Abstract
Socioeconomic status (SES) is a complex and multidimensional construct, encompassing both independent objective characteristics (e.g., income or education) and subjective people’s ratings of their placement in the socioeconomic spectrum. Within the growing literature on subjective SES belongingness and psychological well-being, subjective indices of SES have tended to center on the use of pictorial rank-related social ladders where individuals place themselves relative to others by simultaneously considering their income, educational level, and occupation. This approach, albeit consistent with the idea of these social ladders as summative or cognitive SES markers, might potentially constrain individuals’ conceptions of their SES. This research (N = 368; Mage = 39.67, SD = 13.40) is intended to expand prior investigations on SES and psychological well-being by revisiting the role of subjective SES. In particular, it (a) proposes an innovative adaptation of the traditional MacArthur Scale of subjective SES to income, education, and occupation, thus resulting in three separate social ladders; and (b) tests the empirical contribution of such three social ladders to psychological well-being. Overall, our findings showed that the novel education and occupation ladders (excluding the income ladder) are predictive of a significant part of the variance levels of psychological well-being that is not due to canonical objective metrics of SES (i.e., income, education, and occupation), or to the conventional MacArthur Scale of subjective SES. Although preliminary, these results underscore the need to further reconsider (subjective) SES-related conceptualization and measurement strategies to gather a more comprehensive understanding of the SES-psychological well-being link.
Highlights
During the last decade, the psychology of socioeconomic status (SES) or social class, which is broadly characterized as a social stratification system derived from access to various resources, has experienced a remarkable growth
We found the following distribution: primary school (9%), secondary education (5.7%), vocational training (14.4%), bachelor’s degree (9.5%), incomplete university degree (19.6%), university degree (27.4%), master’s degree (10.3%), and doctoral degree (4.1%)
Some differences in the distribution rate of the traditional MacArthur SSS scale compared to each novel ladder for income, education, and occupation, as well as between these new ladders, can be observed
Summary
The psychology of socioeconomic status (SES) or social class, which is broadly characterized as a social stratification system derived from access to various resources (economic, social, etc.; Moya and Fiske, 2017), has experienced a remarkable growth (see Manstead, 2018) Such increased interest has been fundamentally driven by the onset of the Great Recession, Socioeconomic Status and Psychological Well-Being which is connected to the broadening gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” (Pfeffer et al, 2013). Researchers have posited that the MacArthur SSS scale, insofar as it allows individuals to capture their own social standing in a personalized manner across the SES components, could represent a cognitive average of classical objective SES indices (i.e., a general marker of a person’s SES), thereby providing a more accurate estimation of SES (see Präg et al, 2016)
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