Further consideration of the role of socio-economic status in memory performance

Further Consideration of the Role of Socio-Economic Statusin Memory Performance

MARY ANN GUADAGNO1 and DOUGLAS HERRMANN2

1National Institute for Aging, USA2Indiana State University, USA

SUMMARY

In his commentary, Richardson criticizes the analysis of the relationship between socio-economic status (SES) and memory performance as presented by Herrmann and Guadagno(1997). Richardson's criticism addresses Herrmann and Guadagno's procedures for classifyingeconomic backgrounds of subjects and the statistics they used to analyze the e�ects of SES andmemory. We believe that all of these points are worth considering but suggest that it is tooearly in this research area to de®nitively settle on either (a) the best procedure for classifyingSES or (b) the most e�ective statistical method for post-hoc analysis of memory data. Theunderlying issues are too complex and the number of investigations too few to argue that oneprocedure or method is right and the other wrong. Alternatively, Richardson's commentaryagrees with ours in two important ways. Richardson's article and ours both assert thateconomic background is clearly a relevant variable in explaining memory performance. Inaddition, both articles recommend that memory and cognitive researchers take account ofeconomic well being in future memory research. # 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 12: 611±616 (1998)

Although Richardson's commentary on our article on SES and memory performance(Herrmann and Guadagno, 1997) devotes a lot of space to criticizing our proceduresand statistical methods, his article agrees with ours in two important ways.Richardson's article and ours both assert that economic background is clearly arelevant variable in explaining memory performance. In addition, Richardson'sarticle and ours both recommend that memory and cognitive researchers take accountof economic well being in analyzing memory performance. We believe that these twomessages are deserving of serious consideration by memory researchers.

Richardson's commentary raises a number of good points about our article. Webelieve that all these points are worth considering. However, as an examination of thereferences in both Richardson's article and ours reveals, the investigation of therelationship between economic background and memory is relatively recent and rare.As a result, the methodology in this research area is new and evolving. We recommendthat future researchers examine the alternative methods of assessing economicbackground and memory performance used in these two articles to develop yet othermethods that are even better. The underlying issues are too complex to argue that oneprocedure for classifying economic background is right and the other wrong.Similarly, the methods for post-hoc analysis of data also are neither clear-cut noreasily resolved.

CCC 0888±4080/98/060611±06 $17.50# 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Accepted 29 May 1998

APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, VOL. 12, 611±616 (1998)

In this brief rebuttal we attempt to push the methodological issues a bit further.First, we examine Richardson's preferred method for measuring economic back-ground and consider the latest economic thinking about this issue. Second, weconsider Richardson's views on the data analysis in our article and note the di�cultiesin making such an analysis. Finally, we draw some conclusions about how research onthis topic might progress in the future.

ASSESSMENT OF ECONOMIC BACKGROUND

Richardson argues that we are guilty of imposing a narrow, ethnocentric notion ofsocial strati®cation that ignores `social class' nuances. He alleges that we character-ized SES as a set of characteristics that reside in someone's personality, self-concept,and behavior, classing this an èssentialist view' of SES. But this was not our intent. Infact, in many ways, we agree with his views about social class. We simply attempted tobegin a dialogue for the position that, for better or worse, èconomic background'counts in today's world, even to the extent that it may a�ect memory.

The concept of SES, social class, or socio-economic position is, and has alwaysbeen, a controversial topic among social scientists. Conceptually, SES has tradi-tionally been viewed on the basis of three dimensions, i.e., economic class, socialstatus, and political power. Operationally, variables such as occupation, educationand income have been used most frequently to determine SES along these dimensions(Reiss et al., 1961; Blau and Duncan, 1967). However, additional variables such asreligious a�liation, political a�liation, race, ethnic origin, and self-e�cacy have beenused to predict human attitudes and behavior relative to economic well being or SES.Some researchers have used one of these measures, while others have developedmultivariate indices of SES.

The latest economic thinking about this issue has been evolving since about 1950. Asearly as 1951, George Katona (1951) initiated a movement to bridge the gap betweenpsychology and economics. Hemaintained that elaborate experimental work had beendone on learning, but it was conducted without regard for, or application to, theeconomic behavior of everyday people. Katona wanted to show that a psychologicalanalysis of people's economic motives, attitudes, and expectations would contributeto an understanding of their spending, saving, and investing behavior.

