Social Consistency and Psychological Distress

Various hypotheses have been proposed regarding the stressful nature of a lack of consistency among different dimensions of social status. Three of these, termed respectively the status inconsistency, goal-striving stress, and lifestyle incongruity models, are evaluated with data collected in a southern black community. Of these three models, lifestyle incongruity proves the best predictor of depressive symptoms, in interaction with age. More symptoms are reported by younger persons whose style of life, assessed by material consumption patterns and adoption of cosmopolitan behaviors, exceeds their household social class. Implications of these results for theories of social consistency are discussed.