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Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
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Article

Social Class Differences in Self, Attribution, and Attention: Socially Expansive Individualism of Middle-Class Americans

Nicholas A. Bowman*, Shinobu Kitayama, and Richard E. Nisbett

University of Notre Dame

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: nbowman{at}nd.edu.


  Abstract
Although U.S. culture strongly sanctions the ideal of independence, the specific ways in which independence is realized may be variable depending, among other factors, on social class. Characterized by relative scarcity of social and material resources, working-class (WC) Americans were expected to strongly value self-reliance. In contrast, with choices among abundant resources, middle-class (MC) Americans were expected to value personal control and social expansiveness. In support of this analysis, relative to their WC counterparts, MC Americans reported more support from friends and greater likelihood of giving and receiving advice but less self-reliance (Study 1). Furthermore, we found evidence that this social difference has cognitive consequences: College students with MC backgrounds were more likely than their WC counterparts were to endorse situational attributions for others’ behavior (Studies 2a and 2b) as well as to show holistic visual attention (Study 3).

First published on April 27, 2009, doi:10.1177/0146167209334782

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 2009;35:880.

A more recent version of this article appeared on July 1, 2009

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[Abstract] [PDF]