Unequal opportunities from the start: Socioeconomic disparities in classroom participation in preschool.

Why do socioeconomic disparities in achievement emerge so early in life? Previous answers to this question have generally focused on the perceived deficits of parents from disadvantaged backgrounds (e.g., insufficient childrearing knowledge). Here, we instead focus on the structure of early childhood education and argue that early schooling contexts provide unequal opportunities for engagement to children of higher versus lower socioeconomic status (SES). As engagement is a longitudinal predictor of achievement, early SES disparities in engagement could serve to maintain or even exacerbate SES disparities in achievement. In Study 1 (1,236 observations; N = 98 children), we investigated preschool students' behavioral engagement during whole-class discussions-a core aspect of early childhood education. Low-SES children showed significantly lower engagement than their peers. Consistent with the claim of unequal opportunities for engagement, these differences were not accounted for by SES differences in language proficiency. As students' engagement in school is influenced by their peers' attitudes toward them, we also examined peer perceptions (Study 2, N = 94, and a meta-analysis, k = 2 studies). We found that preschoolers who show more engagement relative to others during whole-class discussions are perceived as possessing more positive qualities (e.g., intelligence). Given that higher-SES students are afforded more opportunities for engagement (see Study 1), they may be the ones benefiting from these positive peer perceptions as well, which might further boost their engagement. Our results suggest that aspects of early childhood education should be redesigned to foster engagement among all students, regardless of their SES. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Increasing vegetables purchase with a descriptive-norm message: A cluster randomized controlled intervention in two university canteens.

Exposure to social norms is a popular way to foster healthy food behavior. Testing the robustness of this effect, we report a field study assessing the impact of a vegetable-related descriptive norm message on vegetables purchase. The first contribution was to rely on a cluster randomized crossover design: Two canteens were randomly selected to display either a vegetable-related or a neutral-behavior norm message. After a first period of data collection, the displays were reversed for a second period: The number of vegetable portions on the main plate were recorded before, during and after the message display (N = 12.994). The second contribution was to test the impact of a message describing vegetables as the normative choice beyond the mere selection of vegetables, on the quantity of vegetables purchased in lunches containing some. Results indicated that the vegetable-related norm message led to a sustained probability of choosing vegetables, contrary to a decrease observed in the control condition. Moreover, students who ordered vegetables ordered a higher quantity when exposed to a vegetable-related message than before whereas quantity declined in the control condition. By treating both canteens as experimental and control and by analyzing both the presence and the amount of vegetables, these results extend and strengthen those previously observed, bringing support for the effectiveness of a descriptive norm message in eliciting healthier food behavior.

Subjective status and perceived legitimacy across countries.

The relationships between subjective status and perceived legitimacy are important for understanding the extent to which people with low status are complicit in their oppression. We use novel data from 66 samples and 30 countries (N = 12,788) and find that people with higher status see the social system as more legitimate than those with lower status, but there is variation across people and countries. The association between subjective status and perceived legitimacy was never negative at any levels of eight moderator variables, although the positive association was sometimes reduced. Although not always consistent with hypotheses, group identification, self-esteem, and beliefs in social mobility were all associated with perceived legitimacy among people who have low subjective status. These findings enrich our understanding of the relationship between social status and legitimacy.

"Our Country Needs a Strong Leader Right Now": Economic Inequality Enhances the Wish for a Strong Leader.

Societal inequality has been found to harm the mental and physical health of its members and undermine overall social cohesion. Here, we tested the hypothesis that economic inequality is associated with a wish for a strong leader in a study involving 28 countries from five continents (Study 1, N = 6,112), a study involving an Australian community sample (Study 2, N = 515), and two experiments (Study 3a, N = 96; Study 3b, N = 296). We found correlational (Studies 1 and 2) and experimental (Studies 3a and 3b) evidence for our prediction that higher inequality enhances the wish for a strong leader. We also found that this relationship is mediated by perceptions of anomie, except in the case of objective inequality in Study 1. This suggests that societal inequality enhances the perception that society is breaking down (anomie) and that a strong leader is needed to restore order (even when that leader is willing to challenge democratic values).

School Selection and the Social Class Divide: How Tracking Contributes to the Reproduction of Inequalities.

