One ‘welfare recipient’ stereotype or many? Using the stereotype content model to examine the stereotypes of different categories of benefit recipients

Abstract

The stereotype content model (SCM) provides a basis to investigate stereotypes of different social groups. Previous SCM research has shown that the “welfare recipients” are stereotyped negatively, with low warmth and low competence. However, prior research has not considered different categories of income support recipients who may be stereotyped differently. Using the SCM, we investigated the stereotypes held by the Australian general population (n = 807) towards five key social groups (unemployed, people with a mental disability, people with a physical disability, single parents, elderly). People with a mental or physical disability and the elderly were similar regardless of whether they were described as receiving income support payments or not. In contrast, the unemployed and single parents were stereotyped with significantly lower levels of warmth and competence when they were receiving payments. This research shows that the needs and circumstances of different groups may be reflected in different levels of community support.

Unemployed + Sick = More Deserving? A Survey Experiment on How the Medicalization of Unemployment Affects Public Opinion

“…Deservingness perceptions are theorized as based upon five criteria of the CARIN model (van Oorschot, 2000(van Oorschot, , 2006: (1) how much control the individual has over the reasons for the need of assistance, (2) what need actually exists and whether it is justifiable to claim it, (3) the level of reciprocity, whether an individual has contributed to society in the past or can be expected to contribute in the future, (4) the identity of and cultural distance to a welfare claimant (5) and the attitudes that can be attributed to the individual which help to overcome the need for assistance as quickly as possible. A well-corroborated finding in this literature is that sick individuals are markedly more deserving than unemployed persons (van Oorschot et al, 2017) and also rated more positively in terms of warmth (Schofield et al, 2021).…”