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A 32-society investigation of the influence of perceived economic inequality on social class stereotyping |
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| Authors: | Porntida Tanjitpiyanond Jolanda Jetten Kim Peters Ashwini Ashokkumar Oumar Barry Matthew Billet Maja Becker Robert W Booth Diego Castro Juana Chinchilla Giulio Costantini Egon Dejonckheere Girts Dimdins Yasemin Erbas Agustín Espinosa Gillian Finchilescu Ángel Gómez Roberto González Nobuhiko Goto Aya Hatano Lea Hartwich Somboon Jarukasemthawee Jaya Kumar Karunagharan Lindsay M Novak Jinseok P Kim Michal Kohút Yi Liu Steve Loughnan Ike E Onyishi Charity N Onyishi Micaela Varela Iris S Pattara-angkoon Müjde Peker Kullaya Pisitsungkagarn Muhammad Rizwan Eunkook M Suh William Swann Eddie M W Tong Rhiannon N Turner Niels Vanhasbroeck Paul A M Van Lange Christin-Melanie Vauclair Alexander Vinogradov Grace Wacera Zhechen Wang Susilo Wibisono Victoria Wai-Lan Yeung |
| Institution: | 1. School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Saint Lucia, Queensland, Australia;2. School of Humanities and Science, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA;3. Department of Psychology, Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Darkar, Dakar, Dakar, Senegal;4. Department of Psychology, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada;5. CLLE, CNRS, Université de Toulouse, Toulouse, Occitanie, France;6. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey;7. Social Research Institute, University College London, London, UK
Escuela de Psicología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile;8. Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, UNED, Madrid, Spain;9. Psychology Department, University of Milan-Bicocca, Milan, Italy;10. Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands;11. Department of Psychology, University of Latvia, Riga, Latvia;12. Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium;13. Department of Psychology, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima, Peru;14. Psychology Department, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg-Braamfontein, Gauteng, South Africa;15. Escuela de Psicología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile;16. Graduate School of Social Sciences, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan;17. IdeaLab Inc, Tokyo, Japan;18. Department of Psychology, Osnabrueck University, Osnabruck, Germany;19. Faculty of Psychology, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand;20. Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Nottingham Malaysia, Semenyih, Selangor, Malaysia;21. Department of Psychology, University of Illinos Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA;22. Department of Psychology, Yonsei University, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, South Korea;23. Faculty of Philosophy and Arts, University of Trnava, Trnava, Slovakia;24. Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands;25. School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK;26. Department of Psychology, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu, Nigeria;27. Department of Social Sciences, Akanu-Ibiam Federal Polytechnic, Unwana, Nigeria;28. Escuela de Psicología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile Department of Applied Psychology, New York University, New York, New York, USA;29. Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, UK;30. Department of Psychology, MEF University, Istanbul, Turkey;31. Department of Psychology, University of Haripur, Haripur, Pakistan;32. Department of Psychology, The University of Texas, Austin, Texas, USA;33. Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore;34. School of Psychology, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, UK;35. Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), CIS-IUL, Lisboa, Portugal;36. Faculty of Psychology, National Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv, Kyiv, Ukraine;37. School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Saint Lucia, Queensland, Australia School of Social Development and Public Policy, Fudan University, Shanghai, China;38. School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Saint Lucia, Queensland, Australia Department of Psychology, Universitas Islam Indonesia, Yogyakarta, Indonesia;39. Department of Applied Psychology, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, China |
| Abstract: | There is a growing body of work suggesting that social class stereotypes are amplified when people perceive higher levels of economic inequality—that is, the wealthy are perceived as more competent and assertive and the poor as more incompetent and unassertive. The present study tested this prediction in 32 societies and also examines the role of wealth-based categorization in explaining this relationship. We found that people who perceived higher economic inequality were indeed more likely to consider wealth as a meaningful basis for categorization. Unexpectedly, however, higher levels of perceived inequality were associated with perceiving the wealthy as less competent and assertive and the poor as more competent and assertive. Unpacking this further, exploratory analyses showed that the observed tendency to stereotype the wealthy negatively only emerged in societies with lower social mobility and democracy and higher corruption. This points to the importance of understanding how socio-structural features that co-occur with economic inequality may shape perceptions of the wealthy and the poor. |
| Keywords: | cross-culture economic inequality social class stereotyping |