HOW THE AMERICAN DREAM SHAPES AD PREFERENCE:
A LOOK INTO THE INTERACTIVE EFFECTS OF INCOME
INEQUALITY AND CONTROL RESTORING AD APPEALS
MASTER THESIS
by
LAURA MARINA GHEORGHE
2
HOW THE AMERICAN DREAM SHAPES AD PREFERENCE:
A LOOK INTO THE INTERACTIVE EFFECTS OF INCOME
INEQUALITY AND CONTROL RESTORING AD APPEALS
MASTER THESIS University of Groningen Faculty of Economics and Business
MSc Marketing Management
by
LAURA MARINA GHEORGHE Jupiterstraat 17
9742ES Groningen +31 (0)642529743 l.m.gheorghe@student.rug.nl
student number S3203093
1st Supervisor: Dr. Mehrad Moeini-Jazani 2nd Supervisor: dr. M.C. (Marijke) Leliveld
3 Abstract
The present research is based on the main idea that perceived income inequality influences consumer behavior. One of the ways consumers are affected, is through a lowered sense of control. Furthermore, previous research suggests that in such a situation, consumers will attempt to restore their desired state, in this case restore their sense of control through
mechanisms such as compensatory consumption. This study examined the interactive effects of income inequality and ad appeals, through a 2 (high vs. low inequality) x 2 (high control vs neutral ad appeals) between-subjects factorial design. The study also measured economic mobility perceptions as a variable influencing sense of control. The main results did not validate the relationships proposed in the beginning of the study. Further research needs to address how control restoring ad appeals can better be incorporated in advertising messages in order to attract customers.
4 Preface
As someone coming from a country that struggles with high levels of economic inequality and corruption, I was naturally drawn to this subject. Reading about the effects of income inequality, income mobility perceptions and about theories such as system justification theory have helped me to better understand both by country and it’s current political, economic and societal issues.
At the same time, as a future graduate interested in pursuing a career in advertising, it was very interesting to learn about compensatory consumption and the way consumers process advertising appeals depending on their psychological states.
5 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ... 3 Preface ... 4 INTRODUCTION ... 6 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ... 8 Economic Inequality ... 8
Conceptual Model and Hypotheses ... 12
RESEARCH DESIGN ... 13
Participants and design ... 13
Procedure ... 14
RESULTS ... 16
Reliability ... 16
Manipulation check : inequality and attitude ... 16
Manipulation check: Appeal type and attitude ... 17
Main analysis ... 18
Underlying process ... 20
Secondary relation ... 21
DISCUSSION ... 23
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ... 24
REFERENCES ... 25
APPENDIX ... 28
Appendix A – Inequality manipulation... 28
Appendix B – Advertisements ... 29
Appendix C – Attitude scale ... 30
Appendix D – Sense of control scale ... 30
6 INTRODUCTION
In 2011, a movement started in the United States of America and got the attention of the whole world. Occupy Wall Street began with a small group of protesters in New York City and brought to public attention one of the biggest problems of this century: economic inequality. Although it failed in changing policy, Occupy Wall Street can still be credited for branding the split of the American society between “the 1%” (the wealthiest) and “the 99%” (the rest), terms that how now become ubiquitous in any conversation about income inequality (Levitin, 2015; Watson, 2012).
Only 6 years later, the World Inequality Report 2018 confirms these issues, describing income inequality in the US as “among the highest of all rich countries” (Pikkety, Saez and Zucman, 2017, p.78). To illustrate, the figure below shows the growth of income for each group since 1980, pointing to the astonishing growth of the top 10% and especially the top 1% as compared to the rest of the population (Pikkety, Saez and Zucman, 2018). Meanwhile, CEO salaries have increased from about 20 times the average worker’s salary to 271 times larger, from 1965 to 2016 (Reinicke, 2018).
Figure 1. The distribution of income growth in the US (Pikkety, Saez and Zucman, 2018)
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Pickett & Wilkinson, 2009). At the same time, marketing researchers are growing concerned of how this changes consumer behavior and attitude towards brands and products. One such novel coping mechanism is compensatory consumption. Since economic inequality can lower a consumer’s sense of control or power, the consumer feels the need to restore this state (Cutright, Bettman & Fitzsimons, 2013; Cutright & Samper, 2014; Rucker & Galinsky, 2008).
