Education-based thinking and acting? Towards an identity perspective for studying education differentials in public opinion and political participation

Spruyt, Bram; Kuppens, Toon

doi:10.1080/23254823.2016.1150689

Cited by 33 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…This awareness of educational categories and their associated traits and attributions is crucial for understanding the consequences of education as an identity. Now that we know that education is consensually seen as an important and legitimate source of social status, we can investigate education, not only as a cause for later personal socio-economic outcomes, but also as a source of identity (Spruyt and Kuppens 2015). For instance, to what extent do less educated people suffer the same psychological consequences as do other low-status groups who find themselves in a position of legitimately low status?…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By not challenging educational inequality, less educated people might also partly contribute to their own low-status position by processes of self-exclusion. As people base their expectations of others' competence on their rank in status hierarchies, lower educated individuals are likely to expect themselves to be of lower competence than higher educated individuals (Ridgeway 1991, 373-374; though see Spruyt and Kuppens 2014). This could be the case in the political arena where less educated people might think they lack the necessary skills, or are not the "right" people to contribute to political discussions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, valuing higher education is not the only factor for distributing education-based social status, it also requires the awareness of one's own position, and the possibility to be classified and to classify others (Ridgeway 1991;Spruyt and Kuppens 2015). Where characteristics such as race/ethnicity or gender are highly visible, education per se is not.…”

Section: Educational Classification and Subjective Social Statusmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Investigating this subjective side of status indicators such as education gives a clearer idea on how people appreciate the social positions that make up these indicators, apart from how societal institutions provide individuals in these positions with certain tangible benefits or disadvantages. As such, investigating subjective social status, as distinct from objective social status, allows us to add to the growing literature around the manifestation and consequences of the lived experience and the subjective understanding of education-based classification (Solga 2002;Spruyt and Kuppens 2015;Tannock 2008).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Education-Based Status in Comparative Perspective: The Legitimization of Education as a Basis for Social Stratification

et al. 2019

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Classical and recent accounts of education posit that education legitimately, and authoritatively, classifies individuals to positions of lower or higher status. However, despite these general theoretical claims, empirical evidence that provides an in-depth picture of the relationship between educational attainment and social status remains scarce. In this paper, based on a dataset of 31 countries (International Social Survey Programme), we investigate the extent to which education is related to subjective social status, the degree to which this is seen as legitimate, and how this relationship varies between countries. We contextualize this relationship with the influence of the centrality of education in countries (operationalized as the share of higher educated). Results showed that education is an important source of subjective social status for individuals across all countries, and is seen as relatively legitimate and uncontroversial among all educational groups. Moreover, among those who perceive education to be more important for status, subjective status differences between educational groups are larger. Additionally, in countries with larger shares of higher educated, educational differences in subjective social status correlate more strongly with whether or not people obtained a degree of higher (tertiary) education. Lastly, the relationship between education and subjective social status in these countries is more independent from other sources of status, such as income and gender. It therefore seems to be that as higher education becomes more central and widely shared in a society, rather than leveling social differences, ironically it also becomes more distinctive and diagnostic in distinguishing people along group lines.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Educational Classification and Subjective Social Statusmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Education-Based Status in Comparative Perspective: The Legitimization of Education as a Basis for Social Stratification

et al. 2019

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“…Determining through which of these three pathways cultural entitlement influences depressive symptoms goes beyond the scope of this study and is for future research to decide. First, because of the negative identity that is tied to their low-status position Spruyt and Kuppens 2015), groups with less education experience a sense of being looked down on (also called "perceived contempt"; . As is commonly acknowledged, perceived stigmatization is negatively related to mental health outcomes (Kessler, Mickelson, and Williams 1999).…”

Section: Status As Cultural Capital and Cultural Entitlementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why are Depressive Symptoms More Prevalent Among The Less Educated? The Relevance of Low Cultural Capital and Cultural Entitlement

Kate

Koster

Waal

2017

Sociological Spectrum

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Analyzing nationally representative survey data collected in the United States in 2014 (n ¼ 1,932), we formulate and test a novel explanation for the educational gradient in depressive symptoms. We theorize that status as cultural capital drives this gradient in addition to well-established economic and social factors, via the feelings of cultural entitlement it inspires. Therefore, we use structural equation modeling to decompose the education effect. We demonstrate that in addition to economic (job security and income) and social factors (embeddedness in the neighborhood), cultural capital indeed accounts for the educational gradient in depressive symptoms via cultural entitlement. We conclude that for understanding social gradients in mental health it is vital to be sensitive for the cultural mechanisms that status as cultural capital can inspire. Based on our findings we propose suggestions for further research.

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I Guess We are from Very Different Backgrounds: Attitudes Towards Social Justice and Intergenerational Educational Mobility in European Societies

Capistrano,

Creighton,

Işıklı

2023

Soc Indic Res

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This paper addresses the relationship between intergenerational educational mobility and attitudes in relation to fairness in European societies. The dimensions of fairness considered capture a broader notion of social justice by targeting four distinct principles: equality, equity, need and entitlement (Hülle et al., 2018). We investigate how attitudes towards those principles differ across individuals who experienced upward, stable, or downward trajectories of educational mobility in relation to their parents. To offer a comparative framework, we use nationally representative surveys of public opinion from 29 countries who participated in the 2018 round of the European Social Survey (ESS), which included a unique battery of questions on attitudes towards fairness. Using Mobility Contrast Models (MCMs), we identify the independent role of educational mobility in shaping attitudes regarding four types of fairness, which encapsulate the broader concept of social justice. We explore notable variation at the country level, although the pooled sample indicates that upward mobility significantly predicts a higher support for the principle of equality. In addition, this relationship is stronger among the more upwardly mobile (i.e., a greater difference between a respondent's education and that of their parent).

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Education-based thinking and acting? Towards an identity perspective for studying education differentials in public opinion and political participation

Abstract: Education-based thinking and acting? Towards an identity perspective for studying education differentials in public opinion and political participation.

Cited by 33 publications

References 51 publications

Education-Based Status in Comparative Perspective: The Legitimization of Education as a Basis for Social Stratification

Education-Based Status in Comparative Perspective: The Legitimization of Education as a Basis for Social Stratification

Why are Depressive Symptoms More Prevalent Among The Less Educated? The Relevance of Low Cultural Capital and Cultural Entitlement

I Guess We are from Very Different Backgrounds: Attitudes Towards Social Justice and Intergenerational Educational Mobility in European Societies

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