Social Class Bias: A Phenomenological Study

Abstract

Nine licensed professional counselors participated in semi-structured interviews about social class and socioeconomic status, including their experiences with classism. Phenomenological analysis revealed both participant classism experiences and use of language that expressed social class bias. Implications and recommendations for future research for counselor educators and supervisors are provided.

A Mixed‐Methods Examination of Counselors' Social Class and Socioeconomic Status Perceptions

“…Authors have suggested that this pragmatic approach to understanding social class as SES factors only may be rooted in U.S. cultural messages such as the belief in meritocracy and that the United States is a "classless" society. Many of these ideas have gone unchallenged, causing counselors to misunderstand what people's lives are like outside of the dominant group (i.e., middle social class; Cook, 2017;West-Olatunji & Gibson, 2012), which is an obvious threat to humanistic counseling approaches.…”

“…Recent qualitative findings corroborate counseling professionals' social class and SES knowledge and awareness gaps. Cook and Lawson (2016) found professional counselors demonstrated limited social class and SES awareness and understanding, whereas Smith et al (2013) and Cook (2017) found counseling professionals held biases about individuals from low social class. Durante and Fiske (2017) explained that biases about people from low social class begin as early as elementary school, at which time children from low social class and middle social class alike believe that people from low social class are not as intelligent or capable as people who are middle social class and higher.…”

“…These results extended to the college years in which students who were working class self-rated their creativity, IQ, and overall intelligence lower than their middle social class peers, suggesting that social class was salient and had a negative impact on individuals from low social class (Durante & Fiske, 2017). Given that the majority of counselors are middle social class and may have little awareness and knowledge about low social class (Vontress, 2011), combined with how infrequently social class and SES are covered in multicultural counseling courses (Pieterse et al, 2009;Priester et al, 2008) and the general U.S. cultural reluctance to examine social class beliefs (Cook, 2017;West-Olatunji & Gibson, 2012), social class bias findings are worrisome and problematic, though contextually understandable.…”

“…The purpose of this study was to expand prior qualitative findings (i.e., Cook, 2017;Cook & Lawson, 2016;Smith et al, 2013) by garnering a broader, larger, and more diverse sample, and by investigating specific aspects of professional counselors' social class and SES perceptions. We sought to answer (a) How do counselors define social class based on their knowledge and experience?…”

“…It is important for counselors to understand the rich layers of cultural experiences that shape the notion of social class into a reality much greater than the factors associated with SES alone, so they have a stronger capacity to connect more fully with their clients' experiences. However, to date, social class and SES are underrepresented topics in counseling research (Clark et al, 2018) and counselor training programs (Priester et al, 2008), and researchers have found counselors hold social class bias (Cook, 2017;Smith et al, 2013), suggesting that counseling professionals need additional social class awareness, knowledge, and skills to attend to this rich component of clients' identities.…”