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Hidden advantages and disadvantages of social class: How classrooms reproduce social inequality by staging unfair comparison

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Three studies conducted among fifth and sixth graders examined how school contexts disrupt the achievement of working-class students by staging unfair comparison with their advantaged middle-class peers. In regular classrooms, differences in performance among students are usually showcased in a way that does not acknowledge the advantage (i.e., higher cultural capital) experienced by middle-class students, whose upbringing affords them more familiarity with the academic culture than their working-class peers have. Results of Study 1 revealed that rendering differences in performance visible in the classroom by having students raise their hands was enough to undermine the achievement of working-class students. In Studies 2 and 3, we manipulated students’ familiarity with an arbitrary standard as a proxy for social class. Our results suggest that classroom settings that make differences in performance visible undermine the achievement of the students who are less familiar with academic culture. In Study 3, we showed that being aware of the advantage in familiarity with a task restores the performance of the students who have less familiarity with the task.
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DOI: 10.1177/0956797616676600
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Research Article
Although the relationship between social class and aca-
demic achievement has been documented in countless
studies, the processes by which social class translates
into differences in academic achievement are far from
fully understood. The present article focuses on how
classroom arrangements and social class interact to repro-
duce social inequality, an overlooked cause of the social-
class achievement gap.
Social class is associated with important economic and
cultural differences known to dramatically affect educa-
tional outcomes (APA Task Force on Socioeconomic Sta-
tus, 2007). Relative to middle-class families, low-income
families face important structural and economic barriers
that can deprive them of basic necessities, such as enough
food or access to adequate educational facilities or
resources (e.g., Ackerman, Brown, & Izard, 2004; Duncan
& Brooks-Gunn, 1997). Partly because of the same barri-
ers, working-class parents are also less likely than those
from the middle class to engage in cultural practices that
facilitate academic success, such as reading stories to
children or frequenting museums (e.g., Bradley, Corwyn,
McAdoo, & Garcia Coll, 2001). But these inequalities do
not tell the whole story.
Educational contexts also play a role in the gap in
achievement between social classes. For example, class-
rooms are not immune from negative stereotypes about
social class that disrupt the achievement of low-income
students and boost self-efficacy among their better-off
peers (Croizet & Millet, 2012). Academic contexts can
also prompt competitive motivation (rather than mastery
goals), which impairs the achievement of working-class
students and facilitates that of the middle-class students
676600PSSXXX10.1177/0956797616676600Goudeau, CroizetHidden Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Class
research-article2016
Corresponding Author:
Jean-Claude Croizet, Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition et
l’Apprentissage, Université de Poitiers, Bâtiment A5, 5 rue Théodore
Lefebvre, TSA 21103, F-86000 Poitiers Cedex 9, France
E-mail: jean-claude.croizet@univ-poitiers.fr
Hidden Advantages and Disadvantages
of Social Class: How Classroom Settings
Reproduce Social Inequality by Staging
Unfair Comparison
Sébastien Goudeau and Jean-Claude Croizet
Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition et l’Apprentissage and CNRS Unité Mixte de Recherche 7295,
Université de Poitiers
Abstract
Three studies conducted among fifth and sixth graders examined how school contexts disrupt the achievement of
working-class students by staging unfair comparison with their advantaged middle-class peers. In regular classrooms,
differences in performance among students are usually showcased in a way that does not acknowledge the advantage
(i.e., higher cultural capital) experienced by middle-class students, whose upbringing affords them more familiarity
with the academic culture than their working-class peers have. Results of Study 1 revealed that rendering differences in
performance visible in the classroom by having students raise their hands was enough to undermine the achievement
of working-class students. In Studies 2 and 3, we manipulated students’ familiarity with an arbitrary standard as a proxy
for social class. Our results suggest that classroom settings that make differences in performance visible undermine the
achievement of the students who are less familiar with academic culture. In Study 3, we showed that being aware of
the advantage in familiarity with a task restores the performance of the students who have less familiarity with the task.
