOYMENTz LAY BELIEFS ABOUT HOW TO REDUCE CURRENT UNEMPLOYMENT *

Adrian FURNHAM University Cohege LandoR UK

Received September 28,1983; accepted January Xl,1985

Whereas most psychological work on unemployment has concerned how people react to being unemployed, considerably fess has concerned peoples’ explanations for and attitudes towards unemployment This study was concerued with lay peoplee’ perceived curer for current unemploy- ment. It was argued that these perceptions both influence and are influenced by current ecouomic policy options. A qu~-~~ti~ sample of nearly 450 people answered one open-ended and six closed questions. The results showed a wide variety of perceived ways of reducin8 ur~empioy- ment ranging from stimtdating the economy to provide more jobs to redistributing existing jobs. However, the ratings of the six specific questions revealed that there was little agreement between the subjects with regard to job sharing, redudng working hours and women giving up their jobs. Further, there were some interesting and predictable sex, age and employment history differences in the subjects’ response. The results are discussed in terms of the role of. lay beliefs in the economy, the literature on uuemployment and possibibties for future research.

The burgeoning ~sy~ho~o~~~ literature on u~ern~~o~ent has con- centrated on a number of specific issues. These have included the psychofogi&d impact of unempIoyment on self-esteem, well-being and morale (Gurney 1,980; Harrison 1976; Warr 1982); the relationship between unemployment and physical and mental health (Banks et al. 1980; Feather and Davenport 1981; Furnham 1983; Stafford et al.

* Requests for reprints should be directed either to A. Lewis at the School of Humanities and Social sciwces, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK, or A. Fumham at Dept. of Psychology, University College London, 26 Bedford Way, Loudon WC1 OAP, UK.

76 A. Lewis, A. Furnhnm / Reducing unemployment

1980); the psychological benefits of work which are denied to the unemployed (Jahoda 1979; Hayes and Nutman 1981; Marsden and Duff 1975); individual differences in the unemployed (Hartley 1980; Huczynski 1978); and how people attribute the causes of unemploy- ment (Furnham 1982a, b). There have also been some studies on people’s attitudes to those unemployed people on social security/welfare benefits (Alston and Dean 1972; Furnham 1983).

The above literature has pointed to the difficulties of being unem- ployed as well as the unsympathetic attitudes of many of those who are not unemployed (Kelvin 1980). However, most of the public debate about unemployment concerns not its consequences but its causes and cures. Indeed the cures for unemployment are nearly always inferred from its perceived causes. For example monetarist economists (e.g., Minford 1983) have argued that unemployment is caused by excessively high wage costs contributed to by the operation of the unemployment benefit system and the influence of the trade unions in the U.K. It is put forward that the lack of differentiation between income from unemployment benefits and low paid work produces a disincentive for work. Furthermore, it is argued that powerful trade unions increase wages to an unnaturally high level. There are of course a number of different policy options available if these causal explanations are accepted, but inherent in all of them is likely to be the need to curb the power of the trade unions and to allow the purchasing power of unemployment benefits to fall compared with low paid employment.

The present study is concerned with lay explanations rather than with cures for employment put forward by professional economists, politicians or political parties. The successful implementation of eco- nomic policy is in part dependent on public support; thus research which investigates lay peoples’ ideas of how unemployment could be cured can be usefully compared with current economic policy. It is recognised that the relationship between lay explanations and explana- tions put forward by economic policy makers is a two-way relationship, by which it is meant that the economic policies of governments shape lay explanations and are in turn moulded by them. This relationship is clearly a complicated one in which the media plays a part. Some informative research findings based on the content analysis of daily newspapers by Mosley (1983) has revealed how newspapers which support varying political parties, systematically place differing em- phases on unemployment, its cause and cure. Although work has been

done on the perceived causes of unemployment (Fur&am 1982a, b; Hesketh and Furnham 1983; Lewis et al. in press), very little appears to have been done on perceived cures for high levels of unemployment. The present study constitutes a pilot study of lay ideas for curing unemployment comparing results from open-ended interview tech- niques with a more traditional set question technique.

