ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Personality and Social Psychology
This article is part of the Research TopicSocial Psychological Perspectives on Threat: Understanding Climate, Economic, and Health ThreatsView all 15 articles
Perceived Financial and Health Threats and Well-Being: The Role of Personal Control in Different Life Domains
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Social Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
- 2Mind, Brain and Behavioral Research Center, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
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Contexts of heightened economic or health instability present a threat to perceived personal control and well-being. Although perceived personal control has been fundamentally postulated as a unitary category, there is some evidence suggesting that levels of perceived personal control might vary throughout different areas of life. Across three independent studies (N = 2646), we examined whether perceived personal control in different life domains (i.e., control over close relationships, health, work, and finances) mediates the linkages of perceived financial and health threats with subjective well-being, self-rated health status, and psychological distress. Results showed that higher perceived financial threat was related to diminished subjective well-being via lower perceived personal control over health, work (Studies 1 and 3), and finances (Study 3). Moreover, increased perceived health threat and well-being was associated with lower subjective well-being via reduced perceived personal control over close relationships (Study 2) and health (Studies 2 and 3). Overall, these findings suggest that distinct domains of perceived personal control may underlie the relationships between various sources of perceived threat (economic vs. health) and well-being outcomes.
Keywords: Personal sense of control, control in different life domains, financial threat, Health threat, Well-being, psychological distress
Received: 04 Dec 2024; Accepted: 11 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Canal-Serantes, Navarro-Carrillo and Valor-Segura. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ginés Navarro-Carrillo, ginesnc@ugr.es
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