Social Class Stereotypes Research Articles

The influence of English language teachers’ social class stereotypes on language teaching

This article analyses Mexican English teachers’ social class-based stereotypes attributed to secondary and preparatory school students. These students are deemed lazy, have no aspirations and come from “hostile” or “backward” environments that allegedly explain their lack of academic engagement and inability to undertake an English learning activity. Such characterisations become relevant since they exhibit that teachers’ beliefs, which are in constant relation to their context and experience (Fives & Buehl, 2012, p. 476) cast light on teachers’ pedagogic decisions. Teachers ascribe students’ roles that limit speaking opportunities and assignments that involve dumbing content down since students are expected to have either a low academic performance or none at all. Through an indexical analysis of teachers’ utterances, this study contributes to recent research on language teachers’ beliefs within applied linguistics where issues of social class, stereotypes and their influence on teachers’ pedagogic decisions have been underexamined.

Ecology stereotypes exist across societies and override race and family structure stereotypes.

Perceivers hold ecology stereotypes-beliefs about how the environments others live in shape their behavior. Drawing upon a life history perspective, we examine the stereotypes people hold about those who live in relatively harsh and unpredictable ecologies. First, across diverse demographic groups and societies (the United States, India, Japan, Romania, the United Kingdom), people believe that individuals who live in harsh and unpredictable environments engage in "faster" behaviors (n = 2,078; ds from .80 to 2.14)-that they are more impulsive, sexually unrestricted, opportunistic, and invest less in education and their own children (Studies 1, 2, and 3). Second, these ecology stereotypes seem to underlie certain Black/White race stereotypes held by White perceivers in the United States (Study 1) and family structure stereotypes (i.e., growing up in a single-mother home) held by perceivers in both Japan and the United States (Studies 4a and 5a). Supporting this, the application of these race and family structure stereotypes is overridden or attenuated when perceivers are presented with direct information about a specific person's ecology (Studies 1, 4A, and 5B). Third, beliefs that there is high ecological mobility within a society reduce the magnitude of ecology stereotypes (Study 3), as one would expect if ecology stereotypes function to help perceivers better predict others' behavior. Last, ecology stereotypes do not seem to be just general valence biases or to simply reflect social class stereotypes. In sum, ecology stereotypes may be an influential but relatively unexamined type of stereotype, with broad implications for thinking about other group stereotypes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Carrie Mae Weems’ Intersectional Tropes: Engaging Black Feminism Within Arts Teacher Education

ABSTRACT In this article, we approach the visual tropes in Carrie Mae Weems’ bodies from an intersectional perspective through mobilising critical arts and black feminist studies for art pedagogies. A constant in Weems’ trajectory are the intersectional tropes that emerge in her artworks, which are collapsed with bodies, defying racial, gender, age, and social class stereotypes, stratification, and oppression. Aiming to engage black feminism with pedagogies, we revisit a critical art project that connects different spaces: the exhibition “Carrie Mae Weems: A Great Turn in the Possible”; and, a pre-service art teacher education course - “Childhoods: Inclusive narratives through art” - where narrative is a mode of decolonising pedagogy through contemporary art. First, we will examine the topics and strategies practised by five students’ micro-groups dealing with the critical and dialogical analysis of the intersectional tropes in Weems’ series. Second, we will reconstruct the process that has been conducted to transform and transfer that knowledge into educational spaces and resources designed to perform a feminist, intercultural, and social justice-oriented art education. Finally, the article discusses how critical pedagogy merges with critical arts to train future art educators while experimenting with a black feminist curriculum.

Dissecting Whiteness: consistencies and differences in the stereotypes of lower- and upper-class White US Americans

ABSTRACT Economic inequality is increasing in the United States, making categorization and stereotyping based on social class more likely. Yet, social class stereotypes have received relatively little attention. Focusing on spontaneously generated stereotypes of different White lower-class and upper-class groups in the United States, we find consistencies and differences across groups. Lower-class groups were stereotyped as poor, uneducated, dirty, and lacking ability, while upper-class groups were stereotyped as rich, arrogant, and lacking sociability. Stereotypes for all groups were largely negative but there were notable variations in stereotype valence, sociability, morality, ability, and assertiveness as well as perceived attitudes toward the groups within each social class, highlighting the importance of moving beyond a monolithic view of “the rich” and “the poor.”