Keywords
socioeconomic status, academic achievement, sociocultural factors, social comparison, open data, open materials
Received 12/6/15; Revision accepted 10/9/16
2 Goudeau, Croizet
(Smeding, Darnon, Souchal, Toczek-Capelle, & Butera,
2013). Far from being neutral, however, education is
inherently saturated with implicit cultural norms that
advantage middle-class students (Bourdieu & Passeron,
1990; Stephens, Markus, & Phillips, 2014). Indeed, aca-
demic contexts value some forms of language use (Carter,
2003; Lahire, 1993), academic attitudes (Blackledge,
2001), school knowledge (Lareau & Weininger, 2003),
bodily posture (Bourdieu, 1979), and models of agency
(Stephens etal., 2014) that are closer to the cultural dis-
positions shaped in the middle class (Lareau, 2003). For
instance, education favors the use of written language,
the expression of personal opinions, and interest in the
arts and literature, all things that match the cultural prac-
tices of middle-class families (Lareau, 2001).
This unequal overlap between academic and family
cultural practices indicates that academic norms reflect
some degree of cultural arbitrariness (Bourdieu & Passeron,
1990; Labov, 1970). This cultural arbitrariness has conse-
quences. Being at ease with these norms makes middle-
class students more familiar with academic expectations
and gives them a head start in the classroom. Familiarity
with the academic standards therefore constitutes a cul-
tural capital (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990; Lamont &
Lareau, 1988). However, entering the classroom with
more cultural capital does more than facilitate perfor-
mance: Because classrooms are conceived to be as a
level playing field, having higher cultural capital also
means being perceived as being smarter (Kelley, 1967;
Plaut & Markus, 2005).
In the experiments reported here, our goal was to
document a general process through which this contin-
gent advantage unfolds in the classroom. Our hypothesis
was that school fuels the social-class achievement gap by
enabling unfair social comparisons among students. More
specifically, we argue that educational contexts under-
mine the achievement of disadvantaged students by
showcasing differences in students’ performance in a
way that does not acknowledge the reality that certain
students, because of their social background, are already
familiar with the academic standard. Indeed, being out-
performed by other students can threaten self-image
(Huguet et al., 2009; Muller & Butera, 2007; Rogers &
Feller, 2016) and trigger self-doubt about incompetence
that taxes cognitive resources and undermines higher
cognition (Autin & Croizet, 2012). Because of their rela-
tive lack of familiarity with academic standards, working-
class students should therefore be prone to experience
debilitating social comparisons.
We tested this hypothesis in three studies conducted
among fifth and sixth graders in their regular classrooms.
Given the well-documented social-class differences in
familiarity with academic culture (Lahire, 1993, 2008;
Lareau, 2003), Study 1 focused on reading comprehension.
Our goal was to examine whether rendering students’ per-
formance differences visible in the classroom without
acknowledging disadvantages in cultural capital was
enough to widen the achievement gap between social
classes. Social class is confounded with multiple variables
and processes; therefore, in Studies 2 and 3, we manipu-
lated cultural capital (i.e., students’ familiarity with an arbi-
trary academic standard) as a proxy for social class. In
Study 2, we used an arbitrary written language, and stu-
dents were made more or less familiar with it through a
training exercise before being tested on the language.
Finally, in Study 3, to test whether being oblivious to the
disadvantage regarding academic standards is related to
the underachievement of the students who have less famil-
iarity with academic standards, we also manipulated
awareness of the disadvantage.
Study 1
In Study 1, we examined whether academic situations
that make differences in students’ performance visible in
the classroom impaired working-class students’ perfor-
mance in reading comprehension, an exercise with which
such students would be less familiar (e.g., Lahire, 1993).
Sixth graders took a difficult reading-comprehension test
and had to answer successive questions displayed on the
board. So that any differences in the students’ perfor-
mance were visible, we asked students to raise their
hands each time they completed an answer. In another
condition, no such requirement was made, thereby mini-
mizing the visibility of differences in students’ perfor-
mance. We expected that simply having students raise
their hands would lead working-class students to experi-
ence a disruptive social comparison, which we expected
would undermine their achievement.
