University students' causal conceptions about social mobility: Diverging pathways for believers in personal merit and luck

Many college students hold ambitious goals for upward social mobility via post-college careers. However, in the current economic recession such optimistic expectations are not a given. The present study examines how college students' current social status and beliefs in causal factors for socioeconomic status (SES) attainment lead to diverging goal-engagement and goal-disengagement promoting pathways that influence expectations for future SES attainment. Data from an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of 419 university students are analyzed. Most study participants expected to attain a significantly higher level of SES than their parents. Moreover, we identified two pathways of SES-related beliefs, goal engagement or disengagement, and goal attainment. An engagement-promoting pathway consisting of meritocratic-oriented causal beliefs and increased goal engagement tendencies was associated with higher expected personal SES. Conversely, a disengagement-promoting pathway consisted of luck-oriented causal beliefs and enhanced goal disengagement tendencies along with decreased expected personal SES. College students' current social status, causal conceptions about SES and goal engagement/disengagement tendencies fully mediate the relationship between perceptions of one's own family of origin's SES and one's expected personal SES.

► University students expect to attain upward social mobility based on their own merit. ► Causal factor beliefs lead to diverging pathways to expected status attainment. ► Meritocratic oriented causal beliefs are goal engagement promoting. ► Luck oriented causal beliefs are goal disengagement promoting. ► Goal engagement leads to enhanced expected personal socioeconomic status.