User:Sey2020/Psychology of social class

Power and status
Recent research has sought to distinguish social class from other dimensions of hierarchy, such as power, or a "person's relative control over resources and ability to influence others, and status, or "one's level of respect and admiration from others." Although interrelated, empirical evidence suggests that social class, measured both objectively and subjectively, is not reducible to power or status and that the correlations between social class and power and status are small to moderate.

Social Class and Mental Health

'Social class can have a significant impact on mental health. It is generally accepted that there is a higher concentration of mental illnesses among those from a lower social classes. Many suggest that this is due to increased stressors of living in a lower class. Examples of these stressors include an unstable place of residence, food insecurity, lack of access to important resources, debt, etc. Economic inequality can directly affect the quality of care patients receive as well as the accessibility of the care. The economic inequality individuals face causes these issues in many ways including, inability to afford to travel to a mental health clinic, work hours overlapping with clinic hours, etc. '

Race, ethnicity, and gender
Social class has been related to other status-based social categories that also effect conceptions of self and how individuals relate to others. For example, similar to being low social class, being female (compared to being male) tends to promote more interdependent norms for relating to others and lower status racial minorities (i.e., African Americans) tend to exhibit more relational norms compared to racial majority members (i.e., European-Americans). Class, race, and gender also have similar effects on individuals sense of belonging in academic institutions. Students from lower social class backgrounds tend to experience increased anxiety about confirming to negative stereotypes about their social class when a test is framed as diagnostic of ability, and inevitably perform worse as a result. This parallels research on the role of stereotype threat in the performance of racial minorities and women in academic settings.