Social Class, Contextualism, and Empathic Accuracy

Recent research suggests that lower-class individuals favor explanations of personal and political outcomes that are oriented to features of the external environment. We extended this work by testing the hypothesis that, as a result, individuals of a lower social class are more empathically accurate in judging the emotions of other people. In three studies, lower-class individuals (compared with upper-class individuals) received higher scores on a test of empathic accuracy (Study 1), judged the emotions of an interaction partner more accurately (Study 2), and made more accurate inferences about emotion from static images of muscle movements in the eyes (Study 3). Moreover, the association between social class and empathic accuracy was explained by the tendency for lower-class individuals to explain social events in terms of features of the external environment. The implications of class-based patterns in empathic accuracy for well-being and relationship outcomes are discussed.

[1]  William Ickes,et al.  Naturalistic Social Cognition: Empathic Accuracy in Mixed-Sex Dyads , 1990 .

[2]  Ernest T. Pascarella,et al.  How college affects students : findings and insights from twenty years of research , 1992 .

[3]  M. Morris,et al.  Culture and Cause: American and Chinese Attributions for Social and Physical Events , 1994 .

[4]  Cameron Anderson,et al.  Power, Approach, and Inhibition , 2003 .

[5]  K. Matthews,et al.  Understanding the association between socioeconomic status and physical health: do negative emotions play a role? , 2003, Psychological bulletin.

[6]  P. Bourdieu.  The social space and the genesis of groups , 1985 .

[7]  P. Bourdieu.  The social space and the genesis of groups , 1985 .

[8]  Klaus Jonas,et al.  Give a person power and he or she will show interpersonal sensitivity: the phenomenon and its why and when. , 2009, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[9]  P. Rossi,et al.  The measurement of SES in health research: current practice and steps toward a new approach. , 2003, Social science & medicine.

[10]  S. Baron-Cohen,et al.  The "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" Test revised version: a study with normal adults, and adults with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism. , 2001, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.

[11]  Ana Guinote,et al.  Power and Goal Pursuit , 2007, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[12]  Brad E. Sheese,et al.  Agreeableness, empathy, and helping: a person x situation perspective. , 2007, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[13]  H. Markus,et al.  You Can ’ t Always Get What You Want : Educational Attainment , Agency , and Choice , 2005 .

[14]  Ramaswami Mahalingam.  Essentialism, Culture, and Power: Representations of Social Class , 2003 .

[15]  D. A. Kenny,et al.  A Guide for the Estimation of Gender and Sexual Orientation Effects in Dyadic Data: An Actor-Partner Interdependence Model Approach , 2008, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[16]  E. Epel,et al.  Relationship of subjective and objective social status with psychological and physiological functioning: preliminary data in healthy white women. , 2000, Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association.

[17]  H. Markus,et al.  Choice as an act of meaning: the case of social class. , 2007, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[18]  Judith A. Hall,et al.  “Subordination” and Nonverbal Sensitivity: A Study and Synthesis of Findings Based on Trait Measures , 1997 .

[19]  P. Salovey,et al.  Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) Users Manual , 2002 .

[20]  S. Srivastava,et al.  The Big Five Trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical perspectives. , 1999 .

[21]  R. Levenson,et al.  Empathy: a physiological substrate. , 1992, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[22]  S. Fortmann,et al.  Socioeconomic status and health: how education, income, and occupation contribute to risk factors for cardiovascular disease. , 1992, American journal of public health.

[23]  P. Salovey,et al.  Emotional Intelligence and Social Interaction , 2004, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[24]  D. Annis.  Dyadic Data Analysis , 2007 .

[25]  R. Nisbett.  Intelligence and how to get it: Why schools and cultures count. , 2009 .

[26]  S. Preston,et al.  Educational differentials in mortality: United States, 1979-85. , 1996, Social science & medicine.

[27]  J. Mayer,et al.  Convergent, Discriminant, and Incremental Validity of Competing Measures of Emotional Intelligence , 2003, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[28]  Michael W. Kraus,et al.  Social class, sense of control, and social explanation. , 2009, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[29]  W. Ickes,et al.  Gender differences in empathic accuracy: Differential ability or differential motivation? , 2000 .

[30]  S. Côté,et al.  Emotional Intelligence, Cognitive Intelligence, and Job Performance , 2006 .

[31]  S. Folkman,et al.  Socioeconomic Status and Health , 1994 .

[32]  S. Gosling,et al.  A very brief measure of the Big-Five personality domains , 2003 .

[33]  Joe C Magee,et al.  From power to action. , 2003, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[34]  Judith A. Hall,et al.  Attributing the sources of accuracy in unequal-power dyadic communication : Who is better and why? , 2006 .

[35]  K. Matthews,et al.  Cognitive appraisal biases: An approach to understanding the relation between socioeconomic status and cardiovascular reactivity in children , 2001, Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine.

[36]  Robert F Krueger,et al.  How money buys happiness: genetic and environmental processes linking finances and life satisfaction. , 2006, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[37]  D. Oyserman,et al.  Does culture influence what and how we think? Effects of priming individualism and collectivism. , 2008, Psychological bulletin.

[38]  Michael W. Kraus,et al.  PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Research Article Signs of Socioeconomic Status A Thin-Slicing Approach , 2022 .

[39]  W. Ickes,et al.  Empathic accuracy in the interactions of male friends versus male strangers. , 1992, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[40]  M. Argyle.  The Psychology of Social Class , 1993 .