The Hidden Value of Highbrow Taste: How Cultural Signals of Class Shape Hiring Outcomes

• In Event: 170 - Section on Inequality, Poverty and Mobility Paper Session. Culture and Inequality

Abstract

This paper provides systematic evidence of the cultural processes through which social class patterns the hiring decisions of employers and hiring outcomes of U.S. workers. I propose that people in the U.S. commonly draw on cultural measures of status discern the class positions of others. Furthermore, I propose that these cultural signals of class are an important basis for employment discrimination in the U.S. labor market. Results from a survey experimental study of 1,428 hiring managers and an audit study conducted in four major U.S. cities reveal that employers consistently attribute a more positive demeanor to applicants with high status cultural tastes. Whether this results in employment discrimination, however, depends largely on the gender of job applicants and the occupational context of employers. Employers are far less forgiving of women with low-status cultural tastes than men, evidence that class-based cultural expectations in the U.S. are more stringent for women. And yet, these traits only become a basis for exclusion in customer-facing occupations where demeanor, or style of self-presentation, is closely monitored by employers. While some have questioned the value of institutionalized, high status culture to U.S. employers, I conclude that status-based cultural tastes are fairly agreed-upon markers of social class and a significant basis for employment discrimination against women in customer-facing jobs.

Author

• Kyla Thomas, Princeton University