Method
Participants. A total of 953 students in the sixth grade
(40 classrooms, 8 middle schools) voluntarily enrolled
in the experiment with administrative authorization and
parental consent (456 girls, 497 boys; mean age = 11.5
years, SD = 0.90). Sample size was determined by the
number of schools that agreed to participate in the
study. To ensure the anonymity of the collected data
(sex, date of birth, occupation of parents, and students’
academic level in French—i.e., their grade point aver-
ages), the schools attributed a random identification
code to each student by the school administration, and
we used this code to match students’ performance and
administrative records. We excluded from the analyses
the data from 16students who had specific reading dis-
orders and from 2 students for whom parental occupa-
tions were unknown. We also excluded the data from
Hidden Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Class 3
191 students whose parents’ occupation (e.g., “military
personnel,” “intermediate civil servant”) could not be
classified as either working class or upper middle class
(see the criteria in the next section; Croizet & Claire,
1998). The proportion of working-class students and
upper-middle-class students did not differ across schools,
χ2(7, N = 744) = 8.10, p = .324, or classrooms, χ2(39, N =
744) = 27.70, p = .912, which suggests that school and
classroom composition was relatively consistent. The
final sample included 744 students in the sixth grade,
assigned to groups for social class as described in the
next paragraph. Finally, in each school, classrooms were
randomly assigned to one of the two assessment condi-
tions (visibility of differences in achievement: visible vs.
not visible).
Social class. Social class was assessed according to
parental occupations (see Croizet & Claire, 1998). It was
the only indicator available from the French school author-
ities. Information about ethnicity was not available because
this information cannot legally be collected in France.
Social-class ranking was determined by the highest level of
occupation held by either parent. For example, if the
mother was a physician and the father a manual worker,
the student was assigned to the upper-middle-class group.
Separate analyses conducted regarding social class,
defined by either the father’s or mother’s occupation,
yielded similar results. Students in the working-class group
included children of manual laborers (55.4%), administra-
tive workers (24.1%), other blue-collar workers (employ-
ees, artisans, farmers, 12.7%), and unemployed persons
(7.8%). Students in the upper-middle-class group included
children of managers (63.8%), researchers and professors
(23.6%), professionals (10%), and miscellaneous occupa-
tions (2.6%). Our final sample included 473 working-class
students and 271 upper-middle-class students.
Materials and procedure. In each middle school, the
experiment was conducted in the same room for all class-
rooms. Children took a national standardized reading-
comprehension test that was difficult because it was
designed for seventh graders1 (Ministère de l’Education
Nationale de la Recherche et de l’Enseignement Supérieur,
2003; also see Autin & Croizet, 2012). The experiment was
introduced to the students as an assessment of their read-
ing and comprehension ability. Students were first asked
to read a difficult text, which remained available to them
throughout the test. Then, they had to answer 15 ques-
tions displayed successively on slides, and students had
45 s to write each answer in a notebook. The reading test
was scored according to the number of correct answers.
Because some questions involved up to three answers,
the possible score ranged from 0 to 20.
Visibility of differences in performance. In the visi-
bility condition, performance differences among students
were suggested: Students were required to raise their
hands if they believed they had the answer before the
allotted time. In the no-visibility condition, differences in
performance remained unnoticed because students were
explicitly told not to signal to the experimenter when they
were done answering a question. After the experiment,
students were thanked and debriefed. They were informed
that the task was very difficult for sixth graders and that
experiencing difficulty was normal and expected. To
avoid contamination among participants within a given
school, we ran the experiment in half a day, which
involved obtaining special permission and organizing the
time so that students in one given classroom could never
pass students from other classrooms: Different recess
times were scheduled, and each class group was escorted
to the experiment room by a teaching assistant.
Results
Analyses were performed using the lme4 (Bates, Maechler,
Bolker, & Walker, 2013) and lmerTest packages
(Kuznetsova, Brockhoff, & Christensen, 2016) for the R
software environment (Version 3.1.2; R Development Core
Team, 2014). We relied on linear mixed modeling to deal
with the nonindependence in the data—students were
nested within classrooms, which were nested in schools
(Westfall, Kenny, & Judd, 2014). The Bayesian information
criterion (Schwarz, 1978) was used to evaluate the good-
ness of fit for each model (Pitt & Myung, 2002). All the
mixed effects were tested using likelihood-ratio tests
(Pinheiro & Bates, 2000). The model with the most com-
plex adjustment (Barr, Levy, Scheepers, & Tily, 2013) and
the smallest Bayesian information criterion was retained. It
included by-school and by-classroom random intercepts,
social class, the visibility of differences in performance,
and the interaction of social class and the visibility of dif-
ferences in performance as fixed effects. Because the num-
ber of participants varied across groups, a Satterthwaite
correction was used to estimate degrees of freedom.
