A Brighter Future: The Effect of Social Class on Responses to Future Debt

Authors

  • Harrison J. Schmitt
    Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
  • Lucas A. Keefer
    Department of Psychology, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS, USA
  • Daniel Sullivan
    Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
  • Sheridan Stewart
    Department of Sociology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
  • Isaac F. Young
    Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

Abstract

The present study serves as an exploratory investigation of the role of social class in responses to the threat of future debt. Previous work has shown that individuals of high and low subjective social class differ in the ways that they respond to a broad range of threats and uncertainties about the future. Across three studies, we found that lower social class individuals expect more future debt and suffer greater attendant stress than higher class individuals (Study 1). We found that experimental manipulations of debt salience increased stress for lower class and not for higher class individuals (Studies 2-3). Likewise, we found that higher class individuals experienced higher affect balance and perceptions of personal control when the possibility of future debt was made salient, specifically as a function of decreased fatalism about future debt (Study 3). These three studies reveal yet another situation in which individuals of lower and higher social class respond differently to threat, and serve as an important step toward understanding the psychological ramifications of rising debt in the United States.