Effects of subjective socioeconomic and social statuses on food choice in adolescents

Subjective status—the perception of one’s place in a socioeconomic or social structure—declines during adolescence, a developmentally sensitive period when low subjective status may be a fundamental threat. Although low subjective status manipulations during adulthood have triggered unhealthy food choices, causal effects on food choices during adolescence are unclear. In two preregistered online experiments, adolescents aged 14–17 years compared their families to those with higher socioeconomic statuses ( n = 473) and themselves to those with higher social statuses in their schools ( n = 775) and completed a food choice task. There were inconsistent effects of the subjective status manipulations on subjective statuses, and no statistically significant effects on food choices, in adolescents. Longitudinal studies examining fluctuations in subjective socioeconomic and social statuses and food choices across the school years, or experiments with alternative manipulations, are needed to examine potential influences of subjective statuses on food choices in adolescents.