Why Do People Think Individuals in Poverty Are Less Vulnerable to Harm?: Testing the Role of Intuitions About Adaptation

Abstract

People often falsely believe that individuals from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds are less harmed than those from higher SES backgrounds by a wide range of negative events. We report three studies (total N = 1,625) that provide evidence that this “thick skin bias” emerges at least in part because people overgeneralize otherwise accurate intuitions about adaptation. Across studies, participants accurately intuited that people adapt to psychophysical experiences (e.g., brightness, weight, and volume) but also inaccurately intuited that people similarly adapt to life hardships that actually tend to exacerbate the harm of future negative events. Experimentally decreasing the salience of psychophysical adaptation intuitions reduced the thick skin bias, suggesting a causal link between these adaptation intuitions and the belief that people in poverty are less vulnerable to harm and underlining the importance of studying how biased beliefs about the effects of poverty may perpetuate inequality.

From Stigma to Scarcity: On Interpersonal and Cognitive Sources of Vulnerability for Consumers in Poverty

“…Previous research documented biases in perceived physical pain potentially attributable to the perception that Black individuals have experienced more hardship than White individuals, and the assumption that hardship reduces vulnerability to physical pain (Hoffman & Trawalter, 2016). We extended this logic to propose that low-SES individuals are perceived as having been "toughened" by their hardship (see also Cheek & Murray, 2023), causing them to be less affected by new negative events. Across dozens of studies, we have found that lay people, Consumer Vulnerability in Poverty 10 including a nationally representatively sample of U.S. citizens, and professionals such as therapists and teachers believe that lower-SES individuals are less impacted both by trivial and by more consequential negative events.…”