About

Pia Dietze received her BA in Psychology from UC Berkeley and her PhD in Social Psychology at New York University. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychological Science at the University of California, Irvine. Her research broadly focuses on the consequences and antecedents of societal inequality. As the principal investigator of the Psychology of Social Inequality Lab, she leads research that explores how social inequalities and privilege are conceptualized and responded to, with implications for real-world outcomes such as policy support and admission or hiring decisions. Her work aims to deepen understanding of the psychological processes underlying social inequality and to inform efforts to address these disparities.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Developmental psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Sociology
• Political Science
• Law
• Geography
• Demographic economics
• Economics
• Public economics
• Mathematics
• Neuroscience
• Positive economics

Selected publications

• When and Why Working Together Benefits First-Generation College Students: A Registered Report

  2025-04-23

  preprintSenior author

  Working together (vs. individually) improves the performance of people from working-class contexts. Consequently, teams with a higher (vs. lower) percentage of individuals from working-class contexts perform better. However, previous research offers two competing mechanisms for this effect. On the one hand, research has provided evidence for a pathway through skills: people from working-class contexts more frequently engage in effective group processes when working together. On the other hand, there is evidence for a pathway through sense of fit: individuals from working-class contexts feel a greater sense of belonging in interdependent settings. In this registered report, we will provide the first simultaneous test of these two proposed mechanisms as the route to successful performance for working-class individuals in teams. Moreover, we will examine if meeting mode—i.e., the extent to which teams work together synchronously (vs. asynchronously)—serves as an important boundary condition for the performance of people from working-class contexts in teams. We hypothesize that the beneficial effects of working together for students from working-class contexts will be diminished when teams work together primarily asynchronously. Lastly, we will provide the first confirmatory test and extension in a real-world collegiate setting where students from working-class contexts are in the majority (in contrast to prior work where they were in the numerical minority). Taken together, this registered report will replicate and extend past research on contextual routes to reduce social class inequalities, and shed light on the mechanisms through which these routes operate.

  PublisherDOI

• When and why working together benefits first-generation college students: A registered report.

  Journal of Experimental Psychology General · 2025-08-04

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Working together (vs. individually) improves the performance of people from working-class contexts. Consequently, teams with a higher (vs. lower) percentage of individuals from working-class contexts perform better. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed the way teams work together, leading to a rise in asynchronous and remote teamwork. Here, we ask: Does the way people work together matter for the benefits documented in prior work? In this registered report, we examined meeting mode-that is, the extent to which teams work together synchronously and in-person (vs. asynchronously and remotely)-as an important boundary condition for the performance of people from working-class contexts in teams. We hypothesize and, in exploratory analyses, find preliminary support for the idea that the beneficial effects of working together for students from working-class contexts are diminished when teams work together primarily asynchronously and remotely. Moreover, we tested two competing mechanisms-fit and skills-but did not find support for either pathway, leaving open questions to be examined in future research. Last, we provided the first confirmatory test and extension in a real-world collegiate setting where students from working-class contexts are in the majority (in contrast to prior work where they were in the numerical minority). Taken together, this registered report replicates and extends past research on contextual routes to reduce social class inequalities and sheds light on important boundary conditions. Our research reveals the importance of providing structural opportunities for students to work together synchronously and in-person to enable the beneficial effects of working together for first-generation students to emerge. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Disentangling the collective and individual dimensions of social class: Picking the right measure matters

  2025-04-21

  preprintOpen access

  Despite a rapid expansion of social-psychological research into social class and its consequences, there remains little consensus regarding how best to measure class itself. Although both subjective rank and social-class identification are used to operationalize “subjective social class,” the two measures are theorized to diverge in how reliably they track individuals’ broader resource ecologies. Across two studies (N = 9,254), we empirically validate this perspective, finding that ZIP- and tract-level estimates of income and educational attainment positively predict individuals’ class identity, such that those from more affluent neighborhoods are more likely to identify with the middle and upper classes. Social rank, on the other hand, is inconsistently correlated with estimates of neighborhood affluence. In light of these neighborhood effects, we suggest that class identification is a better proxy for the structural and collective components of class phenomena, whereas measures of subjective rank may better estimate individual and situational facets.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• When and Why Working Together Benefits First-Generation College Students: A Registered Report

