Extending the Concept of Stereotype Threat to Social Class: The Intellectual Underperformance of Students from Low Socioeconomic Backgrounds

Abstract

Students from poorer families perform worse on intellectual tasks than do other students. The authors tested the stereotype threat hypothesis as a possible explanation for this difference. Students from relatively poor backgrounds, such as members of other stereotyped groups, risk confirming a negative reputation of low intellectual ability. The authors predicted that, on a stereotype-relevant test, members of this group would experience apprehension about confirming their negative reputation and that this susceptibility to the stereotype would impair their performance. The study varied stereotype threat by manipulating the instructions accompanying the test that each participant completed. When described as a measure of intellectual ability, low socioeconomic status (SES) participants performed worse than high SES participants. However, when the test was presented as nondiagnostic of intellectual ability, low SES participants' performances did not suffer, contesting claims of SES differences in intellectual ability.

Etudier, Mesurer et Manipuler la Classe Sociale en Psychologie Sociale: Approches Economiques, Symboliques et Culturelles [Studying, Measuring and Manipulating Social Class in Social Psychology: Economic, Symbolic and Cultural Approaches]

“…La profession des individus ou de leurs parents est également un indicateur de la classe sociale (e.g., Croizet & Claire, 1998;Goudeau & Croizet, sous presse;Smeding et al, 2013). Les individus occupant des emplois d'ouvriers, employés ou étant inactifs sont catégorisés dans la classe populaire.…”

“…Ce désinté-rêt pour le concept de classe sociale marque également la psychologie scientifique. En effet, jusqu'à récemment, à l'exception de quelques recherches (e.g., Argyle, 1994;Berjot & Drozda-Senkowska, 2007;Croizet & Claire, 1998;Régner & Monteil, 2007), les travaux ont rarement étudié la psychologie des classes sociales (APA Task Force on Socioeconomic Status, 2007). Au mieux, la classe sociale avait-elle le statut de variable démographique à contrôler, rarement celui de variable d'intérêt.…”

Stereotype Threat and Race of Interviewer Effects in a Survey on Political Knowledge

“…Extending the concept of stereotype threat to social class, Croizet and Claire (1998) introduced stereotype threat to low-SES participants by informing them the GRE was intended to "assess your intellectual ability for solving verbal problems." The hypothesis that low-SES participants would do less well because stereotype anxiety would disrupt their performance was strongly supported.…”

Effects of status and outcome on attributions and just-world beliefs: How the social distribution of success and failure may be rationalized

“…On the one hand, lay theories suggest that social groups have inherent capacities and traits, leading to essentializing the characteristics of social groups as well as the positions prescribed for them by society (Hochschild, 1995;Hoffman & Hurst, 1990;Yzerbyt, Rocher, & Schadron, 1997). Attributing system-consistent outcomes (such as highstatus groups' successes and low-status groups' failures) to stable internal causes is a powerful way to rationalize the existing distribution of social value, for instance, the academic underachievement of working-class students (Croizet & Claire, 1998). On the other hand, lay theories about the distribution of social value and relations between social groups celebrate the role of diligence and hard work as fundamental to individual mobility.…”