十六大以来，党和政府都更加明确地提出了改善阶层关系，构建和谐社会的理念。这就要求我们必须重新审视所处的时代，直面而不是以简单的“改革代价”为理由掩盖当今社会存在的阶层矛盾和冲突，因此，开展阶层关系研究无疑是事关阶层理论建构、民众心态重建与和谐社会建设的具有战略意义的重大课题。在研究切入点上，本研究以社会认同理论为研究视角，关注社会阶层关系问题，既不同于社会学的宏观社会结构分析和关于阶层划分的探讨，也不同于传统社会心理学将阶层作为一个人口统计学变量进行的差异分析，而是以每一个阶层群体为研究单位，关注社会分化背景下，处于经济资源、组织资源和文化资源占有上不同位置的对应阶层间的心理融合问题，试图在研究着眼点、方法范式和研究深度上有所突破。在方法与目标上，本研究综合运用结构访谈法、故事投射法、实验室实验和现场实验等多重方法，揭示了对应阶层间的心理融合现状，剖析了阶层心理冲突的原因及影响心理融合的因素。并且在现状了解的基础上，通过实验考察了对应阶层间心理融合的内在机制，进一步在改善阶层关系的途径上作了初步的探讨。在研究范式上，以实验方法为主，并且特别强调实验情境的现场性，试图通过“单盲”、“双盲”的技术，在内部效度与生态效度的权衡中，优先保证生态效度，以此弥补既有研究中可能存在“实验者效应”和“社会称许效应”的不足。通过三个大研究（包括九个子研究）组成的系列研究，本研究得出以下主要结论：首先，中国民众对各主要阶层的总体评价存在显著差异。民众社会贡献度与社会心理处境有着很大的错位。在总体上存在处于心理优势地位和劣势地位的稳定的阶层或阶层群。其次，启动特定的群体标签，把个体置于社会比较的“心理场”中，将导致对应阶层间产生社会认知差异的存在。但这种差异的存在是有前提的。不同行为主体、面对不同刺激材料，以及不同社会语境都会使差异效应的表现受到影响。具体而言，启动相应标签以后，在经济资源维度上，对应阶层双方均表现出了内群体偏好和外群体偏见；在组织资源维度上，低地位阶层对高地位阶层产生的偏见效应更加显著；但在文化资源维度上，精英与草根阶层之间未达到统计学意义的显著差异。第三，在阶层心理融合上，社会认同威胁是导致心理距离增大、心理融合程度降低的重要原因之一，并且表现为动态的可变的过程。当评估自身当前劣势地位的现状和评估自身当前优势地位的可能变动时，都会对对应阶层产生更加消极的评价。第四，在现实情境中，人为贴定的阶层标签足以产生认知分类，并在经济、文化对应阶层上产生内群体偏好效应，但个体对人为贴定标签的认同程度因标签水平的不同而存在差异。第五，对群际互动而言，对象身份中其他群体标签的加入和其他范畴信息（如观点认可带来的阶层尊重、主动选择带来的价值认可等）的引入都会弱化阶层标签的作用，可以起到弥合认知分类导致的心理区隔，促进对应阶层间心理融合的作用。

Since the 16th National Congress of CPC, the CPC and Chinese government have explicitly proposed the idea of improving the relationships between social strata and constructing a harmony society, which requests us to face the existing conflicts in our society rather than to ignore them on the pretext of “reformation costs”. Therefore, the research of relationships between social strata is a strategically important issue that has relevance with the construction of social strata theory, the reconstruction of social mentality and the construction of harmony society. This research focuses on the issue of relationships between social strata in the perspective of social identity theory, which is different both from the macroscopical social structure analysis in sociology and from the difference analysis of traditional social psychology which usually regards social strata only as a demographic variable. Instead, this research focuses on the psychological compatibility of the corresponding social strata that are in different amount of possession of economic resources, organizational resources and cultural resources. The present research attempts to make breakthrough in the research perspective, research method and the depth of exploration.This research employs different research methods, including structured interview, story projection method, laboratory experiment and field experiment methods, to have revealed the status quo of the psychological compatibility of the corresponding social strata, and to have analyzed the reason and the influential factors of psychological compatibility. On the basis of previous studies, this research explores the intrinsic mechanism of the psychological compatibility of the corresponding social strata through experiments, and conducts preliminary probation of the approach to improve the relationships between social strata.Experiments are mainly used in the research paradigm. The reality of the experimental scenario is especially emphasized. The experiments give priority to ensure the ecological validity in the balance of internal validity and ecological validity through single-blind and double-blind techniques, which would offset the drawbacks of the possible “effect of experimental characteristics” and “effect of social desirability”.Through a series of studies, which include three main studies and nine sub-studies, the following conclusions are drawn:Firstly, significant differences are discovered among the Chinese people’s general evaluation of the main social strata. There is a distinct disaccord between the social-contribution degree and the social psychological situation. In general, there are fixed strata or groups of strata that are in the psychologically advantaged situation or in the psychologically disadvantaged situation.Secondly, initiating specific group labels to place an individual in the mental field of social comparison would lead to the social cognition difference of the corresponding social strata. However, there is a precondition in the existence of the difference. Different actors, different stimulus materials and different social contexts would all influence the difference.After the initiation of the labels of corresponding strata, both parties of the corresponding strata show in-group favoritism and out-group prejudice on the economic dimension; on the organizational dimension, the prejudice of lower-status stratum to higher-status stratum is more significant; on the cultural dimension, no significant difference is shown between the elite stratum and the “grass roots” stratum.Thirdly, about the psychological compatibility of social strata, social identity threat is one of the important factors that lead to the increase of psychological distance and the decrease of the degree of psychological compatibility, and it is also a dynamic process. When the situation of evaluating one’s own disadvantaged position and the possibility of evaluating one’s own advantaged position changes, negative evaluation of the corresponding social stratum will increase.Fourthly, in the real situation, artificially marked stratum labels will sufficiently lead to cognitive classification, and cause in-group favoritism on the economically and culturally corresponding strata. However, the extent of individual identification of artificially marked labels is difference due to the different extent of the labels.Fifthly, as to the between-group interaction, the introduction of other-group tags to the identity of the object and other categorization information (for example, the respect of a stratum brought about by recognition of viewpoints, the value recognition of proactive choosing), will weaken the effect of stratum tags, which can offset the psychological gap caused by cognition classification, and therefore promote and psychological compatibility of corresponding social strata.