Rising and falling on the social ladder: The bidimensional social mobility beliefs scale
Metadatos
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Public Library of Science (PLOS)
Date
2023-12-05Referencia bibliográfica
Matamoros-Lima J, Willis GB, MoyaM (2023) Rising and falling on the social ladder: The bidimensional social mobility beliefs scale. PLoS ONE 18(12): e0294676. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0294676
Patrocinador
Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under Grant PID2019-105643GB-I00 funded by MCIN/ AEI/10.13039/501100011033; Grant PID2020- 114464RB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/ 501100011033; Regional Government of Andalusia under Grant A-SEJ-72-UGR20, as appropriate, by “ERDF A way of making Europe”, and Grant P20_00199Résumé
Recent works in the field of Social Psychology have shown the importance of studying subjective
social mobility from different perspectives. In the literature about subjective societal
mobility, most of the research is focused on the mobility-immobility framing. However, several
authors suggested studying social mobility beliefs effects differentiating according to
mobility’s trajectory, that is, upward (i.e., improving status over time) and downward (i.e.,
getting worse in status over time). The present research was motivated by the lack of measures
that discriminate between beliefs in upward and downward societal mobility. Across
two studies using different samples of the Spanish adult population, we examined both
dimensions of social mobility beliefs and tested their predictive validity on other related constructs.
In Study 1 (N = 164), with an EFA, we corroborated the independence between the
two types of mobility. The internal structure was confirmed by a CFA in Study 2 (N = 400).
Furthermore, it was shown that upward and downward mobility beliefs are differently related
to other related constructs. The results from Studies 1–2 showed good convergent validity.
In all correlations with the different constructs (attitudes towards inequality, meritocratic
beliefs, justification of the economic system, and status anxiety) we found opposite direction
effects for both types of societal mobility (upward and downward). The development of this
new instrument can help to deepen our understanding of the psychosocial consequences of
subjective social mobility, as well as to differentiate two processes that may have different
consequences.