Kill or cure? Different types of social class identification amplify and buffer the relation between social class and mental health

ABSTRACT

The present research investigated different types of social class identification as moderators of the negative relation between social class and mental health problems. Psychology undergraduates (N = 355) completed an online survey that included measures of social class, mental health and well-being, and three aspects of social class identification: importance of identity, salience of identity, and perceived self-class similarity. Perceived self-class similarity buffered the negative association between social class and depressive symptoms. However, importance and salience of social class identity amplified the associations between social class and anxiety and life satisfaction. These findings contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of the way in which social identification may operate as a social cure.

KEYWORDS:

• Mental health
• satisfaction with life
• social class
• social cure
• social identification

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Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/bqyhd/

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/bqyhd/

Acknowledgment

This research project was completed as part of the course requirements for Rebecca Stuart’s Master of Clinical Psychology degree at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Mark Rubin conducted the final set of analyses and wrote the final version of the manuscript based in part on Rebecca Stuart’s Masters thesis.

Notes

1. Importance and salience can be conceived as part of the broader construct of centrality (Cameron, 2004; Milanov et al., 2014). However, they refer to separate constructs (e.g., Quinn & Chaudoir, 2009), and in the present study an exploratory factor analysis showed that they loaded on distinct factors. There are also theoretical reasons for treating these constructs separately. A social identity may be important to one’s self-concept but rarely considered. For example, a person may not think about their nationality on a daily basis, and yet it may constitute an important part of their self-concept. Conversely, a social identity may be unimportant to one’s self-concept but considered quite frequently. For example, a student might recall which seminar group they belong to on a daily basis even though this group has very little relevance to their overall self-concept. For these reasons, we discuss importance and salience as separate constructs in this article.

2. As shown in Table 2, our measures of importance and salience had a relative high correlation (r = .54). Taking this relationship into account, we included these two variables as simultaneous moderator variables (Hayes, 2013, Model 2) in order to isolate their unique moderating effects independent of one another. The pattern of results was very similar to that observed when importance and salience were treated as separate moderators: Neither variable moderated the effect of social class on depression or stress (ps ≥ .108), and importance moderated the effect of social class on anxiety (p < .001) but salience did not (p = .082). The only difference from the previous pattern of results was that although salience continued to moderate the effect of social class on satisfaction with life, b = 0.19, SE = 0.08, t(349) = 2.42, p = .016, 95% CI (0.04, 0.35), importance did not, b = 0.08, SE = 0.09, t(349) = 0.98, p = .329, 95% CI (−0.08, 0.25).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mark Rubin

Mark Rubin is an Associate Professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He is best known for his work on social identity, stereotyping, prejudice, and social exclusion. For more about his research, please visit: http://bit.ly/1aMjqO9. Rebecca Stuart is a Registered Psychologist working in Newcastle, Australia. She works with young people and their families, as well as adults and couples.