Social Status Differences, Social Class Stereotypes, and Cross-Cultural Communication in the Korean Drama ‘Little Women’

Little Women tells the story of three poor sisters who are involved in a case related to the richest family in South Korea. This article aims to reveal the social class stereotypes contained in the little women series, the factors that influence social class inequality, and also the solutions to these problems. The subjects studied were the three main siblings in the series, namely Oh In Joo, Oh In Kyung, and Oh in Hye. The research method is descriptive qualitative using Hofstede's cultural theory analysis. The analysis is carried out through five dimensions of culture according to Hofstede, namely Power Distance Index, Uncertainly Avoidance Index, Individualism VS Collectivism, Masculinity VS Feminity, and Long-term Orientation VS Short-term Orientation implied in the scenes and dialogues of the Little Women series. The results of the study found 5 social controls from differences in social status, social class stereotypes, and cross-cultural communication. The first is the discriminatory treatment and educational background of the rich and the poor. Then, the power of the upper/higher social class controls everything. The third is the difference between rich and poor families. Fourth, social inequality between the rich and the poor. Finally, the culture of Korean people who want to look luxurious and classy. Overall, it can be seen how the areas of life of the lower social class are under the control or power of the high social class.

A 32‐society investigation of the influence of perceived economic inequality on social class stereotyping

AbstractThere is a growing body of work suggesting that social class stereotypes are amplified when people perceive higher levels of economic inequality—that is, the wealthy are perceived as more competent and assertive and the poor as more incompetent and unassertive. The present study tested this prediction in 32 societies and also examines the role of wealth‐based categorization in explaining this relationship. We found that people who perceived higher economic inequality were indeed more likely to consider wealth as a meaningful basis for categorization. Unexpectedly, however, higher levels of perceived inequality were associated with perceiving the wealthy as less competent and assertive and the poor as more competent and assertive. Unpacking this further, exploratory analyses showed that the observed tendency to stereotype the wealthy negatively only emerged in societies with lower social mobility and democracy and higher corruption. This points to the importance of understanding how socio‐structural features that co‐occur with economic inequality may shape perceptions of the wealthy and the poor.

People in the United States judge the success of individuals from higher- versus lower-income families as less deserving

Extant research demonstrates that individuals from higher-income families are more likely to become successful than individuals from lower-income families. This research aims at investigating how deserving people judge the same socioeconomic success when that success is achieved by individuals from higher- versus lower-income families. Building on the literature suggesting that people draw diverse inferences about others based on their socioeconomic status, seven preregistered experiments, conducted among participants from the United States, demonstrate that people deem the same socioeconomic success of an individual as less deserving when that individual comes from a higher- versus lower-income family. This difference in success deservingness judgments occurs because, in accomplishing the same success, people judge individuals from higher- versus lower-income families as less self-reliant, even when success can be attributed to individuals’ own effort. Importantly, this discrepancy in judgments of self-reliance and success deservingness has critical behavioral consequences: people prefer to give less support to individuals from higher- versus lower-income families, even when these individuals have experienced the same economic downturn and have accomplished the same career success. Together, these results extend existing research on the consequences of social class stereotypes for individuals and society, contribute to the philosophical and socio-political discourse about the nature of deservingness, and caution against a potentially biased provision of support based on people’s family background.

"This kid looks like he has everything": 3- to 11-year-old children's concerns for fairness and social preferences when peers differ in social class and race.

