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. 2025 Aug;128(4):2439-2462.
doi: 10.1177/00332941231188748. Epub 2023 Jul 17.

Subjective Socioeconomic Status Moderates Self-Esteem Reactivity to Daily Stressor Exposure: Evidence From a Daily Diary Approach

Yi Jing Chua  1 , Nadyanna M Majeed  2 , Verity Y Q Lua  3 , Chi-Ying Cheng  1 , Andree Hartanto  1
Affiliations

Subjective Socioeconomic Status Moderates Self-Esteem Reactivity to Daily Stressor Exposure: Evidence From a Daily Diary Approach

Yi Jing Chua et al. Psychol Rep. 2025 Aug.

Abstract

Research on self-esteem reactivity has demonstrated that self-esteem fluctuates in response to daily stressor exposure, and the strength of this relationship varies between individuals. Drawing upon the positive link between objective socioeconomic status (SES) and self-esteem, how subjective SES influences self-esteem reactivity to daily stressor exposure was explored. Using a 7-day daily diary study, the current study (Nparticipants = 243, Ndays = 1651) adopted a multilevel analysis to demonstrate that subjective SES attenuated the within-person association between daily stressor exposure and daily self-esteem, even after controlling for demographics and objective indicators of SES. The interactions were also consistent across social stressors and non-social stressors. The findings provide evidence supporting the protective role of subjective SES in self-esteem reactivity to daily stressor exposure.

Keywords: Daily self-esteem; daily diary; daily stressor exposure; multilevel modelling; subjective socioeconomic status.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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