Social status and mental test performance in Warsaw children

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present some further results of the study on socio-cultural determinants of mental performance.* The dependence of children’s mental performance upon parental membership in a given class, stratum or socio-occupational group, reported in numerous publications, was our subject of study. We shall try to explain or throw some more light on this question referring to the somewhat broader concept of “social status.” In our understanding, the concept comprises parental socio-occupational affiliation as well as both its direct correlates, such as parental education or the family’s material and housing conditions, and its indirect correlates related to specific family culture, such as participation in cultural activities, child-rearing practices, style of parentchild interactions, and the like. We wish to recall that what most studies, mainly from Western countries, have demonstrated is that the lower the socio-occupational stratum to which the parents belong, thi: lower is the average intellectual level of the children, and vice versa-the upper stratum affiliation correlates with better average mental performance (coefficients of correlation between parental class, stratum or socio-occupational category-mainly the father’sand various test measures of the child’s mental performance range from about 0.20&0.40).t Obviously, this is a statistical statement, yet the probability of finding relatively more individuals with adequate mental performance among families located higher in the social hierarchy in comparison with those in lower strata, is high. The above dependence as well as other complementary data according to which the higher the level of intelligence, the more chances an individual has to reach an esteemed social positionand vice versa-(Eysenck, 1973; Terman and Oden, 1959) seem to suggest strongly that social structure will reemerge in unchanged shape and composition, that is, children from privileged classes will replace their parents at the top of social hierarchy, whereas those from lower strata will remain at the bottom. Is this pessimistic picture-in view of social ideals of equality-real and verifiable in all countries and socio-political systems? Will the association of social status with intellectual level be equally strong in Poland, a country with a socio-political system different from those in which most studies on the subject have been carried out, and if s-are we able to isolate the factors responsible for this association?