The COVID-19 pandemic altered social and economic life in the United States, displacing many people from their typical relationship to the institution of work. Our research uses affect control theory’s measurement structure to examine how cultural meanings for occupational identities shifted during the pandemic on the dimensions of evaluation (good-bad), potency (powerful-powerless), and activity (lively-inactive). Quinn et al. found that most occupations were seen as less good and powerful in the early stages of the pandemic than they were shortly before it began, with greater evaluation loss for nonessential occupations and greater potency loss for occupations classified as essential by state executive orders. We add a third wave to these data to reassess meanings after the pandemic eased and vaccines were developed. We use linear mixed modeling to estimate meaning changes across all three waves and to explore whether these changes differed for essential versus nonessential occupations. We find that evaluation and potency ratings of occupations rebounded over the longer term—a pattern that fits a control model of stable cultural meaning. Our results contribute to discussions in cultural sociology about beliefs and their stability.

中文翻译：

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COVID-19 大流行期间美国职业身份的意义变化：是暂时的还是持久的？

COVID-19 大流行改变了美国的社会和经济生活，使许多人失去了与工作机构的典型关系。我们的研究利用情感控制理论的测量结构来研究大流行期间职业身份的文化意义如何在评价（好-坏）、效力（强大-无能为力）和活动（活跃-不活跃）维度上发生转变。奎因等人。研究发现，大多数职业在大流行的早期阶段被认为不如大流行前不久那么好和强大，非必要职业的评估损失更大，而国家行政命令归类为必要职业的效力损失更大。我们在这些数据中添加了第三波数据，以便在疫情缓解和疫苗开发出来后重新评估其含义。我们使用线性混合模型来估计所有三个浪潮的意义变化，并探讨这些变化对于基本职业和非基本职业是否有所不同。我们发现，从长远来看，职业的评估和效能评级会出现反弹——这种模式符合稳定文化意义的控制模型。我们的结果有助于文化社会学关于信仰及其稳定性的讨论。