The psychology of social class: How socioeconomic status impacts thought, feelings, and behaviour

Abstract

Drawing on recent research on the psychology of social class, I argue that the material conditions in which people grow up and live have a lasting impact on their personal and social identities and that this influences both the way they think and feel about their social environment and key aspects of their social behaviour. Relative to middle‐class counterparts, lower/working‐class individuals are less likely to define themselves in terms of their socioeconomic status and are more likely to have interdependent self‐concepts; they are also more inclined to explain social events in situational terms, as a result of having a lower sense of personal control. Working‐class people score higher on measures of empathy and are more likely to help others in distress. The widely held view that working‐class individuals are more prejudiced towards immigrants and ethnic minorities is shown to be a function of economic threat, in that highly educated people also express prejudice towards these groups when the latter are described as highly educated and therefore pose an economic threat. The fact that middle‐class norms of independence prevail in universities and prestigious workplaces makes working‐class people less likely to apply for positions in such institutions, less likely to be selected and less likely to stay if selected. In other words, social class differences in identity, cognition, feelings, and behaviour make it less likely that working‐class individuals can benefit from educational and occupational opportunities to improve their material circumstances. This means that redistributive policies are needed to break the cycle of deprivation that limits opportunities and threatens social cohesion.

The wealth paradox: Prosperity and opposition to immigration

“…In this agenda article, I will start with a review of growing evidence (both social psychological and from other social sciences) that scorn for immigrants may also increase rather than decrease in times of booming economies and among those who are financially and materially better off (e.g., Dambrun, Taylor, McDonald, Crush, & Meot, 2006;Guimond & Dambrun, 2002;Jetten, Mols, & Postmes, 2015;Manstead, 2018;Moscatelli, Albarello, Prati, & Rubini, 2014;Postmes & Smith, 2009). Going beyond describing the evidence, in the second part of this contribution, I will aim to provide an explanation for why anti-immigrant sentiments may be driven by affluence and prosperity (just as much as it may be driven by economic hardship).…”

“…Support for populism parties may become easier to understand when we consider the possibility that affluent people may feel they are not getting what they are entitled to, that they may fear a decline in status, or that they may compare themselves with wealthier individuals and feel that their wealth is not growing fast enough (see also Manstead, 2018). I suspect that a "Wealth Paradox" analysis also may help us understand anti-globalisation trends worldwide and the surge of right-wing populism in new parts of Western Europe, Eastern European countries, and countries such as the Philippines, India and Brazil that recently elected populist leaders.…”

Beyond economic insecurity and cultural backlash: Economic nationalism and the rise of the far right

“…Following this Marxist tradition, “class is defined objectively in terms of one's relationship to the means of production. You either have ownership of the means of production, in which case you belong to the bourgeoisie, or you sell your labour, in which case you belong to the proletariat” (Manstead, : 269). Especially political support for radical groups is closely linked to class affiliation (Lipset, ).…”

“…Social psychological studies also support this argument on the basis of prejudices towards immigrants and ethnic minorities being a function of economic threat. Manstead () shows that it is not only working‐class individuals who can feel economically threatened by immigration and thus become more prejudiced but also “highly educated people express prejudice towards these groups when the latter are described as highly educated and therefore pose an economic threat” (Manstead, : 267). This threat concerns employment, housing, and other services that could potentially become scarce with increasing immigration.…”

“…Put differently, status politics emphasises the perception of the economic context, while class politics focuses primarily on the socio‐economic context itself as cause for political developments. Both Lipset's status politics () and Manstead's SES () thus allow to not only focus on purely economic factors such as occupation and income to explain political behaviour but also to understand subjective perceptions of social class.…”