Is being elite the same as living an easy life? Two distinct ways of experiencing subjective socioeconomic status

Socioeconomic status (SES) predicts a large number of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors; here, we build on these findings to try to paint a comprehensive picture of what people who occupy different SES ranks are like. Existing findings attribute a mixed set of psychological patterns to people who consider themselves near the top of the socioeconomic hierarchy; these individuals are variously portrayed as selfish yet generous, entitled yet happy, and narcissistic yet tolerant. Building on previous efforts to characterize distinct dimensions of SES, we wondered whether there might be distinct but overlapping ways of experiencing one's status in the socioeconomic hierarchy, each linked to a different psychological profile, and each potentially corresponding to a different theoretical approach to the study of SES. We employed a bottom-up, participant-driven approach (total N = 3,338) to identify the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that factor into people's subjective SES. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses showed that these experiences are best represented by two distinct dimensions-a sense that one belongs to a historical cultural elite (corresponding to SES as early life cultural context) and a sense that one's life is easy (corresponding, though less conclusively, to SES as current rank). We developed scales to measure each dimension and, using these scales, found that the two dimensions help categorize the known correlates of SES into two separate but internally coherent sets of psychological patterns-one magnanimous and one self-focused. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).