Advancing the psychology of social class with large-scale replications in four countries

As the topic of inequalities has gained attention in the past decade, social scientists have developed theoretical frameworks to understand how social class shapes the way individuals think, feel, and behave. These frameworks suggest that lower-class contexts nurture psychological and behavioral tendencies oriented toward others and the environment (interdependence, contextualism), whereas higher-class contexts nurture tendencies oriented toward the self (independence, solipsism). However, empirical research on social class faces obstacles that limit the generalizability of extant findings (small sample sizes, nondiverse convenience samples, measurement flexibility). We propose a large-scale (N = 36,000) and theoretically comprehensive replication of 43 key effects (from 22 studies) of social class on the self, relationships, emotions, cognition, social behavior, and decision-making. The project will also contribute to refining theoretical models by testing the predictive strength of widely (and flexibly) used measures of social class and individual, social, and structural moderators of the effects of social class.