Closely related to the topic of economic inequality in the United States is the concept of economic mobility. The leitmotif of American life, as portrayed in cinema, literature and pop culture is the American Dream. People believe that going to the land of opportunities will give them the possibility to climb the social ladder and achieve greater success, which in turn helps them justify or even defend inequality within the society (Shariff, Wiwad & Aknin, 2016)
“The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. (It is not)
“… a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately
capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”
James Truslow Adams (1931, p.214-215)
Marketing researchers have started looking into the effects of economic mobility perceptions in the past years and they have found that it diminishes the effects of income inequality and also that it can increase impulsive spending and variety seeking (Yoon & Kim, 2016; Yoon & Kim 2017).
8 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Economic Inequality in the US
Economic inequality has been named many times one of the biggest issues of our century. Although it shows much higher levels in the United States than in Europe, it is a global matter. It is interesting though to look at the striking differences between the incomes of the top 1% and the bottom 50% between the United States and Western Europe. According to the World Income Report 2018 (Pikkety, Saez and Zucman, 2017), although the two region showed similar levels of inequality in 1980, nowadays the situations are completely different as it can be seen in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Differences between income groups in US and Europe – 1980 to 2017 (Pikkety,
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Moving on to Americans’ perceptions of inequality, surveys show they underestimate the actual levels of income inequality in their society (Hauser & Norton, 2017), but this tendency towards misperception is not only limited to the US and it’s residents. While Norwegians are quite accurate in their estimations, overestimation does occur in France and Germany (Hauser & Norton, 2017). Some of the causes for these under and overestimations could be low or high media coverage on the topic of inequality or the fact that people project their personal perceptions of their local environment (i.e. city or state of residence) to national inequality (Hauser & Norton, 2017).
One surprising fact discovered by Ariely and Norton (2011) in their study on inequality perceptions is that all groups of American respondents in their study, be they wealthy or poor, desired some inequality.
Effects of Economic Inequality
Research shows that members of areas with high levels of income inequality tend to have less trust in each other (Delhey & Dragolov, 2013), which in turn can lead them to engage in unethical behavior (Buttrick & Oishi, 2016; Wilkinson & Pickett, 2017). Income inequality also leads to increased status competition (Buttrick, Heintzelman & Oishi, 2017; Pickett & Wilkinson, 2009), status anxiety (Layte & Whelan, 2014), conspicuous consumption ( Bricker, Ramcharan & Krimmel, 2014) or simply searching for status goods, without necessarily purchasing ( Walasek & Brown, 2015).
Studies also show that inequality affects sense of control through economic threat. Threats to economic status lowers sense of personal control (Fritsche & Jugert, 2017). A more detailed description of personal control and the effects and mechanisms to cope with lowered sense of control will be described in the following sections.
Compensatory consumption and control-restoring ad appeals
When individuals experience a discrepancy between their desired states or ambitions and their current state, they are motivated to reduce this discrepancy (Mandel et al., 2017). Such a coping mechanism is compensatory consumer behavior, described as “any purchase, use or consumption of products or services motivated by a desire to offset or reduce a
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resolves the source of the self-discrepancy” (Mandel et al., 2017, p.138), such as joining the gym when experiencing weight related self-discrepancies (Bagozzi & Dolakia, 1999). On the other hand, symbolic-self completion refers to “Behavior that signals mastery in the domain of the self-discrepancy” (Mandel et al, 2017, p.138), like displaying symbols of business success when lacking in that domain (Wicklund & Gollwitzer, 1981).
Based on the study by Cutright (2012) that found that when individuals perceived low personal control, they attempted to restore control through products containing symbolic boundaries (i.e. framed paintings), I hypothesize that through the mechanism of symbolic-self completion, when consumers perceive lowered personal control, they will prefer an
advertisement that contains control restoring ad appeals. Message framing that urges the consumer to take control with the product will therefore symbolize the needed boundaries.
Sense of control
An individual’s beliefs in personal control over outcomes in his life have been associated with better health and greater longevity (Lachman & Weaver, 1998). These beliefs can also “buffer the negative ramifications of low social class in regard to health and wellbeing” (Lachman & Weaver, 1998, p.771), up to the point that these lower class individuals resemble those in wealthier groups.
