Ambition and Social Class: A Respecification

This paper proposes a theoretical framework for reconciling several contradictory findings on the relationship between social class and ambition. It is suggested that any given success goal has both an absolute and a relative value, the first reflecting its cultural desirability, the second, its social-class accessibility. The “relative distance” of a social class from a given goal thus determines the saliency of that goal for its members, and this saliency in turn constitutes an intervening variable between individual ambition and social achievement. We can thus anticipate differences in the frequencies of certain educational or occupational aspirations in various social classes without postulating differences in extent of individual ambitiousness among their members. The concept of a “class hierarchy of success goal” will help reinterpret empirical evidence about actual levels of aspiration by social class.