This study investigated 3- to 11-year-old US children's (N=348) perceptions of access to resources, social group preferences, and resource distribution decisions and reasoning when hypothetical peers differed in social class (poor or rich) and race (Black or White). Data were collected in 2019. The sample reflected the region where data were collected in terms of gender (44% girls, 30% boys, 1% another identity) and race and ethnicity (46% White, 10% multiracial or multiethnic, 9% Black, 5% Latinx, 2% Asian, 3% another identity), and parents reported a higher average level of education than the regional average. Results revealed both marked age differences in children's perceptions, preferences, decisions, and reasoning and specific combinations of peer group memberships that were especially likely to receive preferential treatment. With age, children perceived that rich peers had greater access to resources than poor peers, but when both peers were poor, White peers were perceived to have more resources than Black peers. Social group preferences changed with age, from mixed social class and racial group preferences, to preferences for rich peers, to dislike for rich peers. Resource allocation decisions and reasoning reflected both social group and fairness concerns: young children distributed more to White peers especially if they were also rich, participants in middle childhood explicitly favored rich peers regardless of their race, and older children distributed more to poor peers and reasoned about either moral concerns for equity or social class stereotypes. Thus, overall, younger children's responses often reflected broader economic and racial inequalities while older children often sought to create more equity, though not always for moral reasons.

How economic inequality shapes social class stereotyping

Two pre-registered experiments (Total N = 822) explored the effect of economic inequality on social class stereotyping and the social mechanisms driving this relationship. In both experiments, participants were randomly assigned to a fictitious society with high or low levels of inequality and rated a wealthy and a poor individual on Vertical (i.e., assertiveness and competence) and Horizontal stereotype dimensions (i.e., friendliness and morality). We found that higher (versus lower) inequality caused both social classes to be perceived as more incompetent, immoral, and unfriendly, and the poor to be perceived as more unassertive. Moreover, we found that high (versus low) inequality caused stereotypes of the wealthy and poor to be more different on unique dimensions (i.e., in relation to the poor, the wealthy were stereotyped as more assertive, but also more unfriendly and immoral). Importantly, inequality affected the stereotype dimensions through distinct mechanisms. We found evidence of class-based categorization mediating the effect of inequality and social class stereotypes on the Vertical dimension, and evidence of negative intergroup relations (i.e., increased competition and reduced trust) explaining stereotypes on the Horizontal dimension. Further, we found that social class stereotypes influenced support for redistributive wealth policies. Our work contributes to the literature by identifying the mechanisms through which inequality affects perceptions of the social classes.

Stereotypes as Historical Accidents: Images of Social Class in Postcommunist Versus Capitalist Societies.

Stereotypes are ideological and justify the existing social structure. Although stereotypes persist, they can change when the context changes. Communism's rise in Eastern Europe and Asia in the 20th century provides a natural experiment examining social-structural effects on social class stereotypes. Nine samples from postcommunist countries (N = 2,241), compared with 38 capitalist countries (N = 4,344), support the historical, sociocultural rootedness of stereotypes. More positive stereotypes of the working class appear in postcommunist countries, both compared with other social groups in the country and compared with working-class stereotypes in capitalist countries; postcommunist countries also show more negative stereotypes of the upper class. We further explore whether communism's ideological legacy reflects how societies infer groups' stereotypic competence and warmth from structural status and competition. Postcommunist societies show weaker status-competence relations and stronger (negative) competition-warmth relations; respectively, the lower meritocratic beliefs and higher priority of embeddedness as ideological legacies may shape these relationships.

Political cognition helps explain social class divides: Two dimensions of candidate impressions, group stereotypes, and meritocracy beliefs

Political cognitions—particularly impressions and stereotypes along two fundamental dimensions of social evaluations—play some role in explaining social class divides and accompanying resentments. First, the Big Two dimensions (warmth/communion and competence/agency) describe candidate perception, person perception, and group stereotypes. In particular, the stereotype content model and related perspectives show social-class stereotypes depicting elites as competent but cold and lower-income groups as incompetent but warm. This trade-off justifies the system as meritocractic, because elites’ stereotypic competence supports their status based on deservingness. Nevertheless, varied evidence (from social psychology, political science, and sociology) indicates common beliefs that support cross-class resentments: In particular, many citizens express political resentment both downward (toward cheats) and upward (toward elites). In this context, backlash against the system results. Anticipated by systematic theories, these political cognitions (impressions, stereotypes, beliefs) help explain the populist and nativist resentments in current political discourse; all support polarized, dysfunctional politics.

