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Contents
- Abstract
- Empirical Traditions in the Study of Social Class
- Resources and Rank: The Substance of Social Class
- Social Class, Solipsism, and Contextualism
- Social Class and the Self-Concept
- Hypothesis 1: Lower-Class Individuals Will Be More Vigilant to Threat Than Upper-Class Individuals
- Hypothesis 2: Lower-Class Individuals Will Experience Reduced Personal Sense of Control Relative to Upper-Class Individuals
- Hypothesis 3: Lower-Class Individuals Will Develop More Communal Self-Concepts, Whereas Upper-Class Individuals Will Develop More Personally Agentic Self-Concepts
- Social Class and Social Perception: Construing Others and the Social Environment
- Hypothesis 4: Lower-Class Individuals Will Exhibit Enhanced Empathy Compared to Upper-Class Individuals
- Hypothesis 5: Lower-Class Individuals Will Favor Contextual Explanations, Whereas Upper-Class Individuals Will Favor Dispositional Explanations
- Hypothesis 6: Lower-Class Individuals Will Believe Social Categories Are Socially Constructed, Whereas Upper-Class Individuals Will Essentialize Social Categories
- Social Class and the Interpersonal Realm: Prosocial Behavior, Relationship Strategies, and Moral Judgment
- Hypothesis 7: Lower-Class Individuals Will Feel More Compassion and Behave More Prosocially Relative to Upper-Class Individuals
- Hypothesis 8: Lower-Class Individuals Will Engage in More Communal Relationship Strategies, Whereas Upper-Class Individuals Will Engage in More Exchange Strategies
- Hypothesis 9: Lower-Class Individuals' Moral Judgments Will Prioritize Purity and Harm, Whereas Upper-Class Individuals' Moral Judgments Will Prioritize Individual Rights, Respect, and Authority
- Social Class: A New Frontier of Psychological Inquiry
- Measuring Social Class
- Signaling Social Class
- Social Class Across Cultures, Ideologies, and the Life Course
- Appendix A
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Abstract
Social class is shaped by an individual's material resources as well as perceptions of rank vis-à-vis others in society, and in this article, we examine how class influences behavior. Diminished resources and lower rank create contexts that constrain social outcomes for lower-class individuals and enhance contextualist tendencies—that is, a focus on external, uncontrollable social forces and other individuals who influence one's life outcomes. In contrast, abundant resources and elevated rank create contexts that enhance the personal freedoms of upper-class individuals and give rise to solipsistic social cognitive tendencies—that is, an individualistic focus on one's own internal states, goals, motivations, and emotions. Guided by this framework, we detail 9 hypotheses and relevant empirical evidence concerning how class-based contextualist and solipsistic...