Relationship between social status and basic personality dimensions

In this paper an attempt has been made to determine the relationship between social status and personality dimensions. The survey was conducted on 2432 subjects aged 18-76. After separate factor analysis of social status and personality indicators was conducted, the extracted dimensions were correlated on the whole sample, male and female subsamples, and age-defined subsamples. The results indicate that social status has only a weak influence an personality. The negative relationship between educational status and authoritarian conformism has been established. According to Eysenck, this dimension belongs primarily to the domain of social attitudes, and in the Big Five model it is closest to the inverse of the openness to experience. Lower socioeconomical status is probably responsible for the larger amount of stressful events to which a person is exposed, which is a plausible explanation for the greater degree of anxiety and depression such a person is experiencing. No statistically significant relationship has been found between social status and unsocialised, impulsive and aggressive personality traits, which opposes Eysenck's hypothesis.