Based on literature on the topics of self-regulation and goal pursuit, researchers suggest that when individuals perceive low feelings of personal control, they automatically form a desire to reduce these discrepancies between their actual state and their ideal state of control (Cutright & Samper, 2014). At the same time, individuals may face challenges in this goal pursuit, such as fear of not being able to meet their goal or that outside forces will influence their outcomes (Cutright & Samper, 2014). Starting from the idea that challenges might make consumers less likely to persist (Glass, Singer & Friedman, 1969), Cutright and Samper (2014) showed that a low sense of personal control positively influences preference for products that require high effort, as a means of restoring control (Cutright and Samper, 2014). Drawing from this study, I assume that consumers will prefer ads that include control-
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Other research on control suggests that when individuals experience low levels of control, they seek out structure in various forms, from the government and God, to random noise, to boundaries in logos and product design and lastly brands themselves (Cutright, 2012; Cutright, Bettman and Fitzsimmons, 2013; Kay et al., 2008; Kay, Moscovitch & Laurin, 2010; Whitson & Galinsky, 2008).
Perceptions of Economic Mobility
Economic mobility is considered a core principle of the American ethos (Davidai & Gilovich, 2015). This belief in the American dream, saying that everyone can climb up the social ladder, makes it easier for Americans to overlook wealth differences and growing income inequality (Davidai & Gilovich, 2015). When measuring perceptions of social mobility, Davidai and Gilovich (2015) found that participants overestimated upward mobility and underestimated downward mobility. This is confirmed by Shariff, Wiwad and Aknin (2016) who show that income mobility is linked with higher tolerance for income inequality, because they have hopes that their children will move up the ranks of society.
12 Conceptual Model and Hypotheses
Main relation
My main goal with this research is to examine the effect of income inequality on the preference for control restoring ads. I expect that when consumers perceive high levels of inequality (vs. low levels of inequality) in their environment, they will prefer ads that include control restoring appeals in the message, as opposed to ads that do not include such appeals. Thus, I hypothesize the following:
H1: Consumers who experiment high levels of income inequality, compared to consumers who experiment low levels of inequality, will prefer ads that include control restoring appeals.
H2: Perceived income inequality increases preference for ads containing control restoring appeals, compared to ads containing neutral appeals.
Underlying process
H3: Consumers who experience high levels of income inequality, compared to consumers who experiment low levels of inequality, will evaluate control restoring ads more positively because of their lowered sense of control through inequality.
13 Secondary relation
H4: Consumers who experience high levels of income inequality, compared to consumers who experience low levels of income inequality, will have a lowered sense of control. H5: The impact of inequality on sense of control will be moderated by consumers’
perceptions of mobility, such that individuals with stronger perceptions of mobility will be less likely to experience the impact of inequality on sense of control.
Figure 4. Model of secondary relatio
RESEARCH DESIGN Participants and design
With this study, I investigated the effects of perceived income inequality and ad appeal type on attitude towards products. As mentioned, I expect that when consumers perceive high levels of inequality, they will exhibit a greater preference for ads that include control restoring appeals. This is explained by their desire to restore a lowered sense of control. The survey was designed in Qualtrics and a total of 198 participants were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk for a 2 (Inequality: high vs. low) x 2 (Control ad appeals: neutral vs. high) between subjects factorial design experiment. The participants were all living in the United States.
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Out of the remaining 168 respondents, 77 were male (45.8%) and 91 were female (54.2%). Regarding employment, 51.8% of respondents were employed full-time, 10.7% part-time and 18.5 % self-employed, with the remaining either unemployed or retired. In regards to
ethnicity, the majority of the sample identified as white (75.6%), while Asian (7.7%), black or Afro-American (6.5%) and Hispanic, Latino or Spanish (6.5%) held the minority
percentages. For a better visualization of political orientation, I performed a cross-tabulation between gender and political party preference, as follows:
Figure 5. Bar graph representing the cross-tabulation of gender and political orientation.
Procedure
Inequality Manipulation. This manipulation was based on a previous experiment by Cote et.
al. (2015). After a brief introduction into the survey, participants were asked to answer demographic questions about their age, gender, religiosity, political orientation, gross annual income, ethnicity, employment, marital status, education and social class. Next, after
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order to validate this comprehension, participants were asked to fill in the correct percentages for 3 questions related to the pie-chart (i.e. “What percentage of private wealth is owned by the wealthiest fifth of the population?”). As a last step, participants were asked to fill in their perceptions about how equally distributed the wealth was, the extent to which they feel the state is suffering economically and their satisfaction with the economic status of their state of residence.
