Social Class and Level of Construal: How Socio-Economic Background Influences the Abstraction Level of Social Constructions

Individuals are quite flexible in how they mentally represent social situations. One construction dimension pertains to whether subjective representations are either more abstract and generalizing, or more specific, reflecting the here and now of the current situation. Prior research has consistently demonstrated that individuals form more specific representations when they face problematic situations. Research further suggests that low socio-economic status individuals frequently are confronted with many problematic, challenging aspects (financial scarcity, access to education, health conditions, etc). The present research investigates the combination of these, so far distinct lines of research and suggests that lower-class individuals' constructions are more specific and more related to the here and now than the constructions of higher-class individuals.