Early life stress, subjective social status, and health during late adolescence

Abstract

Objective: Both lower subjective social status (SSS)—or viewing oneself as having lower status relative to others—and greater early life stress consistently relate to poorer health in adolescence. Early life stress can also negatively influence one’s social relationships and may thereby shape social status. The present studies investigated how early life stress relates to the development of SSS and how SSS relates to health across the transition to college.

Design: In Study 1, 91 older adolescents (M_age = 18.37) reported early life stress, society SSS, and school SSS, and they reported their society SSS and school SSS again 2 years later. In Study 2, 94 first-year college students (M_age = 18.20) reported early life stress and society SSS at study entry and reported their dorm SSS, university SSS, and mental health monthly throughout the year.

Results: Greater early life stress was related to lower society SSS, but not school SSS, in both studies. In Study 2, dorm and university SSS and early life stress were uniquely related to mental health, although associations weakened over time.

Conclusion: Early life stress may predispose people to have low society SSS, and both low school SSS and high early life stress may increase risk for poorer health during transition periods.

Keywords:

• Subjective social status
• social status
• early life stress
• mental health
• college transition

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

Study 1 was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01-HD062547), UCLA California Center for Population Research funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R24-HD041022), UCLA Older Americans Independence Center funded by the National Institute on Aging (P30-AG017265 and P30-AG028748), UCLA Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, University of California Institute for Mexico and the US, American Psychological Association, and Division 38 of the American Psychological Association. Study 2 was supported by a UCLA Academic Senate Grant awarded to Theodore Robles. George Slavich was funded by a Society in Science—Branco Weiss Fellowship, NARSAD Young Investigator Grant #23958 from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, and National Institutes of Health grant K08 MH103443.