What Is Life Style?

Life style is a term used to describe a person’s way of living. It reflects a person’s personality, attitude, and values, and it can have an influence on mental and physical health.

Lifestyle is a type of behaviour, and it is formed in a social and political context. For example, it may be associated with religion, and it could include views on politics, intimacy, and health.

The earliest usage of the word “lifestyle” is by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler. In his book The Science of Living, he defined lifestyle as an individual’s basic character established early in life.

Max Weber also wrote about the lifestyle. He regarded it as a dialectic of recognition of prestige. His writings were not translated to English until after Adler’s.

Other authors have examined the interaction of active and passive dimensions, meaningful actions, routine, and structuration. Authors such as Anthony Giddens, Richard Jenkins, and Joffre Dumazedier have all conducted studies on these topics.

Thorstein Veblen has provided an alternative perspective. He asserts that people adopt certain’schemes of life’ in order to differentiate themselves from inferior social strata.

Marketing methods have coopted some of the insights from sociology and psychology. They seek to create products that customers want. Some marketers rely on the psychological knowledge of Adler and others on quantitative insights from Weber.

A study involving 363 Mexican adolescents was conducted to explore how the life-style of Adventist and non-Adventist adolescents relates to their use of health services and health outcomes. Researchers used a questionnaire to gather information on their daily activities and sleep patterns. These questions included information on whether they watch TV each day and how many hours of sleep they get each night.