Appeal type. In order to manipulate appeal type, two versions of an advertisement for a time
management smartphone app were used (see Appendix B). Participants were randomly assigned to view either the control-restoring ad or the neutral ad. Both advertisements included 3 pictures of a smartphone, side by side, presenting different functions of the app. The neutral ad’s text read: “Forget Forgetting with foogi”, while the text of the control-restoring ad read on two rows: “Forget Forgetting” and “Take charge of your schedule with foggi”.
After this manipulation, I measured the dependent variable, the attitude towards the product (See Appendix C). Participants were asked to rate their attitude towards the product on 7 constructs made of pairs of antonymous words, on a scale from 1 to 7, with 1 representing closest to the negative constructs (“unfavorable”, “negative”, “bad”, “unappealing”, “do not like at all”, “unpleasant”, “not likeable”) and 7 representing the closest to the positive constructs (“favorable”, “positive”, “good”, “appealing”, “like very much”, “pleasant” and “likeable”)
Sense of control. In order to measure sense of control, participants were asked to fill in the
scale for sense of control by Lachman and Weaver (1998). This scale operationalizes sense of control on two dimensions, namely personal mastery and perceived constraints (Lachman & Weaver, 1998). To asses this, participants indicated the extent to which the statements apply to them on a 7-point Likert scale. The scale consisted of a total of 12 questions, out of which 4 tested personal mastery and 8 tested perceived constraints (See Appendix D).
Economic mobility perceptions. In order to measure the extent to which participants perceive
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Attention check. To end the survey, participants had to fill in an attention check question, as
a last measure to check how attentive they were during the survey. They were asked “What is your favorite TV sport?”, while a text followed explaining that many sports start with the letter ‘B’ and indicating to them that they should choose the sport that starts with the letter ‘H’ from the list of 6 sports below. This trick question was meant to check if respondents would actually read the instruction test, or simply jump to picking their favorite sport and therefore, failing the attention check.
RESULTS Reliability
After cleaning up the data by removing the participants that failed the attention check and the comprehension questions, as described in the Participants and Design section, I conducted scale reliability tests for the main scales used in the survey.
The “economic mobility” construct consisted of 8 questions. The scale had a high level of internal consistency, as determined by a Cronbach's alpha of 0.823.
The “sense of control” construct consisted of 12 items. The scale had a high level of internal consistency, as determined by a Cronbach's alpha of 0.674.
The “attitude” construct consisted of 7 items. The scale had a high level of internal consistency, as determined by a Cronbach's alpha of 0.963.
The “mood” construct consisted of 3 questions. The scale had a high level of internal consistency, as determined by a Cronbach's alpha of 0.879.
Given the fact that all these scales proved to meet the reliability requirements, I was then able to create average scores for these variables, for further use in testing.
Manipulation check : inequality and attitude
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by Shapiro-Wilk's test (p > .05), and there was homogeneity of variances, as assessed by Lavene's test for equality of variances (p = .244).
High inequality mean attitude score was 0.28, 95 CI [-0.64 to 0.62] higher than low inequality mean attitude score. There was no statistically significant difference in mean attitude score between high inequality and low inequality condition, t(163) = -1.623, p=0.106. There was no statistically significant difference between means (p>.05), and therefore, we must reject the alternative hypotheses and fail to reject the null hypotheses.
Figure 6. Bar chart representing the effects of inequality conditions on mean attitude
After using the formula to calculate the effect size (d=0.25), we can conclude that the size of the effect was very small.
Based on this analysis, we cannot conclude that the inequality manipulation was effective.
Manipulation check: Appeal type and attitude
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High control mean attitude score was 0.14 (SE=0.18) higher than neutral control attitude score. There was no statistically significant difference in mean attitude score between high control and neutral control appeals, t(163)= -.816, p=.416.
There was no statistically significant difference between means (p>.05), and therefore, we must reject the alternative hypotheses and fail to reject the null hypotheses.
Figure 7. Bar chart representing the effects of appeal conditions on mean attitude
After using the formula to calculate the effect size (d=0.13), we can conclude that the size of the effect was very small.
Based on this analysis, we cannot conclude that the appeal type manipulation was effective.
Main analysis
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removed or not, I decided to continue this analysis including them and to perform a second analysis after removing them, in order to compare results.
While continuing to test the assumptions, I concluded that residuals were normally
distributed (p > .05) and there was homogeneity of variances as assessed by Lavene’s test for equality of variances, p=.169.