  2024-05-20

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Working together (vs. individually) improves the performance of people from working-class contexts. Consequently, teams with a higher (vs. lower) percentage of individuals from working-class contexts perform better. However, previous research offers two competing mechanisms for this effect. On the one hand, research has provided evidence for a pathway through skills: people from working-class contexts more frequently engage in effective group processes when working together. On the other hand, there is evidence for a pathway through sense of fit: individuals from working-class contexts feel a greater sense of belonging in interdependent settings. In this registered report, we will provide the first simultaneous test of these two proposed mechanisms as the route to successful performance for working-class individuals in teams. Moreover, we will examine if meeting mode—i.e., the extent to which teams work together synchronously (vs. asynchronously)—serves as an important boundary condition for the performance of people from working-class contexts in teams. We hypothesize that the beneficial effects of working together for students from working-class contexts will be diminished when teams work together primarily asynchronously. Lastly, we will provide the first confirmatory test and extension in a real-world collegiate setting where students from working-class contexts are in the majority (in contrast to prior work where they were in the numerical minority). Taken together, this registered report will replicate and extend past research on contextual routes to reduce social class inequalities, and shed light on the mechanisms through which these routes operate.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Response to Fittipaldi et al. (2024)

  Trends in Cognitive Sciences · 2024-04-05

  review
  PublisherDOI

• Highlighting health consequences of racial disparities sparks support for action

  Science · 2023-12-21 · 13 citations

  articleCorresponding

  Racial disparities arise across many vital areas of American life, including employment, health, and interpersonal treatment. For example, one in three Black children lives in poverty (versus one in nine white children), and, on average, Black Americans live four fewer years compared with white Americans. Which disparity is more likely to spark reduction efforts? We find that highlighting disparities in health-related (versus economic) outcomes spurs greater social media engagement and support for disparity-mitigating policy. Further, reading about racial health disparities elicits greater support for action (e.g., protesting) compared with economic- or belonging-based disparities. This occurs in part because people view health disparities as violating morally sacred values, which enhances perceived injustice. This work elucidates which manifestations of racial inequality are most likely to prompt Americans to action.

  PublisherDOI

• Beyond cognitive deficits: how social class shapes social cognition

  Trends in Cognitive Sciences · 2023 · 20 citations

  • Psychology
  • Cognitive psychology
  • Developmental psychology
  PublisherDOI

• A Lower-Class Advantage in Face Memory

  Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin · 2022-11-05 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  People remember what they deem important. In line with research suggesting that lower-class (vs. higher class) individuals spontaneously appraise other people as more relevant, we show that social class is associated with the habitual use of face memory. We find that lower-class (vs. higher class) participants exhibit better incidental memory for faces (i.e., spontaneous memory for faces they had not been instructed to memorize; Studies 1 and 2). No social-class differences emerge for faces participants are instructed to learn (Study 2), suggesting that this pattern reflects class-based relevance appraisals rather than memory ability. Study 3 extends our findings to eyewitness identification. Lower-class (vs. higher-class) participants' eyewitness accuracy is less impacted by the explicit relevance of a target (clearly relevant thief vs. incidental bystander). Integrative data analysis shows a robust negative association between social class and spontaneous face memory. Preregistration (Studies 1 and 3) and cross-cultural replication (Study 2) further strengthen the results.

  PublisherDOI

• Personal and Social Means Can Be (But Need Not Be) Opposing: The Case of Social Class

  Psychological Inquiry · 2022-01-02

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Framing economic inequality and policy as group disadvantages (versus group advantages) spurs support for action

  Nature Human Behaviour · 2020 · 51 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Social psychology
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Eric D. Knowles

  New York University

  7 shared

• Maureen A. Craig

  New York University

  3 shared

• Laura Kaltwasser

  Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

  2 shared

• Nicholas J. Fendinger

  New York University

  2 shared

• Andrea Hildebrandt

  Université Paris Cité

  2 shared

• Sally Olderbak

  IFT Institut für Therapieforschung

  2 shared

• Rudy M. Ceballos

  University of California, Irvine

  1 shared

• Paul K. Piff

  1 shared

Labs

• Psychology of Social Inequality LabPI