The effect of socioeconomic status on cognitive and socioemotional processes in Latin American older adults

Abstract

BackgroundSocioeconomic status (SES) negatively impacts cognitive and executive functioning in older adults, yet its effects on socioemotional abilities have not been studied in this population. Also, evidence on neurocognitive processes associated with aging primary comes from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) populations, hindering the generalization of findings to those from upper‐middle‐ and low‐middle‐income countries, such as Latin America.MethodHere, we compared the performance of low‐ and high‐SES older adults from Argentina in cognitive state, executive functions, social cognition (emotion recognition and theory of mind), and counter‐empathic social emotions (envy and Schadenfreude; displeasure at others’ fortune and pleasure at others’ misfortune, respectively). Subsequently, we developed a path analysis to test the directionality of the relationship among those variables in a theoretically plausible model and tested the main paths via multiple regression analyses.ResultRelative to the high‐SES group, low‐SES older adults showed markedly poorer performance on all assessed domains. Convergent evidence from covariance, multiple regression, and path analyses suggested that SES impact on socioemotional processes was not primary but mediated by cognitive and executive decline.ConclusionThese findings offer the first characterization of SES impacts on cognitive and socioemotional processes in non‐WEIRD population and have relevant equity‐related implications for brain health.