2021
DOI: 10.1177/09579265211013117
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‘You come back fighting. That’s what gives you the drive to achieve’: The extraordinary psychological construction of the super-rich in entertainment documentaries

Abstract: Inequality in society is legitimised through the ‘meritocracy myth’ and existing research claims that the affluence of the super-rich is the result of their superior traits. Discursive Social Psychology examines the ways in which psychological concepts such as personality traits function in talk. This research explores how entertainment documentaries construct the traits of the super-rich to legitimise their wealth. A corpus of 41.5 hours of terrestrial UK televised broadcasts that used the term, ‘super-rich’ … Show more

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Cited by 8 publications
(3 citation statements)
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“…Thus, in their study of female business owners' autobiographies, Adamson and Johansson (2020) identify a downplaying of class and wealth differences as these owners stress their ordinariness and the universality of gender struggles. This self-portrait has been reinforced by TV media, who portray the wealthy as particularly resilient, hard-working, and psychological superior in comparison with ordinary people (Carr et al, 2021). Of course, this emphasis on ordinary lifestyles is a somewhat recent phenomenon (Friedman & Reeves, 2020).…”
Section: The Moral Evaluation Of Personal Conductmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Thus, in their study of female business owners' autobiographies, Adamson and Johansson (2020) identify a downplaying of class and wealth differences as these owners stress their ordinariness and the universality of gender struggles. This self-portrait has been reinforced by TV media, who portray the wealthy as particularly resilient, hard-working, and psychological superior in comparison with ordinary people (Carr et al, 2021). Of course, this emphasis on ordinary lifestyles is a somewhat recent phenomenon (Friedman & Reeves, 2020).…”
Section: The Moral Evaluation Of Personal Conductmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In contrast to less affluent groups, the extreme wealth of the super‐rich is presented as aspirational in entertainment documentaries (Carr et al, 2021). Programme titles such as ‘How the other half lives’ minimise constructions of extreme wealth and decrease the need for accountability.…”
Section: Using Discursive Psychology To Explore How Wealth Inequality...mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…This paper eschews the use of the phrase “high value” regarding price: I defer to the economic philosophers Jevons (1871) and Menger (1871) and the accepted notion that value is relative. A social construct of affluence unobtainable by the masses is reinforced by the mass media, be it “reality” TV, TikTok or Instagram, whereby extreme affluence is, if not celebrated, then normalised and part of everyday life (Serafini and Maguire, 2019; Carr et al ., 2021). This normalisation is a recent evolution of the capitalist system inherently linked into the market and desire for luxury goods: most cannot afford such goods yet are conditioned to desire such items whilst passively accepting they will not own such goods.…”
Section: The Social Acceptance Of Luxury Owned By the Few: Indoctrina...mentioning
confidence: 99%