Motivational Accounts of the Vicious Cycle of Social Status: An Integrative Framework Using the United States as a Case Study

Abstract

Social mobility is limited in most industrialized countries, and especially in the United States: Children born to relatively poor parents are less likely to prosper than other children. This observation has multiple explanations; in the current article, we focus on emerging motivational perspectives, synthesizing them into a novel integrative framework grounded in a classic theory of motivation: expectancy-value theory. Together, these findings indicate that individuals with lower socioeconomic status (SES) may be less motivated to achieve status relative to individuals with higher SES—not because of their own personal failings, but as a result of their material, social and cultural contexts. We then consider the significant theoretical advantages of this integrative framework, most notably that it enables us to consider how the disparate perspectives linking motivation to SES are linked and may at times compound or offset each other. In turn, this enables us to make sophisticated predictions concerning the conditions that will enable individuals with low SES to escape the vicious cycle of low motivation. Moreover, our account helps bridge the gap between explanations that locate the cause for low social mobility within individuals and those that locate it in the broader system. We end by addressing implications for the psychological understanding of low status and implications for social policy.

The Development of Educational Aspirations and Expectations From Adolescence to Young Adulthood: A Longitudinal Study of Mexican-Origin Youth

“…Lower expectations are theoretically consistent with having fewer resources to pursue higher education, and lower aspirations are consistent with the theory that material barriers like poverty not only block societal advancement, but also hinder youth's aspirations to strive toward educational advancement (Laurin, Engstrom, & Alic, 2019).…”

Social class transitions: Three guiding questions for moving the study of class to a dynamic perspective

“…Third, the experience of social class change is a human experience about which scholars simply know little. Some researchers have examined people's beliefs about social class change (Davidai, 2018;Kraus & Tan, 2015); others have explored how dominant group members behave in ways that make change more or less likely (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2005;Phillips & Lowery, 2020;Rivera, 2016); and still others have studied how subordinate group members come to accept the unchanging systems they are in (Laurin, Engstrom, & Alic, 2019). However, one avenue that has yet to be fully explored is how people experience change and its implications for well-being, health, and adaptation.…”

Who aspires to have more? The impacts of social class and economic inequality on people’s desire for wealth and status

“…With regard to the "wealthy people earning more" type of inequality (which is commonly the case in many developing economies), we argue that as long as poor people also enjoy a growth in their fortunes, they will be more optimistic about their future gains (e.g., they have the hope that they will be better off in future, Cheung, 2015) and consequently, they might up-regulate their desire for wealth and status. However, with regard to the "poor people earning less" type of inequality, we predict that lower-class individuals will perceive both lower efficacy expectations and lower outcome expectations (Laurin et al, 2019) and…”

“…Third, given that the present thesis focuses on "why upper-class individuals want more" (Chapter 2), to explain the social class differences in individuals' desire for wealth and status, it would be conducive for future research to examine "why lower-class individuals want less". To answer this question, it may be useful to engage with recent work that has suggested three conditions under which lower-class individuals might be less motivated to seek to improve their situations (Laurin, Engstrom, & Alic, 2019). Specifically, lower-class individuals might abandon their striving for upward social mobility when they experience (a) lower efficacy expectation (i.e., they feel they lack skills and external support), (b) lower outcome expectation (i.e., they do not believe that their efforts will pay off), or (c) lower outcome evaluation (i.e., they think the outcome is not valuable or worth pursuing; Laurin et al, 2019).…”

“…To answer this question, it may be useful to engage with recent work that has suggested three conditions under which lower-class individuals might be less motivated to seek to improve their situations (Laurin, Engstrom, & Alic, 2019). Specifically, lower-class individuals might abandon their striving for upward social mobility when they experience (a) lower efficacy expectation (i.e., they feel they lack skills and external support), (b) lower outcome expectation (i.e., they do not believe that their efforts will pay off), or (c) lower outcome evaluation (i.e., they think the outcome is not valuable or worth pursuing; Laurin et al, 2019). It is worth nothing that the two latter conditions-lower outcome expectation and lower outcome evaluation-are also consistent with predictions derived from social identity theorizing.…”