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Lifestyle is the interests, opinions, behaviours, and behavioural orientations of an individual, group, or culture. The term was introduced by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler in his 1929 book, ''The Case of Miss R.'', with the meaning of "a person's basic character as established early in childhood". The broader sense of lifestyle as a "way or style of living" has been documented since 1961. Lifestyle is a combination of determining intangible or tangible factors. Tangible factors relate specifically to demographic variables, i.e. an individual's demographic profile, whereas intangible factors concern the psychological aspects of an individual such as personal values, preferences, and outlooks. A rural environment has different lifestyles compared to an urban
metropolis A metropolis () is a large city or conurbation which is a significant economic, political, and cultural center for a country or region, and an important hub for regional or international connections, commerce, and communications. A big c ...
. Location is important even within an urban scope. The nature of the neighborhood in which a person resides affects the set of lifestyles available to that person due to differences between various neighborhoods' degrees of affluence and proximity to natural and cultural environments. For example, in areas near the sea, a
surf culture Surf culture includes the people, language, fashion, and lifestyle surrounding the sport of surfing. The history of surfing began with the ancient Polynesians. That initial culture directly influenced modern surfing, which began to flourish ...
or lifestyle can often be present.


Individual identity

A lifestyle typically reflects an individual's attitudes, way of life, values, or world view. Therefore, a lifestyle is a means of forging a sense of self and to create cultural symbols that resonate with personal identity. Not all aspects of a lifestyle are voluntary. Surrounding social and technical systems can constrain the lifestyle choices available to the individual and the symbols they are able to project to others and themself. The lines between personal identity and the everyday doings that signal a particular lifestyle become blurred in modern society. For example, "
green lifestyle Sustainable living describes a lifestyle that attempts to reduce the use of Earth's natural resources by an individual or society. It is referred to as zero wastage living" or "net zero living". Its practitioners often attempt to reduce their ...
" means holding beliefs and engaging in activities that consume fewer resources and produce less harmful waste (i.e. a smaller ecological footprint), and deriving a sense of self from holding these beliefs and engaging in these activities. Some commentators argue that, in modernity, the cornerstone of lifestyle construction is consumption behavior, which offers the possibility to create and further individualize the self with different products or services that signal different ways of life. Lifestyle may include views on politics, religion, health, intimacy, and more. All of these aspects play a role in shaping someone's lifestyle. In the magazine and television industries, "lifestyle" is used to describe a category of publications or programs.


History of lifestyles studies

Three main phases can be identified in the history of lifestyles studies:


Lifestyles and social position

Earlier studies on lifestyles focus on the analysis of social structure and of the individuals' relative positions inside it. Thorstein Veblen, with his 'emulation' concept, opens this perspective by asserting that people adopt specific 'schemes of life', and in particular specific patterns of 'conspicuous consumption', depending on a desire for distinction from social strata they identify as inferior and a desire for emulation of the ones identified as superior. Max Weber intends lifestyles as distinctive elements of status groups strictly connected with a dialectic of recognition of prestige: the lifestyle is the most visible manifestation of social differentiation, even within the same social class, and in particular it shows the prestige which the individuals believe they enjoy or to which they aspire. Georg Simmel carries out formal analysis of lifestyles, at the heart of which can be found processes of individualisation, identification, differentiation, and recognition, understood both as generating processes of, and effects generated by, lifestyles, operating "vertically" as well as "horizontally". Finally, Pierre Bourdieu renews this approach within a more complex model in which lifestyles, made up mainly of social practices and closely tied to individual tastes, represent the basic point of intersection between the structure of the field and processes connected with the habitus.


