Born members embody status knowledge unconsciously while upstarts must learn it deliberately

Evidence

Knowing and participating in high-status lifestyle conventions—even certain greetings, subtle preferences, and nonverbal cues—is a critical part of gaining and maintaining high status. This particular knowledge is known as cultural capital, defined by the sociologists Michèle Lamont and Annette Lareau as “widely shared high status cultural signals (attitudes, preferences, formal knowledge, behaviors, goods and credentials) used for social and cultural exclusion.” Cultural capital is most easily acquired through spending years absorbing the tastes, language, behaviors, and preferences of high-status people. For those born wealthy, cultural capital is embodied and unconscious. Upstarts must acquire this knowledge from scratch, and any awkwardness or mistakes may reveal their outsider origin. In some cases cultural capital can be useful in its own right—pairing the right wine with brie is delicious—but this knowledge takes its greatest value as a means to gain acceptance in the high-status world. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 158

Categorization

• DEFINE: Provides the Lamont-Lareau definition of cultural capital as high-status signals used for social exclusion.
• XREF: Echoes Bourdieu’s distinction between embodied and acquired cultural capital; connects to the reader’s existing knowledge of class reproduction. — connects to: Unconsciously primed concepts trigger corresponding behaviors in people; Conventions become habits through unconscious early-life mimicry of peers — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 130; Conscious social identity can change while influences stay unconscious — Brandon Randolph-Seng, Darcy A. Reich, and Kenneth G. DeMarree, On the Nonconscious Antecedents of…, 37 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Conventions become habits through unconscious early-life mimicry of peers #corroborates (0.85) — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 130
• Unconsciously primed concepts trigger corresponding behaviors in people #expands (0.82)
• Conscious social identity can change while influences stay unconscious #corroborates (0.76) — Brandon Randolph-Seng, Darcy A. Reich, and Kenneth G. DeMarree, On the Nonconscious Antecedents of…, 37
• People read other minds by applying learned implicit theories about behavior #corroborates (0.72)