Economic inequality is at its highest point on record and is linked to poorer health and well-being across countries. The forces that perpetuate inequality continue to be studied, and here we examine how a person’s position within the economic hierarchy, their social class, is accurately perceived and reproduced by mundane patterns embedded in brief speech. Studies 1 through 4 examined the extent that people accurately perceive social class based on brief speech patterns. We find that brief speech spoken out of context is sufficient to allow respondents to discern the social class of speakers at levels above chance accuracy, that adherence to both digital and subjective standards for English is associated with higher perceived and actual social class of speakers, and that pronunciation cues in speech communicate social class over and above speech content. In study 5, we find that people with prior hiring experience use speech patterns in preinterview conversations to judge the fit, competence, starting salary, and signing bonus of prospective job candidates in ways that bias the process in favor of applicants of higher social class. Overall, this research provides evidence for the stratification of common speech and its role in both shaping perceiver judgments and perpetuating inequality during the briefest interactions.

for their thoughtful comments on an early draft of this manuscript. We also thank Fariba Ghayebi, Ali Bray, Bennett Callaghan, Breana Rucker, and Sidney Saint-Hilaire for their invaluable assistance with this research.

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Here, we look ahead to a psychology of power that is embedded in societal structures, specifically with regard to the North American context of race, gender, and social class. We argue that studies of power are limited when decoupled from these societal structures of power and we make this argument by examining dominant working definitions and links between power and prosociality. We end with a suggestion that a fully embedded and historical psychological account of social power will require greater constraints on generality, additional descriptive work on the experience of power in everyday life, and methods and samples that bring research on social power out of university spaces and into the places, spaces, and institutions where that power is intertwined.

Despite recent statements in support of racial justice many organizations fail to make good on their commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). In this review, we describe the role of the narrative of racial progress-which conceives of society as rapidly, naturally, and automatically ascending toward racial equity-in these failures. Specifically, the narrative of racial progress: 1) envisions organizations as race neutral, 2) creates barriers to more complex cross-race discussions about equity, 3) creates momentum for less effective policy change, and 4) reduces urgency around DEI goals. Thus, an effective DEI strategy will involve organizational leaders overcoming this narrative by acknowledging past DEI failures, and, most critically, implementing significant, immediate, and evidence-based structural changes that are essential for creating a more just and equitable workplace.