When visually examining the produced profile plots, given that the lines are not parallel, we can initially asses that there might be an interaction effect between inequality and appeal type.
Table 1
Results of two-way ANOVA examining the effects of inequality and appeal type on attitude
Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Partial Eta Squared INEQUALITY 5,187 1 5,187 3,500 ,063 ,021 APPEAL ,701 1 ,701 ,473 ,493 ,003 INTERACTIO N 1,213 1 1,213 ,819 ,367 ,005 Error 243,059 164 1,482 Total 4353,46 9 168 Corrected Total 250,051 167
a. R Squared = ,028 (Adjusted R Squared = ,010) b. Computed using alpha = ,05
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Since there is no interaction effect, I will continue by analyzing and reporting the main effects of inequality and appeal type.
There was no statistically significant difference in “attitude” score for high inequality and low inequality conditions, F(1,164)=3.5, p=.063, partial η2 =.021. At the same time, there was no statistically significant effect of appeal type on “attitude” score, F(1, 164)=.473, p=.493, partial η2 =.003 (see Table 1).
Since there are no main effects, it means we cannot follow up with post-hoc analysis or to run interaction contrasts.
After removing the 3 outliers and re-running the two-way ANOVA, there was no change in significance of effects. There was no statistically significant interaction between inequality level and appeal type for attitude score, F(1,161)=1.282, p=.259, partial η2 = .008. Further, There was no statistically significant difference in “attitude” score for high inequality and low inequality conditions, F(1,161)=2.712, p=.107, partial η2 =.017. At the same time, there was no statistically significant effect of appeal type on “attitude” score, F(1, 161)=1.015, p=.377, partial η2 =.005.
Furthermore, I attempted to perform a two-way ANCOVA with sense of control as a covariate. While testing the assumption of linearity with the help of scatterplots, I have concluded that the relationships are not linear, therefore the assumption is violated. After transforming the data using a natural logarithm function for the sense of control variable and re-plotting, I found non-linear relationships that are dissimilar for different combinations of the two independent variables (inequality and appeal type), therefore a two-way ANCOVA test is inappropriate for testing this data.
Underlying process
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Table 2.
Results of moderated mediation using Hayes Model 14 coeff se t p constant -,2094 ,1533 -1,365 ,174 Sense of control ,1279 ,1602 ,798 ,425 Inequality ,2758 ,1789 1,541 ,125 Appeal type ,1522 ,1779 ,855 ,393 Sense of control* appeal type -,0143 ,2299 -,062 ,950
In sum, after performing all the analysis, the main effects (H1 and H2) and the underlying process (H3) were not supported, therefore inequality condition and appeal type did not significantly influence attitude towards the product.
Secondary relation
In order to test the effects of income inequality on sense of control, with mobility perceptions as a moderator, I ran three tests.
First, An independent-samples t-test was run to determine if there were differences in attitude towards a product between participants in the high inequality condition and those in the low inequality condition. There were no outliers in the data, as assessed by inspection of a boxplot. Sense of control scores for each level of inequality were normally distributed, as assessed by Shapiro-Wilk's test (p > .05), and there was homogeneity of variances, as assessed by Lavene's test for equality of variances (p = .215).
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After using the formula to calculate the effect size (d=0.15), we can conclude that the size of the effect was very small.
Based on this analysis, we cannot conclude that inequality has an effect on sense of control. Further, a linear regression was performed in order to assess the variance in sense of control that is explained by mobility perceptions. First, the two variables were mean centered.
After assessing independence of residual through Durbin-Watson statistic (1.814), I discovered that there were two outliers. Respectively respondent 30, with a maximum score of 7.00 for sense of control, while the predicted values was 3,88 and respondent 63, with a minimum score for sense of control of 1.08, while the predicted value was 3,968. I have decided to continue the procedure with the outliers.
After assessing homoscedascity and normal distribution, I moved on to interpret the results. According to the R² value, mobility perceptions only explain 0.3% of the variance in sense of control. Next, looking at the ANOVA table, it becomes clear that mobility perceptions do not statistically significantly predict sense of control, F(1,163)=.445, p=.506 (see Table 3).
Table 3.
