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A representative democracy requires citizens to be politically engaged; however, a substantial portion of eligible United States voters do not vote. While structural (e.g., ease or difficulty of voting) and individual (e.g., political efficacy, civic knowledge) factors contribute to (a lack of) turnout, the present work adopts a sociocultural perspective to investigate an additional contributor: how people construe-or make sense of-the duty to vote. We examine whether, and for whom, construing voting as interdependent (i.e., voting as a duty to others), compared to independent (i.e., voting as a duty to self), is associated with increased perceived duty and political engagement. Archival analysis (n[Formula: see text] 10,185) documents how perceived duty to vote relates to voter turnout in a nationally representative sample of Americans (Study 1). Two preregistered studies (total n[Formula: see text] 1,256) provide evidence that naturalistically construing one's duty to vote as interdependent (Study 2) and experimentally reflecting on interdependence (Study 3) both predict increases in perceived voting duty. Perceived duty to vote, in turn, is associated with heightened political engagement intentions. Taken together, the present work suggests that how voting is construed-as an independent duty to the self or an interdependent duty to others-may meaningfully influence political engagement, with implications for voter turnout interventions.

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Social class disparities are pervasive in American society. In higher education, one critical driver of these disparities is the cultural mismatch between the interdependent norms of people from working-class backgrounds and the independent norms that pervade higher education. However, after graduating from college and entering white-collar workplaces, people from working-class backgrounds have frequent opportunities to collaborate in teams-that is, to enact interdependent behavior. Do these opportunities reduce cultural mismatch for people from working-class backgrounds? Across two survey studies and two experiments with college-educated U.S. employees (total N = 2,566), we find that they do not. We theorize and document that this is because there is often a decoupling between enacting interdependent behavior and whether such behavior is valued as part of being a "good" employee. We find that employees from working-class backgrounds only experience a cultural match and its benefits (e.g., sense of fit, high retention intentions) when interdependent behaviors are both enacted and valued. In contrast, when interdependent behaviors are enacted but not valued, employees from working-class backgrounds experience a cultural mismatch. Furthermore, we find that this pattern is unique to employees from working-class backgrounds: Employees from middle-class backgrounds report similar fit and retention regardless of whether there is a coupling of enacted and valued interdependent behavior. Taken together, our results suggest that it is critical to examine multiple elements of culture simultaneously (e.g., both enacted and valued behavior) to fully understand and predict the consequences of cultural (mis)match. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

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The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare the vast amount of economic inequality in the U.S. Yet, has it influenced Americans' attitudes and behaviors toward equality? With a three-wave longitudinal survey, the current research provides evidence that experiencing personal harm (e.g., contracting Covid-19, losing jobs, or psychological distress) from the pandemic predicts an increase in people's attitudinal and behavioral advocacy for equality. Specifically, we find that experiencing greater personal harm in the early stages of the pandemic (i.e., May 2020) is associated with increased advocacy for equality one year later (i.e., May 2021; e.g., contacting a public official to express support for reducing inequality). Furthermore, we find that this increase in advocacy for equality is explained, in part, by people's greater endorsement of the external factors (e.g., bad luck, discrimination, etc.) that contribute to inequality. Our work provides evidence that the extent to which people experience harm from the Covid-19 pandemic predicts both their increased understanding of external sources of inequality, as well as their efforts to combat this inequality (e.g., by advocating for policies that combat structural contributors to inequality).

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Previous research has documented that people from working-class contexts have fewer skills linked to academic success than their middle-class counterparts (e.g., worse problem-solving skills). Challenging this idea, we propose that one reason why people from working-class contexts underperform is because U.S. measures of achievement tend to assess people individually. We theorize that working together on measures of achievement will create a cultural match with the interdependent selves common among people from working-class contexts, therefore improving their sense of fit and performance. We further theorize that effective group processes will serve as a mechanism that helps to explain when and why working together affords these benefits. Four studies utilizing diverse methods support our theorizing. Using archival data on college student grades, Study 1 finds that groups with higher proportions of students from working-class contexts perform better. Utilizing a nationally representative sample of collegiate student-athletes, Study 2 suggests that the benefits of working together for people from working-class contexts are moderated by whether groups engage in effective group processes. Studies 3 and 4 demonstrate that working together (vs. individually) causally improves the fit and performance of people from working-class contexts. Study 4 identifies effective group processes as a mediator: People from working-class (vs. middle-class) contexts more frequently engage in effective group processes, thus improving their performance. Our findings suggest that assessing achievement individually is not class-neutral. Instead, assessing achievement in a way that is congruent with interdependent models of self-as people work together-can help realize the full potential of people from working-class contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

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Understanding the sources of the social class achievement gap in education is an important step toward ensuring that education serves its purpose as an engine of social mobility. The goal of the current article is to provide a brief overview of the sources of the social class achievement gap as well as interventions aimed at closing this gap. We outline three major sources of the social class achievement gap-individual skills, structural conditions, and people's processes of meaning-making, or construals-and the interventions that target them. While all of these interventions can effect change, we propose that interventions will be most effective when tailored to fit the specific needs of students and the context in which they are delivered.

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We extend Nettle et al.'s insurance hypothesis (IH) argument, drawing upon life-history theory (LHT), a developmental evolutionary perspective that documents downstream consequences of early-life exposure to unpredictable environments. We discuss novel evidence consistent with both IH and LHT, suggesting that early-life exposure to unpredictable environments is associated with reduced engagement in weight management behaviors and a greater probability of adulthood obesity.

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