In 1964, D. C. Miller maintained that social class or status was òne of the mostimportant variables in social research'. He believed that a person's socio-economicposition a�ects life opportunities relative to health, education, occupation, family,friends, and even life expectancy. AsDrRichardson suggests, a number of factors havebeen used to approximate SES including variables such as occupation, education,income, house type, etc. Several multidimensional scales have been used, such as O. C.Duncan's Socioeconomic Index, Hollingshead's (1957) Two Factor Index of SocialPosition, and the US Census Socioeconomic Status Scoring system, to name a few(DuPuy and Gruvaeus, 1977; Reiss et al., 1961; US bureau of the Census, 1963, 1967).

In 1968, Kassarjian and Robertson suggested that in the United States, wegenerally are reluctant to admit the existence of a social class order. Our US heritageencourages us to dismiss the idea of inherited status or the social prestige thatcomes with birth and is based on inherited wealth and position. Instead, in the UnitedStates, social prestige is assumed to be earned and based on the evaluation of a

612 M. A. Guadagno and D. Herrmann

# 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 12: 611±616 (1998)

person's accomplishments. However, as much as we would like to pretend that a classhierarchy or social strati®cation system does not exist in the United States, it does,however subtle. Most people in the United States attain a SES level comparable tothat of their parents, much as occurs in a class system. This may likely be the case inall societies.

A social strati®cation system commonly used in the sociology and marketingliteratures was developed by W. Lloyd Warner and his associates (Warner et al.,1949). The Warner Social Class system was initially based on how members of acommunity regarded each other, emphasizing one's reputation or participation in thecommunity as the key to social class placement. Since this èvaluated-participation'method was di�cult, time consuming, and expensive, social scientists began develop-ing indices of social class based on more objective criteria such as income, education,and occupation. Warner's objective classi®cation scale was initially based on fourindicators ± income source, residential area, occupation, and type of dwelling,classifying people into six social classes.

Still, other sociologists such as Centers (1952) and Morris and Je�ries (1970)argued that class consciousness can be indicated by a `self-designation' method,whereby people of a community locate themselves on a status hierarchy. For example,in 1970 Morris and Je�ries asked the question Ìf you were to use one of these namesfor your social group, to which one would you belong?' The investigators included alist of classi®cations for the respondent to self-select.

Sociologists have also de®ned social class in terms of religious a�liation, politicalbehavior, and research on parent±child relationships (Schneider, 1952; Form andHuber, 1971; Kohn, 1963). For example, there are perceptions that Episcopalians aremembers of a prestige religion, whereas Baptists may appeal to lower class levels, richwhites are more likely to be Republicans than poor whites; and ®nally, middle-classparental values may emphasize self-direction whereas lower-class parents may valueobedience by children who are eager to please adults.

Indeed social class plays an important role in the ®eld of marketing for market-segmentation purposes. Social class may a�ect consumer behavior relative toshopping patterns, housing choices, and lifestyle. Products, prices, promotion, anddistribution details are targeted to consumers who exhibit consistencies in values,lifestyles, and consequently consumption behavior. In 1962, for example, a study byGlick and Levy showed that working-class audiences liked television, the lower-middle class accommodated it, and the upper-middle class disliked it.

The economic view of SES has generally been guided by the recognition that everysociety is faced with the challenge of allocating scarce and valued resources amongmembers in some generally agreed upon way. Yuchtman (1976) maintains that themost important concept that has evolved from this principle is that of socio-economicstatus (SES). Economists tend to agree that SES is the position of persons or groups insome strati®ed structure of society. Yet many economists still tend to think morenarrowly in terms of economic status or economic well being. Economic status ismeasured by total family income relative to a `needs' standard based on familycomposition, i.e., the number, age, and sex of family members. Total family incomeincludes wages, number of hours worked by family members, transfers, and capitalincome (Duncan and Morgan, 1977).

More recently, economists are beginning to expand their concept of economicstatus to include additional measures of income, i.e., earnings, capital income,

Futher Consideration of the Role of SES 613


pensions, etc., wealth, in-kind income, health insurance, housing status, and otherelements of consumption such as food consumption, housing and medical servicesmeasures. The 1995 Health and Retirement Survey, for example, was recentlydesigned to allow empirical investigations of the economic status of older people inthe United States (Moon and Juster, 1995).