Results of linear regression
Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Regression ,271 1 ,271 ,445 ,506b Residual 99,076 163 ,608 Total 99,347 164
a. Dependent Variable: senseofcontrol_centered b. Predictors: (Constant), mobility_centered
23 DISCUSSION, LIMITATION AND FUTURE RESEARCH
Inspired by previous research into income inequality and compensatory consumption, I decided to test whether income inequality can influence attitude for a product, when it interacts with control-restoring ad appeal. Research has paid little attention so far into these kinds of ad appeals, even though there is vast literature on the effects of sense of control on consumer behavior.
Starting with the main effects, I wanted to test whether income inequality manipulation does influence participants through attitude and sense of control, which did not prove significant. Although the reasoning for the income inequality manipulation was that people project knowledge about their community, in this case, their state, to national inequality (Hauser & Norton, 2017), it might be this same reason that backfired. Since individuals have such good knowledge of their community, there is a possibility that they did not believe the
manipulation because they know the actual inequality distribution in their state. At the same time, it is possible that the sample size was not large enough to be representative of the whole country. Therefore, it might be better for further research into the matter to use another type of manipulation for the income inequality, like that of giving participants news articles to read about the inequality or equality in their country.
Moving on to the second main effect, I wanted to test whether control restoring ad appeals predict a positive attitude towards the product, compared to the case of neutral appeals.This effect din not prove to be significant. One limitation for this can be drawn from the study of Cutright and Samper (2014). It may be that because of the boundary condition of the effect of control on desire for high-effort products, the participants in this study did not prefer the control-restoring ad because it did not reinstate control in the same domain where they were missing it. So, in the case of income inequality, future research might consider advertising for a product related to financial control, in order to test this assumption.
Furthermore, it might be that the product chosen for the advertising was either generally disliked by the participants they were biased against it, so for future experiments, researchers should look more carefully into the type of product chosen for the ad.
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is high, consumers are not as willing to accept new products, as opposed to traditional ones (Faraji-Rad, Melumad, Venkataramani Johar, 2017). Although the research also showed that framing a product in a control-increasing way might help consumers overcome this resistance (Faraji-Rad et al., 2017), this does not seem to be the case for our research. Nevertheless, in replicating a similar experiment in the future, desire for control should be measured for a better understanding of the phenomenon.
Alternatively, the same study by Faraji-Rad et al. (2017) showed that new products can lead to a sense of loss of control and they suggested that future research should consider other product dimensions that might affect sense of control. Therefore, it can be hypothesized that another factor, such as the product advertised itself, influenced sense of control.
Unfortunately, this still does not explain why the control-restoring ad appeals did not influence the attitude towards the product.
As one last direction for future research, a study from Chen, Lee and Yap (2016) showed that in order to compensate for lowered personal control, consumers preferred to purchase
utilitarian products, such as household cleaning products. The mechanism behind this was that they associated these kinds of products with problem solving, therefore reinforcing perceptions about being able to control outcomes (Chen, Lee and Yap, 2016). This study should be taken into consideration in the future, when deciding on the type of product to be advertised.
CONCLUSIONS
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28 APPENDIX
Appendix A – Inequality manipulation
High inequality levels condition
29 Appendix B – Advertisements
Control restoring ad appeals condition
30 Appendix C – Attitude scale
1 (1) 2 (2) 3 (3) 4 (4) 5 (5) 6 (6) 7 (7) Unfavorable
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
Favorable Negativeo
o
o
o
o
o
o
Positive Bado
o
o
o
o
o
o
Good Unappealingo
o
o
o
o
o
o
Appealing Do not like at allo
o
o
o
o
o
o
Like very much Unpleasanto
o
o
o
o
o
o
Pleasant Not Likeableo
o
o
o
o
o
o
LikeableAppendix D – Sense of control scale Personal mastery items:
I can do just about anything I really set my mind to. Whatever happens in the future mostly depends on me.
When I really want to do something I usually find a way to succeed. Whether or not I am able to get what I want is in my own hands.
Perceived constraints items:
31
I often feel helpless in dealing with the problems in life.
There is little I can do to change many of the important things in life. Other people determine most of what I can and cannot do.
Appendix E – Perceived Economic Mobility Scale
A child's chances of achieving financial success are tied to the income of his or her parent. It is highly possible to achieve great wealth regardless of the circumstances of birth. "Hard work equals success" describes the way society works.
There are plenty of opportunities for anyone to go as far as he/she wants. Everyone has a fair chance at moving up the economic ladder.
Society provides enough opportunities to get ahead for those who are motivated. Starting in poverty puts one at a distant disadvantage in life.
