The disconnect between actual economic conditions on the one
hand and beliefs in the American Dream on the other suggests that
Americans may be unaware of the actual levels of social class mobility
in society. Several lines of research anticipate this pattern of inaccuracy:
for instance, when a large sample of Americans was asked to guess
the levels of wealth inequality in the United States, individuals
underestimated the magnitude of economic inequality by a wide margin
(Norton & Ariely, 2011). Americans also display low awareness of
how changes in economic conditions will impact their lives: when
asked to forecast howan economicwindfallwill change their lives, individuals
routinely overestimate the extent that these economic changes
will increase their happiness and well-being (e.g., Wilson & Gilbert,
2005). These data suggest that Americans are unaware of the actual
economic structure of society and of how changes in individual economic
conditions shape their own life outcomes, and provide the
starting point for our first hypothesis: Americans will overestimate actual
levels of social classmobility in society to a substantial degree (Hypothesis
I).