The rich—love them or hate them? Divergent implicit and explicit attitudes toward the wealthy

Abstract

Adding to a growing body of work on the psychology of social class, the present research examined implicit and explicit attitudes toward rich people, standing out from much previous work that has focused on negative evaluations of people with low socioeconomic status (SES). Across three studies, we found that participants (who typically identified as middle class) implicitly, but not explicitly, favored the rich over the middle class. Although financial resources represent a continuum objectively, attitudes toward the rich seem to be conceptually distinct from evaluations of low-SES people. Additionally, we demonstrated that implicit prorich attitudes uniquely predict leniency on a rich driver who causes a car accident, while explicit attitudes do not predict such judgments. This work expands and clarifies knowledge of implicit wealth attitudes and suggests that implicit prorich attitudes are an important factor in understanding how social class influences daily life.

Animalizing the disadvantaged, mechanizing the wealthy: The convergence of socio‐economic status and attribution of humanity

“…Indeed, results regarding the animalization of low‐SES groups support the idea that HU is a hierarchical dimension of comparison that reinforces the class‐based structure by equating the lack of SES with the lack of humanity (Loughnan et al, ). In addition, the mechanistic dehumanization of high‐SES groups identified in our studies may help to understand, for instance, why people hold a negative explicit attitude toward wealthy groups (Horwitz & Dovidio, ). As has been pointed out before in the literature, mechanization has been associated with the desire to distance oneself from others in order to avoid negative consequences for oneself (Haslam & Loughnan, ).…”

“…As Bullock, Williams, and Limbert () suggested, more attention should be paid to how wealthy groups are perceived. Previous studies have shown that people explicitly hold a negative attitude (Horwitz & Dovidio, ) and usually exhibit less prosocial behaviours toward high‐SES groups (Van Doesum, Tybur, & Van Lange, ). The representation of high‐SES individuals as cold, unemotional and inflexible (i.e.…”

How Economic Inequality Fuels the Rise and Persistence of the Yellow Vest Movement

“…When there are increasing levels of inequality, wealth becomes a fitting basis for categorizing oneself and others in society (to use self-categorization theory terminology, inequality enhances the comparative fit of 'wealth' as a basis for categorization, Turner et al, 1987). As a result, 'us' versus 'them' perceptions become more salient and, over time, this will lead to deteriorating relations between different socio-economic groups (as will be evident from greater intergroup competition), so called ' classism' (i.e., enhanced stereotyping of other wealth groups, Horwitz & Dovidio, 2015) and ingroup bias. Ultimately, this can lead to a splintering of society into subgroups and the withdrawal of individuals from society at large, lower social cohesion and reduced identification with society (Jetten et al, 2017).…”

A quarter century of system justification theory: Questions, answers, criticisms, and societal applications

“…() argued, on the basis of social identity theory, that it is very rare for the disadvantaged to internalize a sense of inferiority, studies using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and other implicit methods that mitigate social desirability concerns to at least some degree reveal that sizeable proportions of members of disadvantaged groups – often 40% or 50% or even more – exhibit implicit (or indirect) biases against their own group and in favour of more advantaged outgroup members . For instance, poor people and obese people implicitly evaluate rich people and normal weight people more favourably than their own groups (Horwitz & Dovidio, ; Rudman, Feinberg, & Fairchild, ); many gay men and lesbians implicitly evaluate straight people more favourably than their own groups (Hoffarth & Jost, ; Jost et al ., ); in Chile Hispanics and dark‐skinned Morenos implicitly evaluate Caucasians and light‐skinned Blancos more favourably than their own groups (Uhlmann, Dasgupta, Elgueta, Greenwald, & Swanson, ); Black and Coloured Children favour Whites in South Africa (Newheiser, Dunham, Merrill, Hoosain, & Olson, ); in the United States, minority college students implicitly evaluate White students more favourably than their own groups (Ashburn‐Nardo, Knowles, & Monteith, ; Jost, Pelham, & Carvallo, ; Jost et al ., ). Furthermore, several studies find that the magnitude of implicit outgroup bias on the part of the disadvantaged is positively correlated with individuals' scores on measures of system justification and conservatism, as predicted by system justification theory (Ashburn‐Nardo et al ., ; Hoffarth & Jost, ; Jost et al ., ).…”