In all, there were 46 interviewers who were undergraduates at the University of Bath. They had all received training in research design and interview techniques. Each was required to interview 10 people in their home towns. They were asked to interview 5 males and 5 females, one from each of the following age groups 16-21; 22-34; 35-S; 51-65; and 66 and over.

Of the intended 460 interviews, 459 were successfully completed and I1 were later discarded because of incompleteness, leaving 448 in all. Of the respondents 227 were male and 221 females. It was established that 93 were between 16 and 21 years of age; 89 between 22 and 34; 89 between 35 and 50; 91 between 50 and 65; and 86 aged 65 and over. Over 75% (343) came from urban environments and the rest (105) from rural environments. Just over a third (167) claimed to have been unemployed for some period while the rest (281) claimed to never have been unempluyed. The subjects were asked to specify in detail their occupation and from this information the subjects were categorized into different classes. In all, 46 were in social class AB, 126 in Cl, and 68 in C2 and 80 in DE; 48 were housewives, 15 never employed, 52 students. and 13 unclassified. ’

’ The Register General’s classification was used in the differentiation of social classes. This classification is used by the Government Statistical Services: Social Class AB constitute those in higher and intermediate professional, administrative and clerical occupations; Social Class Cl comprise lower administrative and clerical occupations and those with comparable non-manual skills; C.2 are skilled manual workers; DE are semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers and those living on subsistence level.

18 A. Lewis, A. Furnham / Reducing unemployment

The interviewers were required to rate how much thought and attention the interviewees gave to the questions asked. Over 50% (245) of the respondents were seen as giving a lot of attention and over a third (162) a moderate amount. Less than 10% (41) were thought to have given little attention to the questions.

Interview schedule

Apart from personal and employment details subjects were asked seven questions. The first was a free response question: ‘How do you think unemployment in Britain could be reduced?’ The following 6 questions concerned statements about ways of reducing unemployment. These were chosen to be representative of the popular sort of answers being offered in the media, etc. Subjects were provided with a 5-point agree-disagree scale and were also given the option of replying ‘don’t know’. The interviewer also recorded the demographic information gathered from each subject on the answer sheet. Finally, in order to index the value of each interview, each interviewer was required to note the extent to which each respondent thought about and attended to each question asked.

Results

(I) Content analysis of ‘open-ended’ question

Two independent trained social science students performed a con- tent analysis on the numerous answers given to the first question. At first, 31 categories were developed to code these items. The correlation coefficient between the two coders was 0.98 which reflects a very high rate of agreement. A third coder was called in to attempt to resolve the differences between the other two coders in the few cases where this arose.

Table 1 shows the results of the first content analysis. Apart from those subjects who supplied no answer to the question (‘Don’t know’) the most common replies concerned: lowering the retirement age; increasing job-creation schemes; increasing public spending on social services (nationalized industries); changing governmental policies; in- creasing immigration restrictions and imposing repatriation; increasing local government spending and reducing trade union power.

Table 1 Number of responses to the question “Now do you think unemployment in Britain could be reduced,’ for each of the 32 categories. a (N = 448.)

1. Women should give up their jobs/take part-time work 8 2. Job sharing 9 3. Xncreased central and/or local Government spending 19 4, Immigration restriction/immigrants repatriated S. Work fewer hours per week/less overtime 6, Lower retire-ment age 7. Rednee trade union ~w~~cu~~~g~ c~o~r~~~ 8. Change the ~o~~rn~nt~~ve~a present po&+zs 9. Buy British/create more demand far goods

10. Encourage people to work harder 11. Increase job training and m-training schemes 12. Encourage the creation of small business (co-ops) 13. Industry must have a more competitive attitude 14. Lower inflation/interest rates 15. Conscription 16. Compulsory community service 17, increase job creation schemes t 8. Become a more/iess technological society 19. Give Government greaIer coatroi (re-elect &em) 20. Don’t know 21. Less expenditure on deface 22. Improve educationat st~dards~~~l-~~~~~ age 23. Increase pubiic spending on services (nationalized industries) 24. Stimulate/reflate the economy 25. Increase efficiency/productivity by better management 26. Change social attitudes 27. Rethink the work ethic 28. Demand tight to work 29. Build up war machine 30, Increased birth control 31. Lower unemployment benefit

a Unciassified, 3.

