28 January 2014

Inequality, Mobility and Essentialism

'Social Class Rank, Essentialism, and Punitive Judgment' by Michael Kraus and Dacher Keltner in (2013) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology comments that
Recent evidence suggests that perceptions of social class rank influence a variety of social cognitive tendencies, from patterns of causal attribution to moral judgment. In the present studies we tested the hypotheses that upper-class rank individuals would be more likely to endorse essentialist lay theories of social class categories (i.e., that social class is founded in genetically based, biological differences) than would lower-class rank individuals and that these beliefs would decrease support for restorative justice - which seeks to rehabilitate offenders, rather than punish unlawful action. Across studies, higher social class rank was associated with increased essentialism of social class categories (Studies 1, 2, and 4) and decreased support for restorative justice (Study 4). Moreover, manipulated essentialist beliefs decreased preferences for restorative justice (Study 3), and the association between social class rank and class-based essentialist theories was explained by the tendency to endorse beliefs in a just world (Study 2). Implications for how class-based essentialist beliefs potentially constrain social opportunity and mobility are discussed.
They state that
Social rank in society is a fundamental organizing principle in social relations (Keltner, van Kleef, Chen, & Kraus, 2008), and in the present research, we examined essentialist lay theories about one aspect of human hierarchy - a person’s social class. Drawing from theory suggesting that people are motivated to justify their elevated social position in society (e.g., Keller, 2005), we expected that upper-class rank individuals would be more likely to endorse essentialist lay theories about social class than would their lowerclass rank counterparts.
Consistent with expectations, Study 1 showed that people reporting elevated social class rank tended to think of social class categories in more essentialist terms. Study 2 extended these initial findings by suggesting that upper-class rank individuals endorse essentialist theories of social class, in part, to justify their elevated positions in society’s hierarchy. Study 3 demonstrated that manipulating people’s essentialist beliefs about social class categories led to reduced support for restorative policies for academic cheating. Building on these initial studies, Study 4 manipulated momentary perceptions of relative social class rank. We found that, compared to their manipulated lower-class rank counterparts, manipulated upper-class rank individuals endorsed more essentialist conceptions of social class and were more likely to reject restorative justice proceedings for people caught engaging in economic crimes. Moreover, relationships among social class rank, essentialist beliefs, and punitive judgments could not be accounted for by measures of individuals’ material resources or political orientation.
Essentialism, Social Policy, and Social Mobility
The current research dovetails with a growing body of research suggesting that, relative to their lower-class counterparts, upperclass individuals focus on internal, stable, and trait-based explanations for the actions of others and deemphasize the social context (for a review, see Kraus et al., 2012). This research suggests that these broad class-based differences in social perception extend to beliefs in the biological basis of fundamental social categories. These findings have implications for social mobility.
The current results provide some initial evidence suggesting that essentialist beliefs are associated with justifying and legitimizing an individual’s own position in society and raise the possibility that these beliefs will also increase justification of unfairness in the distribution of economic and social resources: That essentialist beliefs endorsed by upper-class individuals were associated with failing, rather than rehabilitating, academic cheaters suggests that one way in which individuals can maintain current societal structure is through the use of essentialist beliefs. Future research is necessary to determine what other legitimizing behaviors highstatus individuals may engage in to constrain upward mobility in society (e.g., opposition to affirmative action programs) and whether essentialist conceptions of social categories explain this behavior.
As well, endorsing social constructivist beliefs -  beliefs that social class is based on changeable, external social forces - led to the favoring of social policies related to academic policy and judicial procedure that focus on rehabilitating individuals. Perhaps social constructivist views, endorsed by lower-class rank individuals, may increase optimism among these individuals with regard to overcoming current financial hardship, future career opportunities, or even the economic advancement of future generations. In the present research, both social class rank and essentialist beliefs about social class categories were not associated with endorsement of retributive punishments. Given these results, it is interesting to speculate about why social class rank might be more closely tied to restorative justice concerns than to retributive ones. One possible explanation for this pattern is that social class rank is associated with enhanced contextual explanations—the tendency to explain broad social events or personal outcomes in terms of external forces outside of individual control (e.g., Grossmann & Varnum, 2011; Kraus et al., 2009). That is, whereas retributive punishments hold individuals personally responsible for their unlawful actions, restorative punishments acknowledge the positive influence of contextual forces on individual behavior (e.g., rehabilitation programs). Future studies that examine beliefs about the efficacy of contextual intervention as the key ingredient that leads lower-class rank individuals and social constructivists to endorse restorative justice are likely to yield important insights. Given that the current justice system in the United States is based on retributive, rather than restorative, punishment strategies (Gromet & Darley, 2006; Tyler & Jost, 2007; Weiner et al., 1997), the current research anticipates the following question: Do essentialist beliefs in social hierarchy underlie current punishment practices in the United States? Future research is needed to better understand how shifting essentialist beliefs could change current justice practices and how these changes would impact society as a whole. That is, could social constructivist beliefs of social hierarchy increase favor for rehabilitation-based punishments that could improve community life in the long term (e.g., drug treatment programs for prisoners)?
It is also important to consider how essentialist lay theories contribute to beliefs about reduced social mobility among lowerclass individuals (see Kennedy, Kawachi, Prothrow-Stith, Lochner, & Gupta, 1998). For example, one perspective holds that social constructivist conceptions of social class represent an optimistic understanding of social class hierarchy, in that social mobility is not blocked by genetic predeterminants of lower-class status. However, as previous research suggests, lower-class individuals are also keenly aware of the uncontrollable contextual factors that influence their lives (Kraus et al., 2012) and tend to favor political actions that perpetuate the current social order (e.g., Jost et al., 2002). As such, it will be interesting in future research to consider whether social constructivist lay theories of social class increase the pursuit of economic advancement among lower-class individuals, or whether these theories reveal the many external obstacles to social advancement (e.g., biased criminal justice system, unsafe neighborhoods, political influence) that maintain lower-class individuals in their lower ranking positions. Notwithstanding the findings from the present investigation, a few limitations are worth mentioning. First, the results of our current studies would benefit from generalizing to other communities. For example, while our adult samples are representative of the wide range of education and income found in the United States, the samples do fall short in terms of generalizing to communities characterized by poverty, or to communities of great affluence. Replicating this research among these samples gives us greater confidence in the conclusions reached in the present research. As well, the current research examined the association between social class rank and essentialist beliefs about social class categories in particular. We expect that upper-class rank individuals endorse essentialist beliefs, in part, to justify their elevated social position. As such, upper-class rank individuals might engage in essentialist beliefs about other social categories (e.g., race, gender) more generally - particularly in contexts where such beliefs can help to justify their own elevated social position.
It would also be interesting to test the present hypotheses in other cultures (see Mahalingam, 2007), in particular those where economic inequality is not as pronounced. Evidence indicates that economic disparities between rich and poor may be at a historical high in the United States (Phillips, 2002), which suggests that essentialist lay theories of social class have an objective basis for being so powerful in shaping voting behavior and policy decisions among upper- and lower-class individuals. Would similar effects be observed in cultures with lesser disparities between rich and poor?