Status incongruence revisited: associations with shame and mental wellbeing

Abstract

Study purpose: Status incongruence has been related to poor health and all-cause mortality, and could be a growing public health problem due to changes in the labour market in later decades. Shaming experiences have been suggested as playing a part in the aetiology. Our aim was to study the risk for shaming experiences, pessimism, anxiety, depressive feelings, and poor mental well-being (GHQ) with a special focus on shame, in four status categories: negatively and positively incongruent individuals, and low-status and high-status congruent individuals. Method: Data comprised 14 854 working men and women from a regional sample of randomly selected respondents, 18-79 years. Logistic regression was used to study differences in risk for negative emotional outcomes. Results: The negative incongruent category persisted as the group most at risk for all negative emotional outcomes (OR 1.5-1.9; p<0.05-<0.001). When testing the risk for poor mental well-being among the status categories with and without shaming experiences, OR for all groups with shaming experiences were elevated. Among groups without shame, only the negative incongruent category remained at risk (OR 2.7; p<0.05) after adjustment. Conclusion: Negative incongruent status is associated with adverse emotional outcomes, among them shame, which is a previously unappreciated aspect of status incongruence.This is the author version of the following article:Johanna Lundberg, Margareta Kristenson and Bengt Starrin, Status incongruence revisited: associations with shame and mental wellbeing, 2009, SOCIOLOGY OF HEALTH and ILLNESS, (31), 4, 478-493.which has been published in final form at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9566.2008.01148.xCopyright: Blackwell Publishing Ltdhttp://www.blackwellpublishing.com