Because the number of categaries was rather unm~ageable a semnd analysis was done on the categories by getting a fur&x two independ- ent coders to group the 31 categories into between 8 and IO categories. This was done and the ‘best fit’ decided from the two groupings which were in any case very similar (correlation 0.89). Eight categories of response were decided upon which contained varying numbers of responses. In order af popularity suggested ways tu reduce unemploy- ment concerned: stimulating the economy by a vwiety of means; re-distributing available jobs; don’t know; creating jobs by specific

80 A. Lewis, A. Furnham / Reducing unemployment

Table 2

Reclassification of the content analysed data. a (N = 448.)

Stimulate the economy

Increase central and/or local government spending

Buy British/create more demand for goods

Encourage the creation of small business

Lower inflation/interest rates

Stimulate/reflate the economy

Increase public spending on services

Increase efficiency/productivity by better management

109

Re - distribute jobs

Women should give up jobs/take part-time work

Job sharing

Immigration restriction/repatriation

Work fewer hours/less overtime

Lower retirement age

Military

Introduce conscription

Have less expenditure on defense

Build up a war machine

Change attitudes

Encourage people to work harder

Industry must have a more competitive attitude

Become a more/less technological society

Change social attitudes

Rethink the work ethic

Demand the right to work

Job creation

Increase job creation schemes

Job training/retraining scheme

Improve educational standards/school leaving age

Gross political measures

Change government/reverse present policies

Reduce trade union power

Give government greater control

Draconian

Introduce compulsory community service

Increase compulsory birth control

Lower unemployment benefit

80

14

33

68

55

10

Don’t know

a Unclassified, 3.

16

schemes; gross political measures; change in military expenditure, and, finally, draconian measures such as compulsory community service/ birth control.

What is perhaps most interesting about these results is, firstly, the variety of suggestions provided, and, secondly, the similarity of these ideas to those expressed by the major political parties as well as those found in the popular press (see table 2).

Finally, in order to determine the relationship between certain demographic variables and the free responses, a series of correlations were performed. The correlation between males and females responses in each of the 31 categories was 0.73 ( p c 0.001); between younger ( - 35) and older ( f 35) subjects, 0.84 ( p -c 0.001); and between those who had been unemployed for a significant period of time and those who had not, 0.81 (p < 0.001). It seems, therefore, that there was considerable similarity between the subjects in the sort of solutions that they proposed for reducing unemployment.

(2) Analysis of ‘closed’ questions

The overall responses to the remaining 6 ‘closed’ questions are presented in table 3. The table reveals that over two thirds of the respondents believed that the present level of unemployment is un- acceptably high and that the government should spend more money in order to reduce unemployment. Further, just over a half thought immigration should be restricted, but did not think that women with husbands in full-time employment should give up their jobs. Two questions showed unclear responses and a fairly high ‘don’t know/un- certain’ score. Although most of the respondents believed that job sharing and working fewer hours would reduce unemployment, nearly a third had the opposite view.

In order to determine demographic differences in the responses to these questions a series of x2 were calculated. These revealed the following results:

(A) Sex: There were three significant differences. Not surprisingly, more women than men disagreed with the statement that women with husbands in full-time employment should give up their jobs (x2 = 22.49, p -C O.OOl), while more women than men agreed that job sharing is a good way to reduce unemployment (x2 = 23.61, p < 0.001). Also

82 A. &is, A. Fu~ham / Reducing unem~loyme~f

Table 3 Simplified table showing how all the subjects responded. (IV = 448.)

Items Percentages

Disagreeing Agreeing Don’t know/ uncertain

1. The present level of unemployment in Britain is unacceptably high

2. Women with husbands in full-time employment should give up their jobs in order to reduce unemplo~ent amongst men

3. Sharing existing jobs is a good way of reducing unemployment

4. The Government should spend more money in order to reduce unemployment

5. Immigration should be restricted further in order to reduce unemployment

6. People should work fewer hours in order to reduce unemployment

5.8 90.4 3.8

50.1 33.3 16.6

31.3 42.7 26.0

18.7 66.3 15.0

24.6 57.8 17.6

31.9 42.2 25.9

men seem to agree more than women that people should work fewer hours though a large number of women were uncertain about their attitude to the question (x2 = lS.Si, p < 0.01).