Lifestyles as styles of thought

The approach interpreting lifestyles as principally styles of thought has its roots in the soil of psychological analysis. Initially, starting with Alfred Adler, a lifestyle was understood as a style of personality, in the sense that the framework of guiding values and principles which individuals develop in the first years of life end up defining a system of judgement which informs their actions throughout their lives. Later, particularly in
Milton Rokeach Milton Rokeach (born in Hrubieszów as Mendel Rokicz, December 27, 1918 – October 25, 1988) was a Polish-American social psychologist. He taught at Michigan State University, the University of Western Ontario, Washington State University, and the ...
's work,
Arnold Mitchell Arnold Mitchell (February 18, 1918 – July 17, 1985) was a social scientist and consumer futurist who worked for SRI International and created a noted psychographic methodology, Values, Attitudes and Lifestyles (VALS). Early life and educa ...
's VALS research and
Lynn R. Kahle Lynn R Kahle (born 1950) is an American consumer psychologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Oregon's Lundquist College of Business. From 2018 to 2020 he taught at the Lubin School of Business, Pace University in New York as a vis ...
's LOV research, lifestyles' analysis developed as profiles of values, reaching the hypothesis that it is possible to identify various models of scales of values organized hierarchically, to which different population sectors correspond. Then with Daniel Yankelovich and William Wells we move on to the so-called AIO approach in which attitudes, interests and opinions are considered as fundamental lifestyles' components, being analysed from both synchronic and diachronic points of view and interpreted on the basis of socio-cultural trends in a given social context (as, for instance, in
Bernard Cathelat Bernard (''Bernhard'') is a French and West Germanic masculine given name. It is also a surname. The name is attested from at least the 9th century. West Germanic ''Bernhard'' is composed from the two elements ''bern'' "bear" and ''hard'' "brav ...
's work). Finally, a further development leads to the so-called profiles-and-trends approach, at the core of which is an analysis of the relations between mental and behavioural variables, bearing in mind that socio-cultural trends influence both the diffusion of various lifestyles within a population and the emerging of different modalities of interaction between thought and action.


Lifestyles as styles of action

Analysis of lifestyles as action profiles is characterized by the fact that it no longer considers the action level as a simple derivative of lifestyles, or at least as their collateral component, but rather as a constitutive element. In the beginning, this perspective focussed mainly on consumer behaviour, seeing products acquired as objects expressing on the material plane individuals’ self-image and how they view their position in society. Subsequently, the perspective broadened to focus more generally on the level of daily life, concentrating – as in authors such as Joffre Dumazedier and Anthony Giddens – on the use of time, especially loisirs, and trying to study the interaction between the active dimension of choice and the dimension of routine and structuration which characterize that level of action. Finally, some authors, for instance
Richard Jenkins Richard Dale Jenkins (born May 4, 1947) is an American actor who is well known for his portrayal of deceased patriarch Nathaniel Fisher on the HBO funeral drama series '' Six Feet Under'' (2001–2005). He began his career in theater at the Tri ...
and A. J. Veal, suggested an approach to lifestyles in which it is not everyday actions which make up the plane of analysis but those which the actors who adopt them consider particularly meaningful and distinctive.


Health

A healthy or unhealthy lifestyle will most likely be transmitted across generations. According to the study done by Case et al. (2002), when a 0-3-year-old child has a mother who practices a healthy lifestyle, this child will be 27% more likely to become healthy and adopt the same lifestyle. For instance, high income parents are more likely to eat more fruit and vegetables, have time to exercise, and provide the best living condition to their children. On the other hand, low-income parents are more likely to participate in unhealthy activities such as smoking to help them release poverty-related stress and depression. Parents are the first teacher for every child. Everything that parents do will be very likely transferred to their children through the learning process. Adults may be drawn together by mutual interest that results in a lifestyle. For example, William Dufty described how pursuing a sugar-free diet led to such associations: :


Class

Lifestyle research can contribute to the question of the relevance of the class concept.


