Understanding Social Mobility
Lecture by Professor Ian J. Deary, Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh
Venue: Lecture Theatre 1 (Yudowitz), Wolfson Medical School Building, University of Glasgow
The lecture will be from 6-7pm, and will be followed by a drinks reception in the Wolfson Atrium.
This event will be followed by a two-day training course on Structural Equation Modelling. Details will be advertised on the website shortly.
Abstract
Social mobility is a hot topic. Do people get on in life because they are bright and work hard (the meritocratic hypothesis), or because of their social class origins (the social origins and destinations—SAD—hypothesis)? Some researchers in the field think the UK is largely a meritocratic society, whereas others (often using the same datasets) think there is much social class inertia.
In this talk, the emphasis is on lifecourse models of the factors that contribute to social mobility. The main factors addressed are parental social class, childhood intelligence, and education. Professor Deary will try to describe how each of these is associated with the other, and that all contribute to social position by mid-life. The data are drawn from a number of (mostly UK) cohort studies with longitudinal data. The UK is especially strong in having long-term data on people who have been followed up from childhood into adulthood, and in some cases to old age. In each case, structural equation modeling is applied by Professor Deary and his collaborators to test path models of social position and social mobility. The results show that social mobility is dependent upon multiple factors, and that the meritocratic and SAD hypotheses both have some support, and some limitations.
Biography
Ian Deary is Professor of Differential Psychology at the University of Edinburgh, and Director of the Medical Research Council-administered Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology. He graduated in Psychology and Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, and studied there for his PhD. He practised psychiatry in London and Edinburgh before moving to academic psychology. His principal research interest is human mental abilities, especially the origins of cognitive differences and the effects of ageing and medical conditions on mental skills, and the influence of intelligence on health and wellbeing through the lifecourse.
Professor Deary has published over 500 refereed journal articles, four authored books and three edited books. He has an ‘h’ index of 55 on the ISI’s Web of Science and his research work has been cited over 13,000 times to date. He leads a research team studying cognitive ageing by following up the people who took part in the Scottish Mental Surveys of 1932 and 1947. Other members of his research team are currently investigating the influence of childhood IQ on health in adulthood and survival to old age. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the British Academy, the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists. In 2003 he received the Chancellor’s Award from the University of Edinburgh. He held a Royal Society-Wolfson Research Merit Award (2003-2007) for his work on human cognitive ageing. In 2006 he was joint winner, with John Starr and Lawrence Whalley, of the Tenovus Scotland Margaret MacLellan award for “the best research on the brain in Scotland in recent years.” In 2010 he received the Distinguished European Personality Psychologist Award from the European Association for Personality Psychology.
