Anatolia Batruch

When is membership in a social category considered a legitimate basis for treating peopledifferently? We compared two dimensions of social categorization that are central to debatesabout inequality and differential treatment: social class and race/ethnicity. In Study 1 (N =677 Swiss and U.S. students), participants evaluated a teacher who admitted vs. excluded aborderline student from an advanced track because of his working-class vs. racial/ethnicminority background. Differential treatment based on social class was judged more acceptablethan differential treatment based on race/ethnicity, regardless of whether it benefited orharmed the student. Open-ended responses suggested that social class elicited reasoning aboutunequal opportunities, whereas race/ethnicity elicited concerns about discrimination. Study 2(N = 2,777 U.S. adults) was consistent with these explanations: Social class disparities inresources were perceived as larger, but racial categories were perceived as more entitative andmeaningful. Study 3 (General Social Survey, 1975–2024) extended the asymmetry betweensocial class and race to attitudes about government assistance: Americans saw class-relatedfactors as more important than race for getting ahead in life and were correspondingly moresupportive of government assistance targeting poor than Black people. Taken together, thesefindings suggest that social class is a more permissible basis for differential treatment thanrace/ethnicity, an asymmetry that tracks how the two categories are perceived: race/ethnicityas a more coherent identity, and social class as a marker of individuals’ circumstances andopportunities.

Pursuing replicability — independent evidence for previous claims — is important for creating generalizable knowledge^1,2. Here we attempted replications of 274 claims of positive results from 164 quantitative papers published from 2009 to 2018 in 54 journals in the social and behavioural sciences. Replications were high powered on average to detect the original effect size (median of 99.6%), used original materials when relevant and available, and were peer reviewed in advance through a standardized internal protocol. Replications showed statistically significant results in the original pattern for 151 of 274 claims (55.1% (95% confidence interval (CI) 49.2–60.9%)) and for 80.8 of 164 papers (49.3% (95% CI 43.8–54.7%)), weighed for replicating multiple claims per paper. We observed modest variation in replication rates across disciplines (42.5–63.1%), although some estimates had high uncertainty. The median Pearson’s r effect size was 0.25 (95% CI 0.21–0.27) for original studies and 0.10 (95% CI 0.09–0.13) for replication studies, an 82.4% (95% CI 67.8–88.2%) reduction in shared variance. Thirteen methods for evaluating replication success provided estimates ranging from 28.6% to 74.8% (median of 49.3%). Some decline in effect size and significance is expected based on power to detect original effects and regression to the mean because we replicated only positive results. We observe that challenges for replicability extend across social–behavioural sciences, illustrating the importance of identifying conditions that promote or inhibit replicability^3,4.

Theoretical models have been developed to understand how social class influences individual thoughts, feelings and behaviours. However, the validity of these models is threatened by the prevailing use of small, non-diverse samples and flexible measurement practices. We preregistered replications of 35 key hypotheses from 17 correlational and 5 experimental studies, and collected large, quota-based or probability samples from the USA, France, Switzerland and India ( N _total = 33,536). Our analysis yielded three central findings: (1) ~50% of the effects were successfully replicated; (2) conclusions were consistent across different operationalizations of social class, although objective indicators yielded smaller estimates (for example, income and education); and (3) half of the effects were moderated—mostly strengthened—by social class identification, system-justification beliefs or local income inequality. Overall, hypotheses based on differences between social class contexts in terms of constraints, uncertainty and status were well supported. However, hypotheses based on models positing social class differences in psychological orientations towards ‘the self’ versus ‘others and the environment’ received less support. We conclude that these models need to be reassessed as individuals from higher social classes seem more oriented towards both themselves and others. The Stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 29 October 2021. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/B6Y8R .

Transitioning into young adulthood often brings about significant changes in personality traits. However, the reasons behind these personality changes remain unclear. This study integrates insights from research on personality development and the psychology of social class to study how the construction of one’s social class identity in young adulthood might trigger changes in personality traits (i.e., Big Five, locus of control, and risk-taking). We tested our preregistered hypotheses in the context of educational mobility, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study ( N = 4,776). Specifically, we investigated personality changes of young adults whose parents did not go to university, comparing those who are educationally mobile (i.e., go to university) with those who do not during the study period. Overall, the results indicated that upward educational mobility only leads to changes in risk-taking. Theoretical implications for the psychology of class mobility (selection vs. socialization effects) are discussed.

Educational institutions are imbued with an institutional meritocratic discourse: only merit counts for academic success. In this article, we study whether this institutional belief has an impact beyond its primary function of encouraging students to study. We propose that belief in school meritocracy has broader societal impact by legitimizing the social class hierarchy it produces and encouraging the maintenance of inequalities. The results of four studies (one correlational study, N_total = 198; one experiment, N_total = 198; and two international data surveys, N_total = 88,421 in 40+countries) indicate that belief in school meritocracy reduces the perceived unfairness of social class inequality in society, support for affirmative action policies at university and support for policies aimed at reducing income inequality. Together, these studies show that the belief that schools are meritocratic carries consequences beyond the school context as it is associated with attitudes that maintain social class and economic inequality.