Subjective social status is defined as the perceived social standing of a person in a social hierarchy and may change across time. Although the link between subjective social status and well-being is widely recognized, the dynamic nature of changes in subjective social status across the life span is not well understood. We predicted that gains and losses in subjective social status will be associated with changes in positive and negative affect over time. This link should be particularly evident in middle adulthood because the desire for social status might be more important in midlife than in later adulthood. Specifically, we argue that social status gains in midlife may facilitate generativity, a developmental task in this period of the life span that arguably contributes not only to the well-being of others but also oneself. Our analyses of a 10-year longitudinal study (N = 2,306, 40-84 years at T1) using latent change score models suggested that individuals, who lose (or gain) social status (i.e., change their perceived position on the social status ladder), experience an increase (decrease) in negative affect and a decrease (increase) in positive affect. As predicted, these associations were stronger, and in fact only significant, for middle-aged (40-64 years), but not older (65-84 years) adults. Finally, in middle-aged adults, the effects of status changes on changes in affective well-being were mediated by generativity. This pattern of findings suggests that changes in subjective social status are more self-relevant in midlife and may become less relevant to affective well-being as people age. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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主观社会地位的纵向变化与中年（而不是成年后）的正面和负面影响的变化有关。

主观社会地位被定义为一个人在社会等级中所感知的社会地位，并且可能随着时间而改变。尽管人们广泛认识到主观社会地位与幸福之间的联系，但人们对整个人生过程中主观社会地位变化的动态本质却知之甚少。我们预测主观社会地位的得失将随着时间的流逝而产生积极和消极影响。这种联系在成年中期尤为明显，因为对社会地位的渴望在中年比在成年后期更为重要。具体而言，我们认为中年人的社会地位提高可能会促进生殖能力的发展，这是整个人生阶段的一项发展任务，可以说不仅有助于他人的福祉，而且还有助于自己。我们使用潜在变化得分模型对一项为期10年的纵向研究（N = 2,306，T1为40-84年）进行的分析表明，失去（或获得）社会地位（即改变其在社会地位阶梯上的感知地位）的个人），负面影响增加（减少），正面影响减少（增加）。正如预测的那样，这些关联对于中年（40-64岁）的成年人更强，实际上仅是显着的，而对于老年人（65-84岁）则不明显。最后，在中年成年人中，地位的改变对情感幸福感变化的影响是由生殖引起的。这种发现模式表明，中年人的主观社会地位变化与自我相关性更高，随着年龄的增长，与情感幸福感的相关性可能会降低。（PsycInfo数据库记录（c）2020 APA，保留所有权利）。