The number of correct answers on the reading-
comprehension test constituted our dependent variable.
We first tested for effects of gender and academic level in
French, recoding each value as the deviation from the
mean (i.e., x minus the mean of x). These analyses
revealed significant main effects of both gender (boys:
M= 8.92, SD = 3.98, 95% confidence interval, or CI = [8.64,
9.21]; girls: M = 9.80, SD = 4.08, 95% CI = [9.51, 10.09]),
F(1, 743.60) = 12.00, p < .001,2 and academic level, b =
0.60, 95% CI = [0.54, 0.75], F(1, 742.29) = 169.09, p < .001.
However, these factors did not moderate the effects of our
focal variables (visibility of differences in performance
4 Goudeau, Croizet
and social class) on reading-comprehension and were
dropped from the reported analysis. The analysis yielded
a main effect of social class: Reading-comprehension
scores for working-class students, M = 8.28, SD = 3.77,
95% CI = [8.01, 8.55], were lower than those of upper-
middle-class students, M = 11.21, SD = 3.84, 95% CI =
[10.93, 11.48], F(1, 740.28) = 108.52, p < .001. The analysis
also showed a main effect of the visibility of differences
in achievement. Students’ performance was lower when
differences in knowledge became visible through hand
raising, M = 8.66, SD = 4.14, 95% CI = [8.36, 8.95], than
when they were not, M = 10.06, SD = 3.83, 95% CI=
[9.78, 10.34], F(1, 741.66) = 16.19, p < .001. These main
effects were qualified by the expected interaction
between social class and visibility, F(1, 740.39) = 23.80,
p < .001 (see Fig. 1).
In accordance with our hypothesis, the social-class gap
in reading comprehension increased when differences in
performance were visible. As predicted, students from
working-class backgrounds underperformed when the
superior performance of their peers was suggested
through hand raising, M = 7.09, SD = 3.52, 95% CI = [6.85,
7.35], compared with when it was not, M = 9.50, SD =
3.63, 95% CI = [9.24, 9.77], F(1, 742.14) = 54.21, p < .001.
Students from upper-middle-class backgrounds, however,
were not affected by visible differences in performance,
F(1, 740.33) = 0.28, p > .250, indicating a possible ceiling
effect or the fact that being at ease with the task brings
enough sense of self-efficacy that downward social com-
parison offers no further benefit (Bandura, 1997).
Study 2
In Study 2, our goal was to further test the hypothesis
that working-class students underperform because their
lower familiarity with the culture of academic writing and
linguistic norms leads them to think that if they lag
behind, it is a sign of lower ability; such a construal is
known to undermine higher cognition among sixth grad-
ers (see Autin & Croizet, 2012). In Study 2, we manipu-
lated the level of familiarity with academic standards (i.e.,
cultural capital) as a proxy for social class. We designed
a task that involved learning a new writing code. Two
levels of familiarity with this arbitrary code were opera-
tionalized before students took a coding test without
their being aware of it. As in Study 1, in one condition of
the test, students had to raise their hands each time they
completed a word. There was no such requirement in the
other condition, which minimized the visibility of differ-
ences in performance. We hypothesized that having stu-
dents raise their hands to signal completion should be
detrimental to the achievement of their peers who were
less familiar with the academic standards (i.e., those with
the least cultural capital).
Method
Participants. A total of 131 students in the fifth grade
(64 girls, 67 boys; mean age = 10.2 years, SD = 0.7) par-
ticipated in their regular classrooms with consent of their
parents and school authorities (five classrooms from five
elementary schools). The sample size was determined by
the number of schools that agreed to participate in the
study. Additional data about students’ academic level
(based on teachers’ evaluations) and social class (i.e.,
working class, intermediate, upper middle class, deter-
mined by parental occupation) were also collected.
Social-class composition was relatively consistent across
classrooms, χ2(8, N = 131) = 9.09, p = .334. Participants
were randomly assigned to a 2 (level of familiarity: high
vs. low) × 2 (visibility of performance differences: visible
vs. not visible) between-participants design.
