Lifestyle (sociology)

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Lifestyle is the typical way of life of an individual, group, or culture.[1] The term was originally used by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler (1870-1937).[2] The term was introduced in the 1950s as a derivative of that of style in modernist art.[3][clarification needed] The term refers to a combination of determining intangible or tangible factors. Tangible factors relate specifically to demographic variables, i.e. an individuals demographic profile, whereas intangible factors concern the psychological aspects of an individual such as personal values, preferences, and outlooks.


Individual identity[edit]


The lines between personal identity and the everyday doings that signal a particular lifestyle become blurred in modern society.[5] For example, "green lifestyle" 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[who?] 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.[6]

Lifestyle may include views on politics, religion, health, intimacy, and more. All of these aspects play a role in shaping someone's lifestyle. [7] In the magazine and television industries, "lifestyle" is used to describe a category of publications or programs.


An individual's health depends a lot on their lifestyle. Maintaining physical and mental health are crucial to an individual's longevity. The more time spent on hygiene, physical fitness, and diet regulation, the healthier lifestyle they have. Those who chose to participate in any kind of physical activity on a weekly basis are generally healthier than those who don't. Mental illness may occur through various variables. For example, depression may promote mental illness through stress and anxiety. Reasons for being depressed can be due to a number of things including job loss, recently widowed, divorce, etc. Depression may lead to or increase the frequency of poor habits not promoting physical health. Poor habits may eventually lead to a poor or even dangerous lifestyle.

More interestingly, 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.[8] For instance, high income parents are more likely to eat organic food, 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.[9] Parents are the first teacher for every child. Everything that parents do will be very like to be transferred to their children through the learning process.


Technology and diversity have greatly changed the lives of people in society. Technology has positive and negative effects on our daily lives. However, the positivity and negativity of technology depends on how much we use it and how much we are exposed to it. In other words, our lifestyle controls our use of technology, while technology influences our lifestyles. To begin, technology has changed the fields of agriculture, manufacturing, warfare, transportation, information, medicine, communication, among others. Technology has also made it easier for other factors to affect our lifestyles, such as the media. All in all, technology has made our lives much easier, therefore we no longer are required to live vigorous lifestyles that, in the past, contributed to the decline in our health. On the other hand, technology has complicated many lives and has many negative effects. Technology has the power to deliver media to us that can change our values and views on the world, which in return will change our lifestyles. Also, technology has negative effects on the environment such as pollution. Because of technology such as computers and television, people have a much more sedentary lifestyle, which leads to health complications and issues.


Life style research can contribute to the question of the relevance of the class concept.[10]

Media culture[edit]

According to Adorno, the media culture[11] of advanced capitalism typically creates new 'life-styles' to drive the consumption of new commodities.[12] The term 'lifestyle' was introduced in the 1950s as a derivative of that of style in art.[3]

See also[edit]



  1. ^ “lifestyle”
  2. ^ Online Etymology Dictionary
  3. ^ a b Bernstein (1991) p.23 quotation:

    ‘Life-styles’, the culture industry’s recycling of style in art, represent the transformation of an aesthetic category, which once possessed a moment of negativity [shocking, emancipatory], into a quality of commodity consumption.

  4. ^ Spaargaren, G., and B. VanVliet. 2000. ‘Lifestyle, Consumption and the Environment: The Ecological Modernisation of Domestic Consumption.’ Environmental Politics. 9(1): 50-75.
  5. ^ Giddens, A. 1991. Modernity and self-identity: self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  6. ^ Ropke, I. 1999. ‘The Dynamics of Willingness to Consume. Ecological Economics. 28: 399-420.
  7. ^ Giuffrâe, K., & DiGeronimo, T. (1999). Care and Feeding of Your Brain : How Diet and Environment Affect What You Think and Feel. Career Press.
  8. ^ Ponthiere G. (2011). Mortality, Family and Lifestyles. Journal of Family and Economic Issues. June 2011. 32 (2), pg. 175-190
  9. ^ Case, A., Lubotsky D. & Paxson C. (2002). Economic Status and Health in Childhood: The Origins of the Gradient. The American Economic Review , Vol. 92, No. 5. Dec., 2002. pp. 1308-1334
  10. ^ Bögenhold, Dieter. "Social Inequality and the Sociology of Life Style: Material and Cultural Aspects of Social Stratification". American Journal of Economics and Sociology. Retrieved 26 April 2012. 
  11. ^ Adorno [1963] p.98

    In our drafts we spoke of ‘mass culture’. We replaced that expression with ‘culture industry’ in order to exclude from the outset the interpretation agreeable to its advocates: that it is a matter of something like a culture that arises spontaneously from the masses themselves, the contemporary form of popular art.

  12. ^ Bernstein (1991) p.23 quotation:

    Diversity is more effectively present in mass media than previously, but this is not an obvious or unequivocal gain. By the late 1950s the homogenization of consciousness had become counterproductive for

    the purposes of capital expansion; new needs for new commodities had to be created, and this required the reintroduction of the minimal negativity that had been previously eliminated. The cult of the new that had been the prerogative of art throughout the modernist epoch into the period of post-war unification and stabilization has returned to capital expansion from which it originally sprang. But this negativity is neither shocking nor emancipatory since it does not presage a transformation of the fundamental structures of everyday life. On the contrary, through the culture industry capital has co-opted the dynamics of negation both diachronically in its restless production of new and ‘different’ commodities and synchronically in its promotion of alternative ‘life-styles’.


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