A recent study by psychologists Michael Kraus, Stéphane Côté, and Dacher Keltner is therefore especially interesting, not only because it explicitly studied social class as an independent variable but also because it showed that those from the lower class actually do better than those from the upper class.
These researchers studied empathic understanding, the ability to infer accurately the emotions of other individuals. In several studies with both college students and community residents, they showed that those from lower classes were more skilled at reading the emotions of others than those from upper classes. Their assignment of participants to social class relied on more appropriate strategies than the quick-and-dirty ones mentioned above.
