Congruency of academic and interpersonal subjective social status in relation to adolescent psychological health: the moderating role of Core self-evaluations

Disalignments among dimensions of adolescent subjective social status (SSS) may be influential to psychological health. How an individual responds to this incongruence may be explained by personality traits. Drawing upon the conceptualization of SSS and self-concept dimensions, the current study examined how SSS-academic, SSS-interpersonal, and their congruency relate to adolescent psychological health, and the moderating effect of core self-evaluations (CSE). Data (N = 387) were collected in two waves with a three-week interval in a senior high school. Results from the moderated polynomial regression analysis suggested that when CSE was at high levels, there was a significant incongruence effect----the greater the academic-interpersonal discrepancy was, the worse psychological health was reported----and SSS-interpersonal was a stronger predictor of psychological health than SSS-academic. For adolescents with low CSE levels, as long as one dimension of SSS was high, psychological health was better than when both dimensions were low. Examining how congruency of SSS dimensions influences psychological health may shed light on how internal inconsonance within self-concept relates to adolescent adjustment, especially when personality traits are taken into account.