Task familiarity. First, during a familiarization phase,
students performed a coding task and a filler task embed-
ded in the same booklet. The coding task was modeled
after the code subtest of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale
for Children–4th edition (Wechsler, 2004). It involved
learning the association between a series of letters and a
corresponding set of symbols, as if the students were
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
Working Class Upper Middle Class
Reading-Comprehension Score
Social Class
Differences Not Visible (No Hand Raising)
Differences Visible (Hand Raising)
Fig. 1. Results for Study 1: reading-comprehension score (number of
correct answers) as a function of social class (working class vs. upper-
middle class), presented separately for classrooms in which differences
in performance were visible and were not visible during the test (not
visible: hand down vs. visible: hand raising). Scores ranged from 0 to
20. Error bars represent +1 SEM.
Hidden Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Class 5
learning a new written code. For that purpose, partici-
pants had to write down the symbols associated with a
given letter as specified in an available code key. The
filler task involved easy basic arithmetic (e.g., “8 + 3 = ?”).
The tasks were presented in a single booklet to avoid
arousing suspicion about the experimental manipulation.
In the high-familiarity condition, students spent 75% of
the allotted time working on the coding task and 25% of
the time on the filler task. In the low-familiarity condi-
tion, the percentages were reversed.
Visibility of differences in performance. After the
familiarization phase, students took a coding test described
as an assessment of memory and comprehension abilities.
It involved coding 15 pairs of words without the code
answer key. Each pair was presented simultaneously to all
students, who had 45 s to write down the corresponding
symbols for each pair. In the visibility condition, students
were instructed to raise their hands each time they com-
pleted a word before the allotted time. When the time was
up, the children who also had coded an almost complete
answer but missed one letter were asked to raise their
hands. Then the hand-raising instruction was given to
those who had almost a complete answer minus two let-
ters, and finally to those who were short by three letters.
In the no visibility condition, students simply performed
the task. Finally, students were fully debriefed and thanked
for their participation.
Results
We followed an analytical strategy similar to that specified
for Study 1. We ran a linear mixed model with the level of
familiarity, the visibility of differences in achievement, and
the interaction between these two factors as fixed factors
and classrooms as a random factor. The model included
by-classroom random intercepts to account for variability
across classrooms. The outcome variable was the number
of correct answers on the coding task. First, we performed
preliminary separate analyses that tested whether stu-
dents’ social class or academic level (each value was
recoded as the deviation from the mean, or x minus the
mean of x) interacted with our manipulations. These pre-
analyses revealed a main effect of students’ academic
level on coding performance, F(1, 127.56) = 6.43, p = .012,
but no effect of social class F(2, 129.55) = 0.18, p > .25.
The latter finding confirmed that the arbitrary academic
standard we implemented was not related to social class.
In addition, neither academic level nor social class inter-
acted with our experimental design. These factors were
therefore dropped from the analyses reported.
The analysis yielded a trivial main effect of familiarity:
Students with higher familiarity performed better, M =
94.51, SD = 40.80, 95% CI = [87.46, 101.57], than those
with lower familiarity, M = 46.86, SD = 32.09, 95% CI =
[41.32, 52.41], F(1, 127.29) = 64.06, p < .001. This main
effect was qualified by the expected interaction between
familiarity and visibility of differences in achievement,
F(1, 127.52) = 4.10, p = .045 (see Fig. 2). In accordance
with our hypothesis, the achievement gap between the
two levels of familiarity increased when differences in
achievement were visible. As predicted, students with
low familiarity performed more poorly when their peers’
performance was visible, M = 34.76, SD = 26.34, 95% CI=
[30.20, 39.31], than when their peers’ performance was
not visible, M = 58.62, SD = 33.13, 95% CI = [52.89, 64.34],
F(1, 128.03) = 6.84, p = .010. Students in the high-
familiarity condition were not affected by the visibility of
differences in achievement, F(1, 126.96) = 0.07, p > .25.
