Investigating the Impact of Social-Class Cultures on Social Cognition

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One common attribute of human societies is the distribution of people into different social classes. In the United States, we often speak of the "working class," the "middle class," or the "upper class." One view of social class considers a person's relative position within a social hierarchy, with social class reflecting differences in financial resources, education, and occupations. Another view treats social class as reflecting differences among people in their values, ideas, practices, and outlooks on life. Regardless of their origin, the existence of social classes is important to understand, because many important outcomes in employment, education, and achievement are linked to a person's social class. One interesting difference, for example, is the "ethics gap" between classes -- the observation that higher-class individuals tend to break ethical norms more frequently than others. The current research develops a social-cognitive model to account for such differences. Rather than attributing unflattering social values to the rich (e.g., greed), the model developed in this research considers how one's social class might shape basic perceptions of others. Specifically, the proposed model links a diverse array of class-related phenomena to appraisals of "motivational relevance" -- that is, to rapid and spontaneous judgments of others' significance for one's current goals and well-being. The model suggests that divergent relevance appraisals lead lower-class individuals to pay more attention to other people, to see others as physically closer, and to more readily infer others' beliefs and desires, as compared to higher-class perceivers. These social-cognitive processes may be responsible for previously observed social class differences in a variety of areas, including economic prosperity, educational achievement, and occupational outcomes.A series of six studies will test the hypothesized social-cognitive effects of social class. Eye-tracking and immersive virtual reality technology will be leveraged to examine how lower- and higher-class individuals deploy their visual attention in real-world contexts. One set of experiments will examine whether attentional differences between lower-class and higher-class perceivers extend to auditory attention. Other experiments seek to understand how social class affects patterns of visual perception -- specifically, whether lower-class perceivers see other people as more salient and physically closer than do higher-class individuals. One hypothesis to be tested is that higher-class perceivers, because of their chronic tendency to judge other people as low in relevance, are less able to readily infer what others are thinking and feeling. A final experiment will seek to establish the causal role of social class cultures through a "cultural priming" technique that cues members of multiple social classes (e.g., first-generation college students) to adopt one or the other of their class-based worldviews. The knowledge gained in the research will help identify ways of reducing the barriers that working-class individuals face in higher education and other "gateway contexts" -- thus promoting achievement, upward mobility, and economic growth.