SBP: Collaborative Research: Testing the Stress-related Cyclical Nature of Socioeconomic Status Stigma

美国有近4000万人生活在贫困中。攀登社会经济阶梯需要克服许多障碍。这个项目提供了一个新的分析心理障碍，使向上的社会流动如此困难：感觉被污名化的社会经济阶梯较低的压力，压力破坏了提高一个人的教育，职业和财务状况的能力。在美国，社会经济地位较低的人有可能感到被污名化，而美国是一个拥抱改善个人地位的美国梦的国家。经历与耻辱有关的压力会启动一个恶性循环，导致实现更高社会经济地位的障碍。该项目旨在研究导致低社会经济地位的自我实现的原因和后果，并测试新的目标，以消除所有美国人走向繁荣的障碍。该项目测试了来自周期性社会耻辱压力模型的假设，该模型提出，由于感觉受到耻辱而引起的压力破坏了向上社会流动所需的东西。研究1是一项针对大学生的实验，测试由于社会经济地位低下而感到耻辱是否会导致生理压力，从而破坏教育和经济成功所必需的基本认知过程。研究2是一个实验，测试学生的社会经济地位污名如何影响校园归属感和学术相关的结果，如学术坚持。这项研究还测试了可以减少耻辱感负面影响的目标。研究3涉及社区参与者，他们每天多次报告他们的日常生活，以确定由于他们的社会经济地位而感到受到虐待是否会导致他们在未来预期类似的感受，这可能会导致他们改变与他人互动的方式，并避免旨在提高社会经济成功的资源。研究1和3包括一年的随访，以衡量收入，教育和就业的长期变化。该项目还有助于NSF的努力，通过为代表性不足的社区大学生和研究生的研究支持夏季研究计划，扩大参与STEM。更广泛地说，该项目引起了人们对限制社会经济进步的障碍的关注，并为制定有针对性的干预战略提供了信息。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Nearly 40 million people live in poverty in the United States. Climbing the socioeconomic ladder requires overcoming many barriers. This project offers a novel analysis of psychological barriers that make upward social mobility so difficult: feeling stigmatized for being lower on the socioeconomic ladder is stressful, and that stress undermines the ability to improve one's educational, occupational, and financial standing. People who are low on the socioeconomic ladder risk feeling stigmatized in the US, a country that embraces the American Dream of improving one's standing. Experiencing stigma-related stress sets into motion a vicious cycle that leads to barriers for achieving higher socioeconomic status. This work examines causes and consequences that guide the self-fulfilling nature of low socioeconomic status, and it tests new targets to remove roadblocks to prosperity for all Americans.This project tests hypotheses from the Cyclical Social Stigma Stress model, which proposes that stress induced by feeling stigmatized disrupts the very things needed for upward social mobility. Study 1 is an experiment with college students testing whether feeling stigmatized because of low socioeconomic status causes physiological stress, which then undermines basic cognitive processes that are necessary for educational and financial success. Study 2 is an experiment that tests how socioeconomic status stigma among students impacts a sense of campus belonging and academic-related outcomes, such as academic persistence. This study also tests targets that could reduce the negative impact of stigma. Study 3 involves community participants who report on their daily lives multiple times a day, to determine whether feeling mistreated due to their socioeconomic status causes them to anticipate similar feelings in the future, which may cause them to change how they interact with others and avoid resources designed to increase socioeconomic success. Studies 1 and 3 include a 1-year follow-up to measure longer-term changes in income, education, and employment. This project also contributes to NSF's efforts to broaden participation in STEM through a summer research program for underrepresented community college students and research support for graduate students. More broadly, this project brings attention to barriers that contribute to limited socioeconomic advancement and provides information for developing targeted intervention strategies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.