The social classes differ in socialization practices in such a way as to produce dramatic differences in readiness for school. Much of the achievement gap between higher and lower SES groups is caused by these differences. IQ and achievement gaps can be greatly reduced by a variety of interventions ranging from breast-feeding of infants to protection against stereotype threat.

Social class has been understudied in psychology, in part, because the very idea of social hierarchy conflicts with foundational American ideals (e.g., equality among individuals). Nevertheless, social class powerfully impacts individuals’ life outcomes. The current research investigates the influence of students’ social class background on the opportunity to succeed in college. Specifically, it reveals that the culture of American universities, which includes a focus on independent cultural norms, is an important source of institutional bias that contributes to the social class performance gap. With a focus on students from families who are not college-educated—first-generation college students—a series of surveys and experiments reveal that these students often underperform because universities emphasize middle-class norms of independence (e.g., develop your self, pave your own path) that do not match with the relatively interdependent norms that first-generation students bring with them to college (e.g., contribute to community, connect to others). This cultural mismatch undermines first-generation students’ sense of comfort and academic performance in university settings. These studies address the urgent need to recognize cultural obstacles that contribute to the social class achievement gap and to develop interventions to address them.

It’s obvious that poverty is bad for children’s development, but why? One reason poverty is inimical to healthy development is because of psychological stress created by the confluence of risk exposure. The environments of the one in four, American children currently growing up in poverty contain a plethora of suboptimal physical and psychosocial conditions that overwhelm the adaptive mechanisms of many children and their families.

Socioeconomic disadvantage confers risk for ill health. Historically, the mechanisms by which socioeconomic disadvantage may affect health have been viewed from epidemiological perspectives. Such perspectives, however, have not yet formally integrated emerging findings from neuroscience studies demonstrating that socioeconomic indicators relate to patterns of brain neurotransmission, brain morphology, and brain functionality implicated in the etiology of chronic medical conditions and psychological disorders. This talk will highlight findings from a program of health neuroscience research aimed at understanding how the brain might link socioeconomic disadvantage to health and profiles of disease risk. Also discussed will be open questions that, if answered, will paint a more complete mechanistic picture of how socioeconomic disadvantage becomes embodied by the brain to affect health throughout life, which has relevance for efforts to inform social policies and advance interventions and preventative strategies aimed at reducing social health disparities.