Entering the Conversation

If all men are created equal then why are people being treated differently based on their
wealth and status? Even the little things that people have; such as clothes and food, others are
going to judge and make assumptions. Oh thats generic brand coco puffs, they must be poor.
Shes wearing knockoff vans? No way. So how do we see who gets judged and for what
reason? Well, if we were to conduct a study showing how people are treated based on their
socioeconomic status we can see how and why people are treated differently.
To conduct this study we could stage a mock job interview and have 2 people in each
trial; 1 would the client going in for the interview and the other person would be the person
conducting the interview, so you would have your interviewee and your interviewer. We would
have 4 different groups of people to analyze and collect data from.
In the first mock interview the interviewee it will be someone that comes from a poor
neighborhood, and from a lower class family. The Interviewer is going to be someone that comes
from an upper class family and is wealthy. In the second interview we will have the interviewee
that will come from a higher class and the interviewer will be someone from a lower class. In the
3rd interview both the interviewer and interviewee will be from the lower class and in the 4th
interview both the interviewer and interviewee will be from the higher class.
The 4 groups will be asked the same exact questions and have the same job qualifications
and characteristics. The only differing factor will be how they are dressed and the socioeconomic
background they come from. We can observe how each person thats getting interviewed is
treated by the interviewer. By asking questions and seeing how long each interview lasts, then
comparing the winner of each group with the winner of the others. Did the person from the lower
socioeconomic class get picked for the job over the person from the upper class? Or was the

person with the higher socioeconomic class preferred over the the person from the lower class?
When taking factors into play we paired each person with someone from the opposite class as
them, and then we paired two people that come from the same socioeconomic class.
The questions that would be asked are:
1. Where did you grow up? Were you from a large or small town?
Did you feel safe walking around in your neighborhood in the day/at night?
2. How would you feel about working in an environment that comes
from a rougher side of town? How would you feel working in a wealthier, gated,
environment?
3. Do working with people from a different background/SES bother
you? Are you more comfortable/interested in working with people that come from
the same background as you?
4. What type of school did you go to? i.e. magnet, charter, public,
private, etc.
5. What is the most important thing to you?
6. Do you have more name brand clothes in your closet or off brand?
After collecting all the data and viewing the results of who the interviewer picked in each
of the groups we can compare the results to one another and see if there is a main choice to
which type of person gets preferred for a job. Do people prefer someone from a lower class over
someone from a higher class or vice versa? Then, figure out why people preferred one group
over the other. After finding out the results to this study we will be able to see which individual
was preferred for the said job and why they were preferred over the other.