Media culture

The term lifestyle was introduced in the 1950s as a derivative of that of style in art:Bernstein (1991
p.23
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/ref> : The media culture of advanced capitalism typically creates new "life-styles" to drive the consumption of new commodities:


See also

* Hypermobility (travel), Aeromobility * Alternative lifestyle * Intentional living * Life stance * Lifestyle brand *
Lifestyle guru Lifestyle gurus (also called lifestyle coaches, lifestyle trainers, lifestyle consultants) trained people to understand how they can make themselves happier through changes in their lifestyle. Lifestyle gurus are a profession popularised by severa ...
* Otium * Personal life * Sustainable living * Simple living * Style of life * Tao *
Anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...


References


Notes


Bibliography

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an Sebastian, 1990 An, AN, aN, or an may refer to: Businesses and organizations * Airlinair (IATA airline code AN) * Alleanza Nazionale, a former political party in Italy * AnimeNEXT, an annual anime convention located in New Jersey * Anime North, a Canadian an ...
*Kahle L., Attitude and social adaption. A person-situation interaction approach, Pergamon, Oxford, 1984. *Kahle L., Social values and social change. Adaptation to life in America, Praeger, Santa Barbara, 1983. *Leone S., Stili di vita. Un approccio multidimensionale, Aracne, Roma, 2005. *Mitchell A., Consumer values. A tipology, Values and lifestyles program, SRI International, Stanford, 1978. *Mitchell A., Life ways and life styles, Business intelligence program, SRI International, Stanford, 1973. *Mitchell A., The nine American lifestyles. Who we are and where we’re going, Macmillan, New York, 1983. *Mitchell A., Ways of life, Values and lifestyles program, SRI International, Stanford, 1982. *Negre Rigol P., El ocio y las edades. Estilo de vida y oferta lúdica, Hacer, Barcelona, 1993. *Parenti F., Pagani P. L., Lo stile di vita. Come imparare a conoscere sé stessi e gli altri, De Agostini, Novara, 1987. *Patterson M. Consumption and Everyday Life, 2006 *Ragone G., Consumi e stili di vita in Italia, Guida, Napoli, 1985. *Ramos Soler I., El estilo de vida de los mayores y la publicidad, La Caixa, Barcelona,
007 The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...
*Rokeach M., Beliefs, attitudes and values, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1968. *Rokeach M., The nature of human values, Free Press, New York, 1973. *Shields R., Lifestyle shopping. The subject of consumption, Routledge, Londra, 1992. *Shulman B. H., Mosak H. H., Manual for life style assessment, Accelerated Development, Muncie, 1988 (trad. it. Manuale per l’analisi dello stile di vita, Franco Angeli, Milano, 2008). *Sobel M. E., Lifestyle and social structure. Concepts, definitions and analyses, Academic Press, New York, 1981. *Soldevilla Pérez C., Estilo de vida. Hacia una teoría psicosocial de la acción, Entimema, Madrid, 1998. *Valette-Florence P., Les styles de vie. Bilan critique et perspectives. Du mythe à la réalité, Nathan, Parigi, 1994. *Valette-Florence P., Les styles de vie. Fondements, méthodes et applications, Economica, Parigi, 1989. *Valette-Florence P., Jolibert A., Life-styles and consumption patterns, Publications de recherche du CERAG, École supériore des affaires de Grenoble, 1988. *Veal A. J., The concept of lifestyle. A review, in “Leisure studies”, 1993, vol. 12, n. 4, pp. 233–252. *Vergati S., Stili di vita e gruppi sociali, Euroma, Roma, 1996. *Walters G. D., Beyond behavior. Construction of an overarching psychological theory of lifestyles, Praeger, Westport, 2000. *Wells W. (a cura di), Life-style and psycographics, American marketing association, Chicago, 1974. *Yankelovich D., New criteria for market segmentation, in “Harvard Business Review”, 1964, vol. 42, n. 2, pp. 83–90. *Yankelovich D., Meer D., Rediscovering market segmentation, in “Harvard Business Review”, 2006, febbraio, pp. 1–10.


External links


George Vrousgos, N.D. - Southern Cross University
{{Authority control 1920s neologisms Personal life Philosophy of life Culture Sociological terminology Subcultures