From “haves” to “have nots”: Developmental declines in subjective social status reflect children's growing consideration of what they do not have

Abstract

Subjective social status (SSS), or a person's view of their own socioeconomic status, has important consequences for social cognition and wellbeing, yet little is known about its development before adolescence. Previous research finds that SSS declines during childhood. We sought to replicate this finding, and also to extend it by investigating what aspects of children's reasoning drive this developmental decline. To do so, we assessed four- to ten-year-old children's SSS using a MacArthur Ladder Task (n = 377), which has been validated for use with children in this age range. We then assessed children's open-ended rationales for their SSS judgments. Results indicated that SSS declined over child development, replicating previous work. We also confirmed that this decline corresponded with improvements in SSS accuracy; young children overestimated their SSS relative to their objective SES, but were relatively accurate by age ten. Moreover, trends in children's rationales revealed that developmental shifts in both SSS and SSS accuracy corresponded with children's references to what they do not have, but not with references to what they do have, nor with references to any particular status cues (e.g., houses, lifestyle). Thus, children may increasingly consider what they lack to determine their status. Implications for self-evaluation and social cognition are discussed.