The results of Study 2 indicate that students who lack
cultural capital (i.e., who are less familiar with an arbi-
trary academic standard than are their peers) under-
achieve when differences in performance become visible
in the classroom. Our randomized design, which dissoci-
ated advantage or disadvantage from social class, pre-
cludes any interpretation in terms of stereotype threat, as
lower familiarity could not be related to any group repu-
tation of low ability in this study (Croizet & Claire, 1998).
Study 3
In Study 3, we aimed to substantiate our claim that the way
students make sense of the differences in performance
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
Low High
Number of Correctly Coded Letters
Level of Familiarity With Task
Differences Not Visible (No Hand Raising)
Differences Visible (Hand Raising)
Fig. 2. Results for Study 2: number of correctly coded letters as a func-
tion of familiarity with the task (low vs. high), separately by visibility
of differences in achievement (not visible: hand down vs. visible: hand
raising). Scores ranged from 0 to 150. Error bars represent +1 SEM.
6 Goudeau, Croizet
staged in the classroom undermines the achievement of
the students who are the least familiar with academic
standards. Because the disadvantages in cultural capital
are hidden, students who are less familiar with the stan-
dards have few options other than to interpret their expe-
rience of difficulty relative to others as a sign of intellectual
inferiority (Kelley, 1967). We theorized that concerns aris-
ing from such interpretations, which disrupt working
memory among sixth graders (Autin & Croizet, 2012),
might dissipate if students became aware of the disad-
vantage present in the situation. Therefore, in one condi-
tion in Study 3, students were informed that some of their
classroom peers were more familiar with the task because
they had benefited from better training earlier (aware-of-
disadvantage condition). In the other condition, which
was similar to one of the conditions in Study 2, the
advantage in familiarity remained hidden. All participants
were asked to raise their hands if they completed the task
within the allotted time. If the underperformance of stu-
dents who are less familiar with a task compared with
their peers is driven by a threatening interpretation of
differences in performance (as we believe), changing the
meaning of these differences should restore their achieve-
ment. Finally, manipulating the meaning of hand raising
while maintaining hand raising constant across condi-
tions allowed us to reject the possibility that it was hand
raising per se that disrupted the performance of the stu-
dents in our previous studies who were less familiar with
the task.
Method
Participants. A total of 136 students in the fifth grade
(60 girls, 76 boys; mean age = 10.7 years, SD = 0.97) par-
ticipated in their regular classrooms with the authoriza-
tion of their parents and school authorities (six classrooms
of six elementary schools). The sample size was deter-
mined by the number of schools that agreed to partici-
pate in the study. Students’ academic level (based on
teachers’ evaluation) and social class assessed by paren-
tal occupation were collected but dropped from analyses
because they did not interact with our design. The six
classrooms were relatively homogeneous regarding
social-class composition, χ2(10, N = 136) = 6.41, p = .780.
Students were randomly assigned to a 2 (familiarity with
the task: high vs. low) × 2 (awareness of disadvantage:
aware vs. unaware) between-participants design.
Task familiarity. The two conditions of familiarity
were very similar to those in Study 2, except that all chil-
dren were explicitly instructed to learn the associations
between letters and symbols to minimize variability in
students’ spontaneous strategies.
Awareness of advantage in familiarity. After the
familiarization phase, students took a coding test similar
to that in Study 2, except that they had to decode 12 pairs
of symbols. All participants were required to raise a hand
if they finished before the allotted time, making differ-
ences in achievement visible in all conditions. In the
awareness condition, participants were informed that
some of them spent 75% of their time (“15 training exer-
cises out of 20”) preparing for the test, whereas other
participants spent only 25% of their time on this task (“5
training exercises out of 20”). As in the unawareness con-
dition of Study 2, no information was provided to the
participants about familiarization.
Results
Following the analytical strategy of previous studies, we
analyzed the number of correct answers with a linear
mixed model; we included level of familiarity, awareness
of the advantage in having familiarity (unawareness vs.
awareness), and the interaction between these two factors
as fixed factors, and we included classrooms as a random
factor. The outcome variable was the number of correct
answers on the coding task. Preliminary analyses assess-
ing whether social class or academic level interacted with
our experimental design yielded no main effect of social
class, F(2, 128.26)= 1.61, p = .204, and a main effect of
academic level, F(1, 131.31)= 9.83, p = .002, indicating
again that the arbitrary academic standard that we imple-
mented was unrelated to social class. As in Study 2, nei-
ther social class nor student’s academic level interacted
with our design. These factors were dropped from further
analyses.
