This present study aimed to explore the relationship between upward social comparison, relative deprivation, belief in a just world, and delay discounting by surveying 614 college students. The results showed the following: (1) upward social comparison could significantly and negatively predict individuals' delay discounting; and (2) belief in a…

Kenya's secondary schools are active sites of intensifying inequalities among young people, producing different kinds of subjectivities. Drawing from interview data with school graduates, I consider how young people discern the value of their education according to material resources, like new school buses and buildings. These concerns indicate…

Since the public intellectuals of the 1960s, there has been a shift towards the celebrity academic, as subjects such as history and science have transferred into popular television entertainment, often with female academics as the presenters. Using a case study of the British media, a post-feminist lens has been applied to examine how 17 celebrity…

The present study examined the relationship between adult attachment and subjective social status (SSS) in college students through a cross-sectional survey (Study 1) and a longitudinal study (Study 2). In Study 1, 1300 college students were recruited via research flyers and online campus advertisements. They completed measures of adult attachment…

In recent years, social status has been re-conceptualized as a unique and dynamic social identity that shapes motivational processes, guiding pursuits of status-related goals. Therefore, social status is not a static social positioning, but instead a developing construct that informs cognitions and behaviors, particularly during status…

In this article, I examined parents' views of a gifted and talented (G&T) phase out proposal in an effort to document how the aspirational class can disrupt, instead of reproduce, racial inequities in diverse schools. Using qualitative methods, I found that parents' educational consumption practices fit with their philosophy of education,…

Based on a qualitative study of the motivating factors behind the consumption of international schooling by elite Nigerian parents, this article explores what a group of elite parents perceived as the indicators of high-quality education. The findings suggest that these parents did not consider 'good grades' as an indicator of high-quality…

Even though recent research has shown how mediatized discourses and institutional discourses rescale shifting portraits of authentic and inauthentic multilinguals, little research has focused on the dynamic processes through which individuals as social agents have been actively engaged in this reflexive process. Focusing on the increasingly…

The multifaceted nature of peer social status entails personal benefits and potential detrimental effects that are particularly relevant to adolescents, as they place a higher emphasis on popularity and being well-liked compared to other stages of development. The study examined adolescents' motivational constructs related to gaining or changing…

This study examines whether and how an individual's subjective, or self-rated, popularity is related to one's structural position in the peer network, as measured by betweenness centrality and structural hole measure. Data were drawn from the original fieldwork conducted in Laos (N = 1,490; boys = 40%; M[subscript age] = 13), a low-income country…

This paper investigates how the emotional responses towards research assessment reflect both social position and strategy in the struggle for scientific authority. This is examined through interviews with humanities researchers conducted as a part of a study on the implications for research practice of the Danish Bibliometric Research Indicator…

Adults' development of literacy and numeracy skills that can enable them to navigate the demands of contemporary life and be prepared for the future is central to their economic, social, and personal well-being and the functioning of society. This article discusses the role of literacy and numeracy in adult learning and education, beginning with…

Pop culture has served as a catalyst for leadership development, both creating and manufacturing culture while also creating the parameters for us to understand culture in a public context. While pop culture has influenced how people engage with leadership development across contexts, celebrities have been the manifestation of pop culture…

"Elite" and "flagship" are two influential groupings used to conceptualize differences among higher education institutions, but rarely defined. We derive common features attributed to these groupings from a content analysis of 40 years of higher education literature. Next, we explore the relationship of these features to other…

This exploratory report investigates how children, aged 6- to 12-years, reason about divisions in labour. It focuses on understanding when in development children might associate higher status groups with intellectual as opposed to physical labour. It explores this question by introducing a sample of mostly mid/high-SES American children to a…