Research Design Connection: Social Class and Attention to Others

by Sally Augustin, Ph.D. | December 5th, 2016

Dietze and Knowles investigated how attention to others varies by social class. Their findings can inform design decisions and also help explain puzzling design research outcomes, as well as discrepancies between executive and lower level employee perceptions of distractions in workspaces, for example. Dietze and Knowles learned that “people’s [perception of their own] social class affects their appraisals of others’ motivational relevance – the degree to which others are seen as potentially rewarding, threatening or otherwise worth attending to…wearable technology was used to film the visual fields of pedestrians on city streets; higher-class participants looked less at other people than did lower-class participants…[in additional studies] participants’ eye movements were tracked while they viewed street scenes; higher class was associated with reduced attention to people in the images…[and] a change-detection procedure assessed the degree to which human faces spontaneously attract visual attention; faces proved less effective at drawing the attention of …