The analysis yielded a trivial main effect of familiarity:
Students who were more familiar with the task, M =
98.94, SD = 23.32, 95% CI = [94.98, 102.89], performed
better than their peers who were less familiar with the
task, M = 68.26, SD = 31.35, 95% CI = [62.95, 73.58], F(1,
130.27) = 50.02, p < .001. This main effect was qualified
by the expected interaction between familiarity and
awareness of the advantage in having familiarity, F(1,
130.00) = 7.03, p = .009 (see Fig. 3). As hypothesized, the
students who were less familiar with the task performed
better when the advantage in familiarity was unveiled,
M= 78.26, SD = 31.05, 95% CI = [72.99, 83.53], than when
it remained hidden, M = 58.26, SD = 28.72, 95% CI =
[53.39, 63.14], F(1, 130.04) = 10.51, p = .001. No such
effect was observed for the students who were more
familiar with the task, F(1, 130.05) = 0.26, p > .250. This
finding provides evidence that what matters is how visi-
ble differences in performance are interpreted. Study 3
showed that when students were left unaware of the
advantage some of them enjoyed, the students who were
Hidden Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Class 7
less familiar with the task (compared with peers who
were more familiar) underachieved when differences in
performance were visible in the classroom. However,
when raised hands meant that some students were
advantaged, and therefore not necessarily smarter, wit-
nessing differences in performance did not harm the
achievement of the students who were less familiar with
the task. Finally, because all students raised their hands,
the findings for this study allow us to reject the possibility
that hand raising per se explains the performance drop
reported in Studies 1 and 2.
Discussion
Across three behavioral studies, we showed that class-
rooms magnify the social-class achievement gap by
enabling social comparisons that undermine the perfor-
mance of working-class students. Classrooms indeed
usually showcase differences in performance in a way
that does not acknowledge the advantage given
to students whose social class affords them a greater
familiarity with the implicit standards valued in education
(Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990). Study 1 revealed that sim-
ply having students raise their hands to signal completion
during a difficult reading test undermined the perfor-
mance of the working-class students, whose lower famil-
iarity with the academic language is well established
(Lahire, 2008; Lareau, 2003). Because social class is con-
founded with multiple factors and processes, we manipu-
lated students’ familiarity with an arbitrary academic
standard as a proxy for social class. In Study 2, the exper-
imentally disadvantaged students underperformed when
the higher performance of the experimentally advan-
taged students was suggested through hand raising,
which proves that an arbitrary and hidden advantage can
fuel the achievement gap. Study 3 showed that making
students aware of this advantage in cultural capital could
change the story: Despite the visibly better achievement
of their peers, the students who were less familiar with
the task did not underachieve when the disadvantage in
the levels of familiarity with the task was revealed.
Contributing to a growing body of work, our findings
confirm that reproduction in education is not simply the
product of prior differences among students: Educational
contexts can amplify the social-class achievement gap
(Smeding etal., 2013; Stephens, Fryberg, Markus, Johnson,
& Covarrubias, 2012). Our research is the first to provide
a direct test of the hypothesis, initially formulated by
Bourdieu (1974), that educational settings perpetuate
social inequality by “giving recognition to a cultural heri-
tage . . . , to a social gift treated as a natural one” (p. 32).
Relying on randomized experimental designs, we showed
that classroom situations set the stage for disruptive social
comparisons that harm the achievement of students who
are less familiar than their peers with the arbitrary codes
and standards valued in education. Because education is
generally conceived as a level playing field (Guinier,
2015), students are left with few options other than to
interpret their experience of difficulty relative to others as
a sign of intellectual inferiority, a construal detrimental to
higher cognition among children (Autin & Croizet, 2012).
