Subjective perception of lower social-class enhances response inhibition Jinkyung Na a, ⁎, Micaela Y. Chan b a Department of Psychology, Sogang University, Republic of Korea b Center for Vital Longevity, The University of Texas at Dallas, United States abstract article info Article history: Received 23 July 2015 Received in revised form 10 November 2015 Accepted 13 November 2015 Available online 18 November 2015 An emerging literature suggests that lower-class individuals value ‘adjusting’ and ‘fitting-in’ whereas higher- class individuals emphasize ‘personal control’ and ‘influencing.’ Thus, we hypothesized that individuals with low subjective social class (i.e., those who think that their rank in the social hierarchy is low) would show en- hanced performances in a response-inhibition task, compared to individuals with high subjective social class (i.e., those who think that their social rank is high). Supporting this prediction, Study 1 found that one's percep- tion of their social class was negatively associated with inhibition (i.e., lower class → better inhibition). However, subjective social class was not associated with working memory capacity. This suggests that the predicted effect of lower class is inhibition specific. Furthermore, Study 2 established the critical role of subjective social class in this process by manipulating participants' subjective social class. Study 2 also showed that individual differences in inhibitory tendency mediated the corresponding differences in response inhibition. Taken together, the pres- ent results demonstrate that perceived lower-class is associated with enhanced performance in response inhibition. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Social class Response inhibition Models of agency Reinforcement sensitivity 1. Introduction People are socialized in different sociocultural contexts depending on their social class (Kraus, Piff, & Keltner, 2011; Stephens, Markus, & Fryberg, 2012). Given that human beings adapt to their environments (e.g., by acquiring knowledge and skills necessary for their immediate environments), it is not surprising that social class has been theorized to shape our psychological processes (e.g., Bourdieu, 1979; Durkheim, 1893/1933). This tradition is continued by modern empirical research in cognitive development (Frankenhuis & de Weerth, 2013) and social cognition (Kraus, Piff, Mendoza-Denton, Rheinschmidt, & Keltner, 2012). The overarching premise of these approaches is that individuals with varying social class develop different styles of cognition as a reac- tion to their sociocultural contexts. Most notably, lower-class individ- uals are shown to be better at social-cognitive tasks involving contextual information than higher-class individuals since individuals with low social class are encouraged to be sensitive to social contexts (e.g., other individuals, Kraus, Côté, & Keltner, 2010; Masten et al., 2008). Building on this literature, the present research investigated so- cial class differences in response inhibition. Specifically, we hypothe- sized that response inhibition would be enhanced among lower-class individuals compared to higher-class individuals. In particular, the pres- ent research focused on one's subjective perception of social class as subjective social class has been shown to reliably influence various psy- chological processes (Kraus, Tan, & Tannenbaum, 2013). Why would individuals with lower social class be better at response inhibition than those with higher social class? First, previous literature suggests that lower-class individuals may have a model of agency (or one's normative beliefs about action) that is compatible with response inhibition (e.g., Townsend, Eliezer, Major, & Mendes, 2014). For exam- ple, lower-class and higher-class children are socialized in different ways; children are often taught to obey and be directed in lower-class contexts but to be assertive and self-expressive in higher-class contexts (Kohn & Schooler, 1983; Kusserow, 2004; Lareau, 2002). Thus, lower- class individuals adopt a model of agency emphasizing interdependence and adjustment whereas higher-class individuals adopt a model of agency emphasizing independence and personal control (Stephens, Markus, et al., 2012; Stephens, Markus, & Townsend, 2007). Moreover, social class differences in models of action are closely linked to social class differences in reasoning. When understanding others' behaviors, a tendency to give undue weight to personal attri- butes (e.g., traits) was substantially attenuated among lower-class indi- viduals due to their sensitivity to situational constraints (e.g., Varnum, Na, Murata, & Kitayama, 2012). Likewise, it has been repeatedly shown that lower-class individuals are contextual (i.e., focusing on so- cial forces and other individuals) in their reasoning whereas higher- class individuals are solipsistic (i.e., focusing on one's own internal states) in their reasoning (e.g., Kraus et al., 2012). For example, com- pared to higher-class individuals, lower-class individuals have been shown to be more accurate in judging others' emotions (Kraus et al., 2010) and more sensitive to contextual factors in social perception Personality and Individual Differences 90 (2016) 242–246 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, Sogang University, 35 Baekbeom-ro, Mapo-gu, Seoul 121-742, Republic of Korea. E-mail address: jinkyung@sogang.ac.kr (J. Na). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.11.027 0191-8869/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid