Are you interested in social class? I've two working papers which show: 1️⃣ Using actor recordings of different accents, that people derive class from accent and this causally influences trait evaluations 2️⃣ That class-based descriptive representation improves support for the political system. 🧵

With @robjohns75.bsky.social, we ask: do people infer class from accents? And does that matter for candidate evaluations? The answer is yes and yes.

Randomising people to verbal vignettes by professional voice actors in a survey, we find: - That people readily attach class to different accents - more working-class candidates are seen as slightly less competent and likely to succeed, but far more warm and generally more desirable as MPs.

And whilst a lot of the effects on traits are via class (i.e., accent influences perceived class), accent also has quite large effects through some other path...

It's a first draft written for the joint sessions on class and inequality (by @peterla.bsky.social & @mabreyer.bsky.social) so v happy for feedback. Paper: djdevineorg.wordpress.com/wp-content/u...

In a second paper with @turnbulldugarte.com, we ask: Does working-class descriptive representation enhance perceptions of system legitimacy? Using two survey experiments, we argue that (1) it does, quite a lot (2) this is for candidates and institutions (3) it is conditioned by class identity.

In the first experiment, we just give people descriptions of potential candidates. The working-class candidate increases views they'd be responsive, similar, and more likely to make trustworthy decisions.

This is conditioned by strength of identity. People who identify (more strongly as) working-class react more positively to the working-class candidate and more negatively to the upper-class candidate. And about 66% of respondents identify as working-class, so that's a lot.

In the 2nd experiment, we: 1. Add a middle-class treatment 2. Give an example of a parliament with low and high representation of the different classes And find the same. Parliaments with high working class representation are preferred by working-class identifiers, even compared to mid-class parls