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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 27, 2026

Using the Race Model Inequality to Quantify Behavioral Multisensory Integration Effects

Using the Race Model Inequality to Quantify Behavioral Multisensory Integration Effects

Published on: May 10, 2019

How social status shapes race.

Andrew M Penner¹, Aliya Saperstein

¹Department of Sociology, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-5100, USA. andrew.penner@uci.edu

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

|December 10, 2008

Summary

Racial perceptions are not fixed. Social position influences how individuals see their own race and how others perceive them, with lower status linked to Black identification and higher status to White identification.

Area of Science:

Sociology
Social Psychology
Race and Ethnicity Studies

Background:

Sociological and psychological research has historically viewed race as a fixed individual attribute.
Previous studies have not fully explored the dynamic relationship between social position and racial identification over time.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the fluidity of racial perceptions.
To examine how an individual's social position impacts their racial self-identification and how they are perceived by others.

Main Methods:

Utilized longitudinal data from a representative sample of Americans.
Analyzed changes in racial identification and perception in relation to socioeconomic status, employment, and incarceration.

Main Results:

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Individuals experiencing unemployment, incarceration, or poverty were more likely to identify as Black and less likely to identify as White.
These shifts in racial identification occurred irrespective of prior classifications or self-identifications.
Racial perception is demonstrated to be contingent on social standing.

Conclusions:

Race is not a static individual characteristic but a fluid marker of social status.
Social position significantly shapes how individuals and others perceive race.
Findings challenge fixed notions of race and highlight its dynamic, socially constructed nature.