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Pessimistic cognitive biases mediate socioeconomic status and children's mental health problems

Yu Hao1, Gary W Evans2, Martha J Farah3

  • 1Center for Neuroscience and Society, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA. hhao@sas.upenn.edu.

Scientific Reports
|March 30, 2023
PubMed

Insights

Low socioeconomic status (SES) is linked to more childhood emotional disorders. This study finds that pessimistic thinking, influenced by adversity, contributes to this link in children.

Area of Science:

  • Child Psychology
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Social Determinants of Health

Background:

  • Low socioeconomic status (SES) is correlated with increased rates of emotional disorders in children.
  • Cognitive biases, such as pessimism, may contribute to the disparity in mental health outcomes between different SES groups.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the role of cognitive bias, specifically pessimistic attributional style, in mediating the relationship between SES and emotional disorders in children.
  • To examine whether persistent, pervasive adversity mediates the link between SES and pessimism.

Main Methods:

  • Assessed attributional style (pessimism) and childhood emotional problems in 341 9-year-olds across a wide SES range.
  • Measured SES using income-to-needs ratio, poverty history, and parental education.
  • Examined mediation pathways involving SES, adversity, pessimism, and emotional problems.

Main Results:

  • Lower SES children exhibited a higher prevalence of pessimistic attributional style (effect sizes 0.18-0.24).
  • Persistent, pervasive adversity predicted pessimism and mediated the SES-pessimism association.
  • Pessimistic attributional style mediated the relationship between SES and childhood emotional problems.

Conclusions:

  • Pessimism, exacerbated by adversity, plays a significant role in the link between low SES and childhood emotional disorders.
  • Interventions targeting cognitive biases may help mitigate mental health disparities associated with socioeconomic disadvantage.

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