Selection practices in education, such as tracking, may represent a structural obstacle that contributes to the social class achievement gap. We hypothesized that school's function of selection leads evaluators to reproduce social inequalities in tracking decisions, even when performance is equal. In two studies, participants (students playing the role of teachers, N = 99, or preservice and in-service teachers, N = 70) decided which school track was suitable for a pupil whose socioeconomic status (SES) was manipulated. Although pupils' achievement was identical, participants considered a lower track more suitable for lower SES than higher SES pupils, and the higher track more suitable for higher SES than lower SES pupils. A third study (N = 160) revealed that when the selection function of school was salient, rather than its educational function, the gap in tracking between social classes was larger. The selection function of tracking appears to encourage evaluators to artificially create social class inequalities.

Revisiting the Measurement of Anomie.

Sociologists coined the term "anomie" to describe societies that are characterized by disintegration and deregulation. Extending beyond conceptualizations of anomie that conflate the measurements of anomie as 'a state of society' and as a 'state of mind', we disentangle these conceptualizations and develop an analysis and measure of this phenomenon focusing on anomie as a perception of the 'state of society'. We propose that anomie encompasses two dimensions: a perceived breakdown in social fabric (i.e., disintegration as lack of trust and erosion of moral standards) and a perceived breakdown in leadership (i.e., deregulation as lack of legitimacy and effectiveness of leadership). Across six studies we present evidence for the validity of the new measure, the Perception of Anomie Scale (PAS). Studies 1a and 1b provide evidence for the proposed factor structure and internal consistency of PAS. Studies 2a-c provide evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. Finally, assessing PAS in 28 countries, we show that PAS correlates with national indicators of societal functioning and that PAS predicts national identification and well-being (Studies 3a & 3b). The broader implications of the anomie construct for the study of group processes are discussed.

Social justice in education: how the function of selection in educational institutions predicts support for (non)egalitarian assessment practices.

Educational institutions are considered a keystone for the establishment of a meritocratic society. They supposedly serve two functions: an educational function that promotes learning for all, and a selection function that sorts individuals into different programs, and ultimately social positions, based on individual merit. We study how the function of selection relates to support for assessment practices known to harm vs. benefit lower status students, through the perceived justice principles underlying these practices. We study two assessment practices: normative assessment-focused on ranking and social comparison, known to hinder the success of lower status students-and formative assessment-focused on learning and improvement, known to benefit lower status students. Normative assessment is usually perceived as relying on an equity principle, with rewards being allocated based on merit and should thus appear as positively associated with the function of selection. Formative assessment is usually perceived as relying on corrective justice that aims to ensure equality of outcomes by considering students' needs, which makes it less suitable for the function of selection. A questionnaire measuring these constructs was administered to university students. Results showed that believing that education is intended to select the best students positively predicts support for normative assessment, through increased perception of its reliance on equity, and negatively predicts support for formative assessment, through reduced perception of its ability to establish corrective justice. This study suggests that the belief in the function of selection as inherent to educational institutions can contribute to the reproduction of social inequalities by preventing change from assessment practices known to disadvantage lower-status student, namely normative assessment, to more favorable practices, namely formative assessment, and by promoting matching beliefs in justice principles.

Evaluative pressure overcomes perceptual load effects.

Perceptual load has been found to be a powerful bottom-up determinant of distractibility, with high perceptual load preventing distraction by any irrelevant information. However, when under evaluative pressure, individuals exert top-down attentional control by giving greater weight to task-relevant features, making them more distractible from task-relevant distractors. One study tested whether the top-down modulation of attention under evaluative pressure overcomes the beneficial bottom-up effect of high perceptual load on distraction. Using a response-competition task, we replicated previous findings that high levels of perceptual load suppress task-relevant distractor response interference, but only for participants in a control condition. Participants under evaluative pressure (i.e., who believed their intelligence was assessed) showed interference from task-relevant distractor at all levels of perceptual load. This research challenges the assumptions of the perceptual load theory and sheds light on a neglected determinant of distractibility: the self-relevance of the performance situation in which attentional control is solicited.

Improving working memory efficiency by reframing metacognitive interpretation of task difficulty.

Working memory capacity, our ability to manage incoming information for processing purposes, predicts achievement on a wide range of intellectual abilities. Three randomized experiments (N = 310) tested the effectiveness of a brief psychological intervention designed to boost working memory efficiency (i.e., state working memory capacity) by alleviating concerns about incompetence subtly generated by demanding tasks. Sixth graders either received or did not receive a prior 10-min intervention designed to reframe metacognitive interpretation of difficulty as indicative of learning rather than of self-limitation. The intervention improved children's working memory span and reading comprehension and also reduced the accessibility of self-related thoughts of incompetence. These findings demonstrate that constructing a psychologically safe environment through reframing metacognitive interpretation of subjective difficulty can allow children to express their full cognitive potential.