In sum, over the year, the SES concept has undergone considerable change inde®nition, theory, and empirical testing. It is fair to say that there is still no consensuson its meaning or usage among economists or contemporary social scientists. Wemaintain that the terms SES, social class, and social position have been, and continueto be used synonymously to assess economic background. There is not one bestde®nition of the concept. Undoubtedly, memory researchers will need to work withandmeasure the concept in ways that are most appropriate for their particular researchproblem and circumstances.

METHODOLOGY AND STATISTICAL ANALYSIS

Literature search methodology

We believe that our computer literature search of the Psych Info,Medline, and Socinfodatabases for studies of the relation between SES and memory was sensitive. Sixty-one articles were identi®ed initially as being concerned with memory and economicstatus. Richardson's (1987) article was detected by the search but not included in the®nal database because the article did not use SES. (Richardson measured economicbackground according to social class, as is common in the UK). In the end, weidenti®ed 18 of the 61 articles as worthy of study for the purpose of understanding therelationship between SES and memory performance.

Statistical analysis

In Herrmann and Guadagno (1997), we employed statistical analysis that we regardedas conservative. The primary problem with the analysis conducted by Herrmann andGuadagno was that the analysis could not determine whether the extent of therelationship between SES and memory performance di�ers across di�erent kinds ofmemory. Because 15 of the articles did not provide indices of variability in memoryperformance per SES level, there was no way to evaluate the strength of the SES/memory relationships, such as with meta-analysis. Nevertheless, 13 studies indicatedthat memory performance scores were higher when the SES of subjects was higher.

The ratio of the performance measures of high and low SES subjects accordingto the major categories used in Table 1 of Herrmann and Guadagno (1997) wasintended as a descriptive measure. No doubt Richardson is correct, i.e., bettermeasures of the relative di�erence between the memory performance of high and lowSES individuals can and should be developed in the future. Nevertheless, whetherdone as a ratio, a di�erence score, or some other measure, a comparison of high andlow SES is the objective of this research and the results of Herrmann and Guadagnodemonstrate that there is a relationship between SES and memory performance.Richardson developed statistics that circumvented the problems our analysis couldnot overcome. We are glad that he did so, especially given that his analyses yieldedresults that are consistent with Herrmann and Guadagno's ®ndings and hypotheses.



DISCUSSION

Regardless of the shortcomings of our research or Richardson's, four conclusionsabout our joint e�orts are evident. First, the correlation between SES and memoryperformance is almost always positive, although the magnitude of this correlationmust be left for future research to determine.

Second, SES is probably di�erentially related to memory performance. AsRichardson points out, the e�ects of SES were larger in vocabulary tests than inmemory span tests or in episodic memory tests. Thus, SES is a potentially confound-ing factor in some investigations of memory. It is likely that some discrepancies acrossdi�erent investigations, including failures to replicate, have originated from di�erentinvestigations using subjects of di�erent SES levels. For example, the results ofmemory research may di�er across private institutions (whose students originate fromhigh SES backgrounds) and state institutions (whose students originate from lowerSES backgrounds) because of the di�erences in the SES of subjects. Accordingly, inthe future, memory researchers may achieve clearer results by controlling for SES or,at least, taking account of SES levels when interpreting results.

Third, investigations are needed into the basis of the relationship betweeneconomic background and memory performance. The relationship between SES andmemory may be due to several factors that have been shown to in¯uence memory ormay be plausibly linked to memory performance, such as the heritability of acquiredmemory ability across SES and a variety of environmental in¯uences that a�ectsmemory performance (such as variations across SES in access to physical andemotional health care, educational opportunity, occupational experience, nutrition,and more), as well as several other variables pointed to by Richardson such ascultural di�erences, task content, and the context of memory performance.

