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Cited by 288Social and Intergroup PsychologySocial Power and Status DynamicsCultural Capital and Social Class

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 124 of the 126 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Signs of Social Class: The Experience of Economic Inequality in Everyday Life

Open access
Kraus, Michael W., Park, Jun Won, Tan, Jacinth J. X.·2017·Perspectives on Psychological Science
DOI 10.1177/1745691616673192PMC PMC5453398

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Abstract

By some accounts, global economic inequality is at its highest point on record. The pernicious effects of this broad societal trend are striking: Rising inequality is linked to poorer health and well-being across countries, continents, and cultures. The economic and psychological forces that perpetuate inequality continue to be studied, and in this theoretical review, we examine the role of daily experiences of economic inequality-the communication of social class signals between interaction partners-in this process. We theorize that social class signals activate social comparison processes that strengthen group boundaries between the haves and have nots in society. In particular, we argue that class signals are a frequent, rapid, and accurate component of person perception, and we provide new data and analyses demonstrating the accuracy of class signaling in 60-s interactions, Facebook photographs, and isolated recordings of brief speech. We suggest that barriers to the reduction of economic inequality in society arise directly from this class signaling process through the augmentation of class boundaries and the elicitation of beliefs and behaviors that favor the economic status quo.

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Fig. 1. A theoretical model detailing the modes of social class signaling and their influence on the augmentation of group boundaries between the haves and have nots in society and, in turn, on social judgments and behaviors that perpetuate economic inequality on a societal scale.
Fig. 1. A theoretical model detailing the modes of social class signaling and their influence on the augmentation of group boundaries between the haves and have nots in society and, in turn, on social judgments and behaviors that perpetuate economic inequality on a societal scale.CC BY-NC · PubMed Central
Fig. 2. The tendency for observers to guess the correct social class quartile (left) and half (right) of participants based on observing 60 s of behavior, 20 Facebook photographs, listening to seven isolated spoken words, or across all signaling modalities. The light grey bars indicate percentages expected if observers are guessing at rates indistinguishable from chance. In all cases, observers showed above chance accuracy in perceiving social class.
Fig. 2. The tendency for observers to guess the correct social class quartile (left) and half (right) of participants based on observing 60 s of behavior, 20 Facebook photographs, listening to seven isolated spoken words, or across all signaling modalities. The light grey bars indicate percentages expected if observers are guessing at rates indistinguishable from chance. In all cases, observers showed above chance accuracy in perceiving social class.CC BY-NC · PubMed Central

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Citations

Cites

Research works printed but not linked: 11

  1. Bjornsdottir R. T., 2016, Presentation at the Emerging Psychology of Social Class Pre-Conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology
  2. 10.1037/0022-3514.34.3.405 · DOI
  3. 10.2307/2575202 · DOI
  4. Fiske S. T., 2012, Facing social class
  5. Labov W., 1972, New York City department stores, 4, 43
  6. Lareau A., 2008, Social class: How does it work?
  7. 10.4159/9780674915565 · DOI
  8. Shaw G. B., 2012, Pygmalion
  9. Steele C. M., 2011, Whistling Vivaldi: And other clues to how stereotypes affect us (issues of our time)
  10. Veblen T., 1973, The theory of the leisure class
  11. Wolfram W., 2006, American English: Dialects and variation

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Metadata

Authors
Kraus, M. W., Park, J. W., & Tan, J. J. X.
Affiliations
  • Yale University (US)
  • University of California, San Francisco (US)
Corresponding author
Kraus, Michael W.
ORCID
Venue
Perspectives on Psychological Science
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2017-05
Volume
12
Issue
3
Pages
422-435
ISSN
  • 1745-6916 (ISSN-L)
  • 1745-6924
DOI
10.1177/1745691616673192
PMC
PMC5453398
OpenAlex
W2618394217
Cited by
288
References
126
Citations by year
2026: 20 · 2025: 31 · 2024: 40 · 2023: 33 · 2022: 35 · 2021: 49 · 2020: 28 · 2019: 34 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 7
FWCI
56.03
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Perspectives on Psychological Science (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Singapore Management University Institutional Knowledge (InK) (Singapore Management University) (submittedVersion)
  • OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
  • PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
  • PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion, public-domain)
Funders
Yale University, School of Management
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social Power and Status Dynamics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Cultural Capital and Social Class
Keywords
economic inequality, social comparison, person perception, class boundaries, everyday life, speech recordings, group boundaries
MeSH terms
Humans, Quality of Life, Social Class, Socioeconomic Factors, Health Status Disparities

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