Socioeconomic status (SES, or social class) is considered an important determinant of psychological and life outcomes.
Despite this importance, how to appropriately conceive of and measure it remains unsettled.
In this work I argue that SES is, practically speaking, an unmeasurable construct and present an alternative strategy for studying socioeconomic conditions.
For a short presentation of this work, please see here.
How people imagine their future self—how vivid or distant, for example, their hopes, dreams, and goals feel—matters for how motivated people feel to work toward achieving their future self.
How many material resources people hold, in particular having less income, might reduce their ability to think about the future self, both through cognitive load and more negative expecations for the future.
Across two observational studies and one experimental study, my graduate school advisor, Serena Chen, and I found that people with less income viewed their future self less vividly, felt less similar to and more distant from their future self, liked their future self less, and allocated less money to their future self.