Prejudices in Cultural Contexts: Shared Stereotypes (Gender, Age) Versus Variable Stereotypes (Race, Ethnicity, Religion)

Some prejudices share cross-cultural patterns, but others are more variable and culture specific. Those sharing cross-cultural patterns (sexism, ageism) each combine societal status differences and intimate interdependence. For example, in stereotypes of sex and age, lower status groups—women and elders—gain stereotypic warmth (from their cooperative interdependence) but lose stereotypic competence (from their lower status); men and middle-aged adults show the opposite trade-off, stereotypically more competent than warm. Meta-analyses support these widespread ambivalent (mixed) stereotypes for gender and age across cultures. Social class stereotypes often share some similarities (cold but competent rich vs. warm but incompetent poor). These compensatory warmth versus competence stereotypes may function to manage common human dilemmas of interacting across societal and personal positions. However, other stereotypes are more variable and culture specific (ethnicity, race, religion). Case studies of specific race/ethnicities and religions reveal much more cultural variation in their stereotype content, supporting their being responses to particular cultural contexts, apparent accidents of history. To change stereotypes requires understanding their commonalities and differences, their origins and patterns across cultures.

Teaching Social Class

Discussing socioeconomic status in college classes can be challenging. Both teachers and students feel uncomfortable, yet social class matters more than ever. This is especially true, given increased income inequality in the United States and indications that higher education does not reduce this inequality as much as many people hope. Resources from current psychological science can inform teaching by providing insights about social class stereotypes, attributions about blame and deserving, trust, cross-class interactions, and class cultures. Implications for teaching include paying attention to the potential for class-based stereotype threat, cultural mismatch, and stigma, as well as considering relative status in addition to absolute rank. Ongoing research can provide useful and hopeful directions for coping with social inequality in college classrooms.

Even More Racially Isolated than Before: Problematizing the Vision for “Diversity” in a Racially Mixed High School

