Are themes within college students’ stories about how they were admitted to University related with social class?
Creators: name: Westberg, Dulce
name: Piff, Paul
name: Dunlop, William
name: Brosnahan, Daniel
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Personality and Social Contexts
subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: Psychology
subject: FOS: Psychology

description: Research Questions Past work indicates that lower class individuals prefer contextual over dispositional explanations of social events (Kraus, Piff, &amp; Keltner, 2009). This may be because lower class individuals report feeling that they have fewer resources and are of subordinate rank in comparison to others. In other words, those with lower class individuals may feel that they have less control, which may lead them to adopt contextual versus dispositional explanations for events. Indeed, Kraus and colleagues (2009) found that personal control mediated the relation between lower social class and contextual explanations. In the present work, we coded for two themes that map loosely onto dispositional and contextual explanations. Agency and Communion. Agency was coded on a 5-point scale where higher values indicated greater emphasis on self-mastery, independence, and personal control over one’s University acceptance. Communion was coded on a 5-point scale where higher values indicated greater emphasis placed on how social connections and other people were integral to one’s acceptance to University. We will assess relations between Agency and Communion and three indices of social class: The MacArthur SES ladder (Adler, Epel, Castellazzo, &amp; Ickovics, 2000), parental education, and the Social Class Identity Measure (Dietze &amp; Knowles, 2016). We will investigate the following research questions: (1) Are Communion and Agency related with measures of social class? Hypotheses: (1) Agency will be positively related with measures of social class. (2) Perceived control will mediate the positive relation between Agency and social class. (3) Communion will be negatively related with measures of social class. (4) Perceived control will mediate the positive relation between Communion and social class. Covariates: We will test relations both with and without controlling for the effect of narrative length, gender, age, and ethnicity/race. Sampling Plan We will use existing data collected at the University of California Irvine (UCI) to investigate our hypotheses. 964 UCI students participated in an online survey exploring “how your experiences as a student shape your well-being”. In this survey, students were prompted to respond to the following prompt: Admission to the University of California Irvine is highly competitive, and many people that apply are ultimately turned away. In this study, we are interested in events and factors that, you believe, led to your admission to UCI. Below, please describe each of these events, in chronological order. In addition, please describe how these events are related The authors read through each response to determine that participants provided an appropriate response. Participants that did not provide a response of at least 50 words were not considered. This process resulted in a final sample of 273 UCI students (Mage = 20.48, SD = 3.94; 193 female). Six students identified as Black/African American, 63 as Chicano/Mexican American, 43 as Chinese/Chinese American, 8 as East Indian/Pakistani, 23 as Filipino/Filipino-American, 8 as Japanese/Japanese American, 10 as Korean, 15 as Latino/Other Spanish-American, 1 as Polynesian, 8 as Thai/Other Asian, 33 as Vietnamese, and 50 as White/Caucasian. Analysis Plan First, we will compute Pearson Bivariate correlations between Agency, Communion, MacArther SES ladder, parental education, the Social Class Identity measure, and personal sense of control. Second, we will conduct mediational analyses with sense of control as a mediator of the relation between each measure of social class and Agency/Communion.