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Identity, Networks, and Mental Health: The Relationship between Structures and Meaning on Distress and Subjective Wellbeing

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2019, PHD, Kent State University, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Sociology and Criminology.
Mental health is a vast area of research whose reach spans across disciplines. From a sociological perspective, mental health scholars call attention to two aspects of the social world that are predictive of distress and wellbeing: the structure of social relationships in which individuals find themselves as well as the content or meanings associated with who individuals are within such relationships. In this dissertation, I incorporate both approaches through an identity theory perspective. This perspective is appropriate because individuals are embedded within complex networks, or webs of ties, based on identities they hold; similarly, individuals evaluate themselves in social situations according to the content of the identities they enact. Both approaches to identity have been separately linked to mental health outcomes, but examination of both processes simultaneously is rare. Thus, this is the gap I seek to address within the identity, network, and mental health literatures. This dissertation is organized around three key inquiries that each incorporate an element of network structure as well as content-related processes on mental health. The first examines how multiplex ties (e.g., when one befriends their co-workers) impact authenticity through two identity related concepts (i.e., self-complexity, or the degree to which expectations across two identities do/not overlap, and self-view mis/alignment, or when meanings across two identities do/not align). The second further contextualizes the first inquiry by examining how self-complexity interacts with self-view misalignment to differentially impact wellbeing across non-/multiplex co-worker/friend network structures. The third examines how density (i.e., the proportion of connections that exist among members in network) interacts with identity non-verification (i.e., when an individual thinks that others view them differently than they view their self) to impact distress. I test each inquiry using recent and national egocentric network survey data from 491 U.S. adults. Results suggest that: 1) self-complexity mediates the relationship between co-worker/friend multiplexity and authenticity such that multiplexity indirectly (but positively) impacts authenticity, 2) self-complexity buffers the negative impact on wellbeing from self-view misalignment but only when individuals possess multiplex relationships, and 3) high levels of density in friendship and co-worker networks buffer the increase in distress from non-verification in the identities. These results are important because they contextualize identity-relevant stressors and resources as key factors for mental health; they also attest to the fruitful nature of taking a dual-faceted structure- and content-based approach to mental health through identities.
Richard T. Serpe, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Will Kalkhoff, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Kristen Marcussen, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Freda B. Lynn, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
John Updegraff, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Janis Crowther, Ph.D. (Other)
108 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Markowski, K. L. (2019). Identity, Networks, and Mental Health: The Relationship between Structures and Meaning on Distress and Subjective Wellbeing [Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1555942428443257

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Markowski, Kelly. Identity, Networks, and Mental Health: The Relationship between Structures and Meaning on Distress and Subjective Wellbeing. 2019. Kent State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1555942428443257.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Markowski, Kelly. "Identity, Networks, and Mental Health: The Relationship between Structures and Meaning on Distress and Subjective Wellbeing." Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1555942428443257

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)