The Social Origins of Effort: How Incentives Reduce Socioeconomic Disparities among Children.
Cognitive effort (i.e., the mobilization of mental resources for task performance) is essential to equality of opportunity and meritocracy because it epitomizes individual agency. However, sociological theories of social inequality in effort are scarce and partial, and available empirical measures o...
| Publicado en: | American Sociological Review Vol. 91; no. 1; pp. 89 - 123 |
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| Autores principales: | , , , , , , , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Sage Publications Inc.
Feb2026
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=191455677&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 191455677 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00031224 ASC jtl: American Sociological Review issn: 00031224 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Feb2026 vid: 91 iid: 1 pid: 344 pub: Sage Publications Inc. artinfo: ui: 191455677 10.1177/00031224251401933 ppf: 89 ppct: 34 formats: tig: atl: The Social Origins of Effort: How Incentives Reduce Socioeconomic Disparities among Children. aug: au: Radl, Jonas Foley, William Kröger, Lea Katharina Lorente, Patricia Palacios-Abad, Alberto Solga, Heike Stuhler, Jan Swarr, Madeline affil: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and WZB Berlin Social Science Center Universidad Carlos III de Madrid Independent researcher WZB Berlin Social Science Center and Freie Universität Berlin su: Germany Spain Task performance Social psychology Autonomy (Psychology) Socioeconomic factors Psychology of school children Equality Social perception Motivation (Psychology) Reward (Psychology) Child psychology Social classes Child behavior Research funding Cognition in children Descriptive statistics Experimental design Data analysis software sug: subj: Task performance Social psychology Autonomy (Psychology) Socioeconomic factors Psychology of school children Equality Social perception Motivation (Psychology) Reward (Psychology) Child psychology Social classes Child behavior Germany Spain Research funding Cognition in children Descriptive statistics Experimental design Data analysis software keyword: effort incentives laboratory study socioeconomic status stratification effort incentives laboratory study socioeconomic status stratification ab: Cognitive effort (i.e., the mobilization of mental resources for task performance) is essential to equality of opportunity and meritocracy because it epitomizes individual agency. However, sociological theories of social inequality in effort are scarce and partial, and available empirical measures of effort are unreliable and lack validity. We fill this lacuna by (1) elaborating a theoretical account of how socioeconomic status (SES) affects children's cognitive effort, (2) developing a novel research design for measuring effort using simple-yet-demanding behavioral tasks and varying incentive conditions, and (3) presenting evidence based on this laboratory design featuring 1,360 5th-grade students. We theorize that greater material abundance and lower environmental threat reduce the subjective costs of exerting effort for higher-SES children, and that parental socialization emphasizing autonomy gives them more intrinsic motivation compared to lower-SES children. Conversely, we posit that the effort of lower-SES children is more susceptible to material and status rewards. Supporting our expectations, we find that social origin effects on effort are largest when incentives are absent, yet decrease notably when material incentives are introduced. Albeit surprisingly modest and malleable, social origin effects on effort challenge voluntaristic notions of individual agency. Crucially though, providing tangible performance rewards can significantly narrow socioeconomic disparities in effort. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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