Our findings indicate that making students aware of the
disadvantage conferred to some of them restores the per-
formance of the students who are less familiar with aca-
demic standards
We operationalized disadvantage in cultural capital as
variations of students’ familiarity with an arbitrary aca-
demic standard. Research has documented that, com-
pared with poor parents, upper-middle-class parents
engage in a form of parenting that indeed leads to the
transmission of vocabulary and communication skills that
are valued in school (Lareau, 2003). These language
dispositions constitute an important aspect of cultural
capital (Lareau & Weininger, 2003). But cultural capital
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
Low High
Number of Correctly Decoded Symbols
Level of Familiarity With Task
Aware of Disdvantange in Familiarity Level
Unaware of Disadvantage in Familiarity Level
Fig. 3. Results for Study 3: number of correctly decoded symbols as
a function of level of familiarity with the task, separately for students
who were aware of the disadvantage in levels of familiarity with the
task and those who were not. Differences in performance were visible
in all conditions (i.e., hands were raised). Scores ranged from 0 to 120.
Error bars represent +1 SEM.
8 Goudeau, Croizet
encompasses many other outcomes of class socialization,
such as body posture, cognizance of “legitimate” cultural
knowledge (e.g., visiting art exhibitions), sense of entitle-
ment (Lareau, 2003), or cultural models of self (Stephens
et al., 2012). Future research will have to examine
whether unawareness of the advantage in these other
aspects of cultural capital can amplify, through social
comparison, the social-class achievement gap.
In summary, our research reveals how regular educa-
tional contexts can magnify social inequalities. Simply
having students raise their hands in the classroom to sig-
nal achievement, a practice widely used for classroom
management (Ryan, Cooper, & Tauer, 2013; Tanner,
2013), can have a debilitating impact on the achievement
of working-class students. We showed that this predica-
ment results from a construal of the academic situation
that ignores the arbitrary advantage conferred to upper-
middle-class students. Our research suggests that chang-
ing the construal that the classroom is a level playing
field can offer better learning opportunities for children
from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Action Editor
Brian P. Ackerman served as action editor for this article.
Author Contributions
J.-C. Croizet developed the study concept. Both authors con-
tributed to the study design. S. Goudeau collected the data. S.
Goudeau and J.-C. Croizet performed the data analysis and
interpreted the results. J.-C. Croizet and S. Goudeau wrote the
manuscript. Both authors approved the final version of the
manuscript for submission.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Dominique Knutsen and
Dominique Muller for their help with data analysis.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with
respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.
Funding
This research was supported in part by a grant from the Contrat
Projet Etat Région (13e CPER programme 11 and 14e CPER –
INSECT – Contexte), Université de Poitiers, France.
Open Practices
All data and materials have been made publicly available via the
Open Science Framework and can be accessed at https://osf
.io/7d5b5/ and https://osf.io/jbfbp/, respectively. The complete
Open Practices Disclosure for this article can be found at http://
journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0956797616676600.
This article has received badges for Open Data and Open
Materials. More information about the Open Practices badges
can be found at https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki/1.%20View%20the%20
Badges/ and http://pss.sagepub.com/content/25/1/3.full.
Notes
1. The numbering of grade levels is different in France and
the United States. This test was intended for 12- to 13-year-
olds, who would attend the seventh grade in the United States
but the fifth year (cinquième) in France. Elsewhere in the text,
“fifth grade” and “sixth grade” are used as they would be in the
United States.
2. Effect sizes for the mixed models analyzed in the current
study are not reported because no method is currently available
to estimate them (J. Westfall, personal communication, October
30, 2014; see also Westfall etal., 2014).
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Class does make a difference in the lives and futures of American children. Drawing on in-depth observations of black and white middle-class, working-class, and poor families, Unequal Childhoods explores this fact, offering a picture of childhood today. Here are the frenetic families managing their children's hectic schedules of "leisure" activities; and here are families with plenty of time but little economic security. Lareau shows how middle-class parents, whether black or white, engage in a process of "concerted cultivation" designed to draw out children's talents and skills, while working-class and poor families rely on "the accomplishment of natural growth," in which a child's development unfolds spontaneously—as long as basic comfort, food, and shelter are provided. Each of these approaches to childrearing brings its own benefits and its own drawbacks. In identifying and analyzing differences between the two, Lareau demonstrates the power, and limits, of social class in shaping the lives of America's children. The first edition of Unequal Childhoods was an instant classic, portraying in riveting detail the unexpected ways in which social class influences parenting in white and African American families. A decade later, Annette Lareau has revisited the same families and interviewed the original subjects to examine the impact of social class in the transition to adulthood.
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