Finally, the role of SES in memory performance needs to be explained theoretically.Simplistic explanations based on genetics versus the environment no longer aresu�cient. SES, as discussed by us and by Richardson, represents a complex ofvariables. Thus, the relationship between SES and memory performance is probablylinked to conditions a�ecting physiological development, emotional development,educational opportunity, memory skills, and more (Searleman and Herrmann, 1994).The past century of research on memory has yielded an incredible amount ofknowledge about the e�ects of task variables on memory performance. Given theextensive knowledge that has been developed about memory performance per se,perhaps it is appropriate now to devote e�ort to investigating societal in¯uences, suchas re¯ected by SES, on memory. Such investigations will bene®t both applied andbasic researchers (Herrmann et al., 1998) because both types of researchers assess thememory performance of human subjects who originate from di�erent social-economic backgrounds, backgrounds that are now seen as in¯uencing memoryperformance.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank John T. E. Richardson for his very helpful comments on our article.Reprints may be obtained from either Guadagno or Herrmann.

Futher Consideration of the Role of SES 615


REFERENCES

Blau, P. M. and Duncan, O. D. (1967). The American occupational structure. New York: JohnWiley.

Centers, R. (1952). The American class structure: a psychological analysis. In C. E. Swansonet al. (Eds), Readings in Social Psychology (rev. edn) pp. 299±311) New York: Holt,Rinehart & Winston.

Duncan, G. J. and Morgan, J. N. (1977). Five thousand American families: patterns of economicprogress. Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, The University of Michigan.

DuPuy, H. J. and Gruvaeux, G. (1977). The construction and utility of three indexes. DHEWPublication No. (HRA) 78-1348, Series 2, No. 74. Washington, DC: US GovernmentPrinting O�ce.

Form, W. H. and Huber, J. (1971). Income, race, and the ideology of political e�cacy. Journalof Politics, 33, 659±688.

Glick, I. O., and Levy, S. J. (1962). Living with television. Boston, MA: Aldine.Herrmann, D. and Guadagno, M. A. (1997). Memory performance and socio-economicstatus. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 11, 113±120.

Herrmann, D., Raybeck, D. and Gruneberg, M. (1998). A clash between scienti®c cultures: therelationship between basic and applied research. Terre Haute, IN: Indiana State UniversityPress.

Hollingshead, A. B. (1957). Two factor index of social position. Self-published. New Haven,CT.

Hollingshead, A. B. and Redlich, F. C. (1958). Social class and mental illness. New York: JohnWiley..

Kassarjian, H. H., and Robertson, T. S. (1968). Perspectives in consumer behavior. Glenview,IL: Scott, Foresman and Company.

Katona, G. (1951). Psychological analysis of economic behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill.Kohn, M. L. (1963). Social class and parent±child relationships: an interpretation. AmericanJournal of Sociology, 68, 471±480.

Miller, D. C. (1964). Handbook of research design and social measurement. New York: DavidMcKay Company, Inc.

Moon, M. and Juster, F. T. (1995). Economic status measures. the Journal of HumanResources. 30, S138±S157.

Morris, R. T. and Je�ries, V. (1970). Class con¯ict: forget it! Sociology and Social Research, 54,306±320.

Reiss, A. J., Duncan, O. T., Hatt, P. K. and North, C. C. (1961). Occupations and social status.New York: Free Press.

Richardson, J. T. E. (1997). Socio-economic status, social class and memory performance: Acritical response to Herrmann and Guadagno (1997). Applied Cognitive Psychology, thisissue.

Richardson, J. T. E. (1987). Social class limitations on the e�cacy of imagery mnemonicinstructions. British Journal of Psychology, 78, 65±77.

Schneider, H. (1952). Religion in 20th century America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress.

Searleman, A. and Herrmann, D. J. (1994). Memory from a broader perspective. New York:McGraw-Hill.

US Bureau of the Census (1963). Methodology and scores of socioeconomic status, WorkingPaper No. 15. Washington, DC: US Government Printing O�ce.

US Bureau of the Census (1967). US Census of Population, 1960, Socioeconomic Status, FinalReport PC(2)-5C. Washington, DC: US Government Printing O�ce.

Warner, W. L., Meeker, M. and Eells, K. (1949). Social class in America. Chicago, IL: ScienceResearch Associates.

Yuchtman, E. (1976). E�ects of social-psychological factors on subjective economic welfare. InB. Strumpel (Ed.). Economic means for human needs. Ann Arbor, MI: Survey ResearchCenter, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan.



Documents

Further consideration of the role of socio-economic status in memory performance