SUNY Purchase, USA.
Boston University, USA.
Cognition. 2022 Jun;223:105027. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105027. Epub 2022 Feb 3.
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.
主观社会地位（SSS），即一个人对自己社会经济地位的看法，对社会认知和幸福感有重要影响，但人们对其在青春期前的发展知之甚少。先前的研究发现，SSS 在儿童期下降。我们试图复制这一发现，并通过研究哪些方面的儿童推理导致了这种发展下降来进一步扩展它。为此，我们使用麦克阿瑟阶梯任务（n=377）评估了四到十岁儿童的 SSS，该任务已在该年龄段的儿童中得到验证。然后，我们评估了儿童对 SSS 判断的开放式推理。结果表明，SSS 在儿童发展过程中下降，复制了先前的工作。我们还证实，这种下降与 SSS 准确性的提高相对应；年幼的孩子高估了他们的 SSS 相对于他们的客观 SES，但到了十岁就相对准确了。此外，儿童推理的趋势表明，SSS 和 SSS 准确性的发展变化与儿童对自己所没有的东西的参考相对应，而不是与自己所拥有的东西的参考相对应，也与任何特定的地位线索（例如，房子、生活方式）的参考相对应。因此，儿童可能越来越多地考虑自己的不足来确定自己的地位。讨论了对自我评价和社会认知的影响。
