Lower social class, better social skills? A registered report testing diverging predictions from the rank and cultural approaches to social class

Are people with lower socioeconomic status (SES) better than those with higher SES at empathic accuracy, or recognizing others' thoughts and feelings? Two psychological approaches to the study of SES say they are, but emphasize different reasons. The rank approach argues that because individuals with lower SES experience low rank, they feel less in control and more threatened by others, so it is more valuable for them to understand others' mental states. The cultural approach argues that because lower SES cultures foster more interdependent values, people steeped in those cultures focus more on others, leading them to better understand others' mental states. Previous tests of the basic hypothesis these two approaches share have yielded mixed evidence. This registered report uses a large-scale, nationally representative sample to accomplish two goals. First, it tests the basic shared hypothesis, finding that lower subjective rank, social class cultural group, and income—but not education—all predict better empathic accuracy. Second, it explores additional research questions, finding that subjective rank more strongly predicts empathic accuracy compared to SES cultural group (consistent with the rank approach), but childhood SES more strongly predicts empathic accuracy than adulthood SES (consistent with the cultural approach). Results regarding the moderating role of the valence of the mental state being recognized were not consistent. We conclude there is indeed a negative association between social class and empathic accuracy, and discuss the degree to which this is due to the psychology of rank and childhood cultural socialization.