(B) Age: The age variable only revealed two significant differences. Younger people more than older people disagreed with the statement that women with husbands in full-time employment should give up their jobs (x2 = 84.48 p < 0.001) and that immigration should be restricted (x2 = 48.07 p < 0.01).

(C) Employment history: There was only one marginal difference between those who had been unemployed and those not. Those who had not experienced unemplo~ent tended to disagree with the idea of people working fewer hours to reduce unemployment than those who had experienced some unemployment (x2 = 13.26 p -c 0.05).

Some attempt was also made to look at urban-rural and social class differences, although the former was relatively easy to classify the results showed no significant differences on all 6 items. However, although some differences did emerge on the latter social class analysis insufficient confidence could be pleased in the classification of the occupational data.

A. Lewis, A. Fur&am / Reducing ~~ernF~o~~~i 83

Discussion

The study was set up as a pilot examination of lay remedies for high unemployment. A content analysis of free responses revealed a large number of proposed solutions ranging from commonly held political and economic solutions like reflation and job sharing to solutions allied to monetarist policies like lowering unemployment benefit and draconian measures such as the reintroduction of national service conscription. Despite the regularity with which the unemployment issue is discussed in the media about a sixth of the sample were unable or unwilling to provide a response. The five most common solutions were stimulation of the economy, job redistribution, job creation schemes and gross political measures. Overall, there seemed to be a fairly high degree of consensus between the sorts of solutions offered by people of different sexes, ages and employment histories.

The analysis of the specific closed questions revealed two interesting and important findings. The first was that there was considerable agreement on items referring to the fact that something needed to be done about unemplo~ent (items 1 and 4). However, as the other four items revealed, there was considerably less agreement especially about job sharing and working fewer hours. Specific demographic analysis of each question revealed some predictable differences. For instance, women were against sacrificing their jobs if their husbands were employed but did favour job sharing and working reduced hours. Similarly, younger people seemed more liberal than older people in that they did not believe in curbing immigration or women giving up jobs. Surprisingly, people who had experienced unemployment did not differ considerably from those who had not in their answers. They only differed on one question - those who had experienced unemployment agreed more with the idea of working fewer hours than those who had not. Thus the results of the study show that whereas people unambigu- ously agreed that unemployment was a bad thing they did differ in the appropriateness of certain measures.

An important methodological point raised by this pilot study con- cerned the relationship between the open and closed questions. Firstly, whereas only eight people (less than 3%) had spontaneously suggested that women give up their jobs, almost exactly a third of the sample agreed with this solution when given to them later as part of the rating task. Secondly, only 20 people (about 5%) suggested immigration

restriction/repatriation, yet over 50% of the sample agreed with this idea when given a direct choice. The same is true for the idea of job sharing where only 9 people offered this as a solution but over 40% agreed with this idea.

This result suggests that the agenda set by media representatives is likely to have a major influence on lay consciousness as Mosley (1983) has suggested, in that people welcome a label or framework on which to attach their views. The difference between the results uf the two analyses also has implications for political polling and the assessment of lay or ‘public’ opinion in future research.

Overall, the results suggest that the broadly monetarist policies of the Conservative government in Britain (similar to the policies of the Reagan administration in the U.S.A.) do not form a substantial part of lay economic consciousness. Indeed, there is considerable support for reflating the economy, increasing public expenditure and increasing demand for goods, which is more allied to a Keynesian approach to economic policy. Future research should be aimed at examining the links people make between economic variables. As Mosley (1983) notes the popular press in the 1970’s suggested that a reductian in inflation was a precondition for the reduction of unemployment. Do people make the connection between unemployment and inflation? Do they believe, as many macroeconomics have argued, that full employment can be bought at the cost of higher inflation?

This study was not without its drawbacks: the sampling could be improved and more questions could be asked. It is hoped that this pilot study will stimulate more research on lay economic beliefs.

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