Background/ContextThe term racial diversity is interchangeably used in the literature with other terms such as racially mixed, integration, and desegregation in reference to policies to design and practices to implement racially heterogeneous communities, districts, and schools. Scholarship that promotes the democratic potential of racially diverse schools argues that the policies for doing so, if implemented systematically, can extend equitable resources to all students and dismantle negative racial and social class stereotypes through cross-cultural interactions. However, the social-justice-oriented goals of a racially diverse school will never fully materialize if institutional and structural barriers as well as racial attitudes and perceptions allow only a privileged few to connect to opportunities and result in a school that is merely diverse in terms of student enrollment.PurposeAttaining racial heterogeneity is just one goal of racially diverse schooling. Students’ academic and social opportunities, engagement, and connectedness to school should also be considered. Thus, this article expands upon research that critically examines definitions of “true” diversity and calls for a policy vision for diversity that goes beyond achieving heterogeneity in student enrollment and considers what structures and relationships are necessary to provide equitable opportunities for all students. In order to further problematize the concept of “diversity,” the author used Brown High School (BHS), a racially and socioeconomically diverse comprehensive high school located in a predominately White, affluent southern part of a major metropolitan area, as a critical case. The school community as a whole appreciated its racially diverse student body, but as the case study demonstrates, “appreciation” for diversity did not resolve the institutional, structural inequities and racial attitudes that resegregated students of color who transferred to BHS in search of better opportunities to structures within the school that were nearly or equally isolating as their previous racially segregated, low-performing schools.ParticipantsSeventeen students of color were interviewed and among this sample seven identified as Latina/o, six as African American, one of Asian descent (Vietnamese), and three self-identified as multi-ethnic (Latina/Chinese, Latino/White, and Latina/White). Nine faculty (the principal, two assistant principals, four teachers, one tutoring center director, and one college and career counselor) were nominated by students to also be interviewed.Research DesignThis study employed qualitative case study methods to illuminate the complex relationships that unfold within the high school of study.Data Collection and AnalysisSchool-level demographic and achievement data, observations, school documents, and field notes of student-led focus groups also helped frame the high school context. All data was collected during the 2009–2010 school year. An initial round of open coding and then several iterations of focused coding were used to uncover consistent themes, issues, and story lines.FindingsThe school administration unveiled a school improvement plan that would enable the school to capitalize on its growing student diversity by ensuring all students have meaningful academic and social connections to school. Despite the school improvement team's efforts to hold school community wide discussions about what changes should be made to support the increasingly diverse student body, most students of color who transferred to BHS were consigned to the lowest course and programmatic tracks, creating very disparate structures of opportunity within the high school. A complex set of factors contributed to inequities within the high school. There were vast inequities between schools across the district; thus, students of color from lower performing schools transferred to BHS already at a disadvantage in academic preparation. Also, some faculty were reluctant to change their practices to accommodate the increasingly diverse student body and harbored negative racial attitudes and stereotypes. Finally, any strategies put in place to address the inequities were very unsystematic and, instead, were piecemeal and programmatic.Conclusion/RecommendationsIn order to fully capitalize on the democratic benefits of diversity, leaders must be willing to re-organize and alter school structures so that every student is equally connected to opportunities. Also, while it is important for school leaders to engage in discussions with faculty and the community about the importance of racial diversity, dialogue is only one step, as leaders must also then take action towards implementing systematic supports to address inequities. Furthermore, faculty should consider how their own racial identities and social constructions about diversity impact student experiences and make faculty dialogue about race and cultural difference an integral part of the school improvement plan. Ultimately, when racially diverse schools are not strategic about ensuring all students are connected, students of color within these settings can become even more racially isolated.

Following the Child, Socioanalysis, and Threats to Community: Teacher Response to Children's Texts

ABSTRACTI brought two conceptions of teacher response to my teaching and research in a third-grade writing workshop. The first, drawn from workshop literature, emphasized following and supporting children's choices of topic and purpose for writing. Such a conception, however, ignored the problem of children pursuing questionable intentions and material in their texts, such as when children's texts affirm—even if unintentionally—gender, race, and social class stereotypes and boundaries. I developed a second conception of response—response as socioanalysis—from work by Habermas and Freire. Children's texts were conceived of as artifacts of an oppressive U.S. society (similar to how, in psychoanalysis, patients' stories are viewed as artifacts of Oedipal conflicts).The core of the paper is a detailed analysis of a particularly difficult occasion for teacher response. In this case, a popular child wanted to publish a fictional narrative that I read as an attack on an unpopular classmate. I examine how my inte...

Do Teachers React to "Multiple Intelligences"? Effects of Teachers' Stereotypes on Judgments and Expectancies for Students with Diverse Patterns of Giftedness/Talent

This research examined how teachers' judgments, expectancies, and decisions were influenced by hypothetical students' patterns of giftedness and demographic characteristics. The study involved 158 prospective and experienced teachers who responded to six 1-page scenarios of students with varying backgrounds (gender, race, and socioeconomic status) and ability patterns (analytic, verbal, social, creative arts, motor, and control). Responses to each student included 25 trait ratings, judgments of appropriate programming and resources, and predictions of adult success. The findings indicate differential predictions of success, recommendations for programming and resources, and trait ratings for those with different patterns of giftedness and talent. For several trait ratings, teachers' reactions to ability patterns appeared to be magnified when the pattern was inconsistent with gender, race, or social class stereotypes. Overall, the findings of this study suggest that teachers may be sensitive to "multiple intelligences" (Gardner, 1983) if they are exposed to a sufficient range of information about individual students.