About Face: Seeing Class and Race

Abstract

People’s social class, and the perceptions of their social class are embedded in an institutional context that has important ramifications for one’s life opportunities and outcomes. Research on first impressions has found that people are relatively accurate at judging a variety of traits such as perceived sexual orientation and income, but there is a paucity of research that investigates whether people are also accurate at judging wealth or class. In this article, we first investigate whether people understand the distinction between income and wealth. Then, using a novel dataset, we examine whether people are accurate at identifying the income and wealth levels of individuals across racial and ethnic groups by facial cues alone. We find that participants understand the meaning of income, but not wealth. Additionally, we find that perceivers categorize class more accurately than by sheer chance, using minimal facial cues, but perceivers are particularly inaccurate when categorizing high-income and high-wealth Black and Latinx subjects.

Keywords:

• socioeconomic status
• first impression
• person perception
• social class
• inequality
• stratification economics

JEL Classification Codes:

• Z13
• D63
• J15

Notes

1 The term “targets” is borrowed from the psychology literature, where it is used regularly in the literature. Here the term refers to the individuals in the photographs being analyzed by participants. In contrast, the term “participants” refers to the people who come into the lab to participate in the studies directly.

2 This is based on both the Survey of Income and Program Participation and the Survey of Consumer Finances which report slightly different median wealth numbers for the U.S.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mark Paul

Mark Paul is an assistant professor of economics and environmental studies at New College of Florida. Sarah E. Gaither is an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience and faculty affiliate with the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity and The Center on Health and Society at Duke University. William Darity, Jr. is the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African-American Studies and Economics and the director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University.

Sarah E. Gaither

Mark Paul is an assistant professor of economics and environmental studies at New College of Florida. Sarah E. Gaither is an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience and faculty affiliate with the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity and The Center on Health and Society at Duke University. William Darity, Jr. is the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African-American Studies and Economics and the director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University.

William Darity

Mark Paul is an assistant professor of economics and environmental studies at New College of Florida. Sarah E. Gaither is an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience and faculty affiliate with the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity and The Center on Health and Society at Duke University. William Darity, Jr. is the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African-American Studies and Economics and the director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University.