Marie Jahoda
Austrian-British social psychologist
Austrian-born social psychologist who, with Paul Lazarsfeld and Hans Zeisel, studied the effects of mass unemployment in Marienthal and later proposed components of positive mental health.
Why this person matters
The Marienthal study examined an unemployed community. Jahoda later described five categories of experience that work provides, such as time structure and social contact. She was arrested in 1936 for underground political activity and left Austria in 1937.
Main contributions
Marienthal study
With Paul Lazarsfeld and Hans Zeisel she studied an unemployed community and tested a Marxist expectation that economic crisis would produce revolutionary class consciousness. Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal appeared in 1932 or 1933 (sources differ), with an English edition in 1971.
Five categories of experience
She described time structure, social contact, collective effort or purpose, social identity or status, and regular activity as vital to well-being.
Positive mental health
Her 1958 book Current Concepts of Positive Mental Health proposed six components: attitudes toward oneself, growth and self-actualisation, integration, autonomy, perception of reality and environmental mastery.
Context and limits
Jahoda was arrested in November 1936 for alleged ties to the socialist underground, convicted in May 1937 and sentenced to three months, then released on condition that she leave Austria immediately. The sources read describe her work without critique, so none is stated here. They differ on the Marienthal publication year (1932 or 1933) and on her end date at Sussex (1972 or 1973).
In your introductory course
Stress, health and wellbeing.She appears in health and applied chapters for research on unemployment and well-being, and in methods chapters for mixed-method field studies.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 14.1. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1933
She received her PhD at the University of Vienna, studying with Karl and Charlotte Bühler.
- 1937
She was released from prison on condition that she leave Austria, and moved to England.
- 1958
She published Current Concepts of Positive Mental Health.
- 1965
She joined the University of Sussex as professor of social psychology.
Sources
- Psychology's Feminist Voices, Marie JahodaArchive or museum. Institutional biography inspected.
- Wikipedia, Marie JahodaReference work. Reference article inspected.