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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Lay Theories About Social Class Buffer Lower-Class Individuals Against Poor Self-Rated Health And Negative Affect, Jacinth J. X. Tan, Michael W. Kraus
Lay Theories About Social Class Buffer Lower-Class Individuals Against Poor Self-Rated Health And Negative Affect, Jacinth J. X. Tan, Michael W. Kraus
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
The economic conditions of one’s life can profoundly and systematically influence health outcomes over the life course. Our present research demonstrates that rejecting the notion that social class categories are biologically determined—a nonessentialist belief—buffers lower-class individuals from poor self-rated health and negative affect, whereas conceiving of social class categories as rooted in biology—an essentialist belief—does not. In Study 1, lower-class individuals self-reported poorer health than upper-class individuals when they endorsed essentialist beliefs but showed no such difference when they rejected such beliefs. Exposure to essentialist theories of social class also led lower-class individuals to report greater feelings of negative self-conscious …
Americans Overestimate Social Class Mobility, Michael W. Kraus, Jacinth J. X. Tan
Americans Overestimate Social Class Mobility, Michael W. Kraus, Jacinth J. X. Tan
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In this research we examine estimates of American social class mobility—the ability to move up or down in education and income status. Across studies, overestimates of class mobility were large and particularly likely among younger participants and those higher in subjective social class—both measured (Studies 1–3) and manipulated (Study 4). Class mobility overestimates were independent of general estimation errors (Study 3) and persisted after accounting for knowledge of class mobility assessed in terms of educational attainment and self-ratings. Experiments revealed that mobility overestimates were shaped by exposure to information about the genetic determinants of social class—a faux science article suggesting …