Perceptions of Socioeconomic Mobility Influence Academic Persistence among Low Socioeconomic Status Students

Abstract

Despite facing daunting odds of academic success compared with their more socioeconomically advantaged peers, many students from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds maintain high levels of academic motivation and persist in the face of difficulty. We propose that for these students, academic persistence may hinge on their perceptions of socioeconomic mobility, or their general beliefs regarding whether or not socioeconomic mobility—a powerful academic motivator—can occur in their society. Specifically, low-SES students' desire to persist on a primary path to mobility (i.e., school) should remain strong if they believe that socioeconomic mobility can occur in their society. By contrast, those who believe that socioeconomic mobility generally does not occur should be less motivated to persist academically. One correlational and two experimental studies provide support for this hypothesis among low (but not high) SES high school and university students. Implications for future intervention efforts are discussed.

Self‐affirmation reduces the socioeconomic attainment gap in schools in England

“…Low‐SES students who were told that the test was a measure of verbal intelligence performed worse than those who were told that it was an investigative tool for studying hypotheses about lexical processes, whereas higher‐SES students performed the same regardless of what they were told. Other studies have found similar effects in low‐SES students ranging from 6‐year‐olds to college students (Browman, Destin, Carswell, & Svoboda, ; Désert, Préaux, & Jund, ; Good, Aronson, & Inzlicht, ; Spencer & Castano, ).…”

How economic inequality shapes mobility expectations and behaviour in disadvantaged youth

“…That is, individuals from low-SES backgrounds might adjust their engagement in behaviors that can promote future socioeconomic success based on their perceptions of the attainability of socioeconomic mobility. These experimental findings are also complemented by at least five cross-sectional and longitudinal studies 48,55 .…”

“…Lab and real-world experiments that can causally test the antecedents and consequences of people's subjective, internal experiences are common in social psychological research 19,45 . In such designs, participants are randomly assigned to distinct experimental groups, such that some groups (but not others) are exposed to actual environmental conditions (e.g., the unequal distribution of resources in an economic game 46,47 ) or biased information about the social environment that they inhabit (e.g., a newspaper article discussing the lack of intergenerational mobility in a participant's country [48][49][50] ). By only manipulating one factor of interest (e.g., the levels of economic inequality or socioeconomic mobility that one perceived in their society), these experimental designs provide controlled tests of whether these isolated factors have a causal influence on an outcome of interest.…”

“…These studies have involved experimentally manipulating low-SES young people's beliefs about the attainability of economic mobility in their society and examining its impact on behaviors relevant to achieving future socioeconomic success. In one lab experiment with university students and one field experiment with students at the critical middle school-to-high school transition 48 , students from lower-and higher-SES backgrounds were presented with information that either suggested that socioeconomic mobility was something that generally could or could not occur in their society.…”

“…Household income represents families' census block group's median income (obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau) and is plotted at ±1 SD. Error bars represent ±1 SE.Figure adaptedwith permission from ref 48,. Elvesier.…”