Social Class, Contextualism, and Empathic Accuracy

Recent research suggests that lower-class individuals favor explanations of personal and political outcomes that are oriented to features of the external environment. We extended this work by testing the hypothesis that, as a result, individuals of a lower social class are more empathically accurate...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychological science Vol. 21; no. 11; pp. 1716 - 1723
Main Authors: Kraus, Michael W., Côté, Stéphane, Keltner, Dacher
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.11.2010
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects:
Accuracy
Adult
Agreeableness
Class
Emotional expression
Emotional intelligence
Emotions
Empathy
Facial Expression
Female
Hierarchy, Social
Humans
Interpersonal Relations
Lower class
Male
Middle Aged
Nonverbal Communication
Personality psychology
Role playing
Social Behavior
Social Class
Social classes
Social control
Social Environment
Social events
Social interaction
Social judgement
Social Perception
Social psychology
Social theory
Socioeconomic status
Upper class
Well being
social power
emotion
socioeconomic status
empathic accuracy
social class
ISSN:0956-7976, 1467-9280, 1467-9280
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Recent research suggests that lower-class individuals favor explanations of personal and political outcomes that are oriented to features of the external environment. We extended this work by testing the hypothesis that, as a result, individuals of a lower social class are more empathically accurate in judging the emotions of other people. In three studies, lower-class individuals (compared with upper-class individuals) received higher scores on a test of empathic accuracy (Study 1), judged the emotions of an interaction partner more accurately (Study 2), and made more accurate inferences about emotion from static images of muscle movements in the eyes (Study 3). Moreover, the association between social class and empathie accuracy was explained by the tendency for lower-class individuals to explain social events in terms of features of the external environment. The implications of class-based patterns in empathic accuracy for well-being and relationship outcomes are discussed.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
content type line 23
ObjectType-Article-2
ObjectType-Feature-1
ISSN:0956-7976
1467-9280
1467-9280
DOI:10.1177/0956797610387613