Toward a Cultural Psychological Perspective on Social Class in the United States.

Social Class;Culture;Well-being;College Students;Education;Psychology;Social Sciences;Psychology and Education

Bowman, Nicholas A.Nisbett, Richard E. ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Social Class;    Culture;    Well-being;    College Students;    Education;    Psychology;    Social Sciences;    Psychology and Education;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/60790/nabowman_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Recent research has illustrated how culture can profoundly shape psychological processes and social interactions. However, relatively little is known about how these processes vary across social class groups in the United States. These dynamics are particularly important for colleges and universities, which both serve as the gateway to middle-class life and foster certain norms and values among their students. In Chapter 2, I propose that middle-class American (MC) contexts emphasize personal control and choice, whereas working-class American (WC) contexts emphasize self-reliance and hard work. Moreover, MC social networks, which are large and mostly voluntary, require a relatively greater attention to social others than do small, mostly involuntary WC networks. In two samples, MC were more likely than WC to attend to situational factors in drawing causal attributions, even when controlling for cognitive ability. Moreover, MC performed better than WC on a task requiring broad visual attention, whereas no social class difference occurred on a focused attention task. In Chapter 3, I argue that WC display well-being primarily through physical health, whereas MC display well-being primarily psychologically. First, these forms of well-being are most coherent in their respective socio-cultural contexts: Correlations among various physical health measures were higher for WC than MC, whereas the reverse was true for psychological well-being measures. Second, correlations between health measures and psychological measures were higher for WC than MC, suggesting that WC are more likely to use their physical health to inform their perceptions of psychological well-being. Third, psychosocial factors were better predictors of physical health for WC than MC, whereas the reverse was true for predicting psychological well-being. Chapter 4 explores the development of psychological well-being (PWB; Ryff, 1989) among first-generation and non-first-generation college freshmen. At the beginning of college, social class differences occurred for only two of the six PWB dimensions, whereas first-generation students scored lower on all dimensions at the end of the first year. The most consistent predictors of change in PWB were forming quality relationships with other students, being challenged in classroom settings, and having hostile interactions with diverse peers. The effects of some college experiences varied across social class.