Content area
Full Text
Key Words inequality, meritocracy, test scores, personality traits, family
background, social class, race, ethnicity, schooling, occupational attainment,
earnings
* Abstract I review studies of the roles played by cognitive skills and noncognitive traits and behaviors in stratification processes. Bowles & Gintis (1976) were among the first to argue that noncognitive traits and behaviors are more important than cognitive skills in determining schooling and employment outcomes. Now, 25 years later, these authors (Bowles & Gintis 2002) claim that the ensuing literature vindicates their position. There is much evidence for this claim, although it remains unresolved. I locate their discussion within the larger literature that has appeared during this time period. This literature provides an emerging interdisciplinary paradigm for the study of socioeconomic attainment, including differentials by social class, race, and ethnic background.
INTRODUCTION
What characteristics do employers want in their workers? Bowles & Gintis (1976, p. 131) suggested that they are the same characteristics that teachers want in their students. These include the cognitive skills necessary to get the job done. They also include work habits that facilitate efficient individual and organizational functioning. At lower skill levels, both at school and work, these characteristics tend to focus on following rules and procedures, and conformity to external authority. At higher skill levels, they include greater emphasis on worker initiative under the control of internalized norms of behavior. At all skill levels, they include appropriate focus on the task at hand, combined with the habit of energetic and efficient work.
Bowles & Gintis (1976; ch. 4, 5) argued that family social class persists strongly across generations and that it does so largely because of differential behavioral socialization in schools, rather than because of differential inheritance of cognitive capacities from parent to child. They offered several arguments, with supporting evidence, for this viewpoint. First, they argued that net of the child's cognitive performance, family background still exerts a very large effect on student outcomes. Second, they argued that most of the effect of schooling on occupational and earnings attainment is due, not to the effect of schooling on cognitive skill as measured by test scores, but to the correlation between schooling and various noncognitive traits of workers.1 Finally, they argued that the noncognitive traits rewarded by employers...