The hidden cues of social class: What do people rely on when determining someone else's social class?

Abstract

We aimed to understand the cues individuals use to assess social class, and their relation to social theories. Participant (N = 235) open-ended survey responses were coded in response to the following: “If you can at least sometimes tell if someone is (#1) working-class/poor OR (#2) middle-/upper-class, how can you tell? What are all of the characteristics, behaviors, and/or other indicators that communicate their social class to you?” Based on participant comments, we created six themes: embodied cultural capital, material/economic capital, taste, status/position, institutional cultural capital, and social capital. First, we found spontaneous participant responses reflected several classic social class theories. Second, while the content often differed in terms of how participants discussed the working-class/poor compared to the middle-/upper-class, there was only one significant difference in frequency of response. Specifically, participants were more likely to express the embodied cultural capital theme when asked about the working-class/poor. Finally, participants with some more privileged identities (e.g., racially white, those with higher education, straight/heterosexual participants) were more likely to focus on symbolic or non-material aspects of class compared to participants with some less privileged identities (e.g., participants with lower incomes in their families of origin), who focused more on material and economic cues in determining a person's class.