The Effect of Sex and Predominant Socioeconomic Class School Climate on Expectations of Success Among Black Students

Abstract

One strong trend within social science today involves the increasing recognition of situational or reality factors, as opposed to intrapsychic or internal personal characteristics in the determination of behavior. Jackson and Haley (1968) see many aspects of transference as due to the demand characteristics of the therapy situation itself. Others have shown that such diverse behaviors as marked differences in maternal care (Minturn and Lamberts, 1964), increases in intelligence test scores (Haggard, 1954) and rises in school achievement (Rosenthal and Jacobson, 1968) may also be accounted for in terms of diverse situational or environmental pressures. Although any attempt to explain all behavior in terms of either inside versus outside is bound to oversimplify the issue, social scientists are now looking more and more at situational factors to account for variations in behavior. Thus, in spite of McClelland's (1961) and Winterbottom's (1953) studies of early family influence on later achievement motivation, the 1967 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Report (see Wilson, 1967) concluded that while family status is of great importance for early school achievement, in the later grades the influence of family gives way more and more to the influence of student's peers (p. 82). Wilson (1959) concluded that the average socioeconomic status of the student body influences the aspirations of individual