Objective and subjective socioeconomic status: intercorrelations and consequences* (original) (raw)
Related papers
System justification among the disadvantaged: A triadic social stratification perspective
Frontiers in Psychology, 2020
For the past 25 years, the field of social and political psychology has embraced the idea that humans possess a special system justification motivation which causes even members of disadvantaged groups to support societal systems that ostensibly operate against their personal and group interests. Recently, this system justification motive explanation has been challenged, based on mounting empirical evidence to the contrary. However, the potential demise of this dominant perspective invites explanations for the system justification phenomenon, especially amongst the disadvantaged. Existing interest-based accounts, such as the social identity model of system attitudes have tried to fill this gap, but have generally focused on system rationalisation processes within dyadic systems that pitch disadvantaged groups against their privileged counterparts alone. The current contribution extends the existing interest-based accounts by explaining system justification effects in multi-stratified social systems. Based on the triadic social stratification theory, we propose that system justification among the disadvantaged may result from favourable inter-status comparisons within a multi-stratified social system.
Subjective status and perceived legitimacy across countries
European Journal of Social Psychology, 2020
The relationships between subjective status and perceived legitimacy are important for understanding the extent to which people with low status are complicit in their oppression. We use novel data from 66 samples and 30 countries (N = 12,788) and find that people with higher status see the social system as more legitimate than those with lower status, but there is variation across people and countries. The association between subject status and perceived legitimacy was never negative at any levels of eight moderator variables, although the positive association was sometimes reduced. Although not always consistent with hypotheses, group identification, self‐esteem, and beliefs in social mobility were all associated with perceived legitimacy among people who have low subjective status. These findings enrich our understanding of the relationship between social status and legitimacy.
Editorial: Exploring system justification phenomenon among disadvantaged individuals
Frontiers in Psychology, 2023
The question of why (or even when) the disadvantaged might be more or less supportive of existing social arrangements is a matter of debate amongst social and political psychologists (e.g., Passini, 2019; Jost, 2020, see also Rubin et al., 2022). Accordingly, for this Research Topic, we chose a title that was deliberately broad in scope, accommodating several aspects that included: (a) the drivers of system justification; (b) the socio-structural conditions that enhance or dampen system justification, (c) the ideological correlates of system support, and (d) the impact of system justification on wellbeing. Taken together, the contributions comprised in this Research Topic provide a comprehensive analysis of these four issues.
Personality & social psychology bulletin, 2018
This study tests specific competing hypotheses from social dominance theory/realistic conflict theory (RCT) versus system justification theory about the role of social status. In particular, it examines whether system justification belief and effects are stronger among people with low socioeconomic status, and in less socially developed and unequal nations than among better-off people and countries. A cross-national survey was carried out in 19 nations from the Americas, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia, and Oceania using representative online samples ( N = 14,936, 50.15% women, M = 41.61 years). At the individual level, system justification beliefs, right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, national identification, sociopolitical conservatism, sex, age, and social status were measured. At the national level, the human development index and the Gini index were used. Multilevel analyses performed indicated that results fit better with the social dominance/RCT approac...
The status-legitimacy hypothesis revisited: Ethnic-group differences in general and dimension-specific legitimacy, 2014
The status-legitimacy hypothesis, which predicts that low-status groups will legitimize inequality more than high-status groups, has received inconsistent empirical support. To resolve this inconsistency, we hypothesized that low-status groups would display enhanced legitimation only when evaluating the fairness of the specific hierarchy responsible for their disadvantage. In a New Zealand-based probability sample (N = 6,162), we found that low-status ethnic groups (Asians and Pacific Islanders) perceived ethnic-group relations to be fairer than the high-status group (Europeans). However, these groups did not justify the overall political system more than the high-status group. In fact, Maori showed the least support for the political system. These findings clarify when the controversial status-legitimacy effects predicted by System Justification Theory will – and will not – emerge.
European Review of Social Psychology, 2023
System justification theory (SJT) assumes that social identity theory (SIT) cannot fully account for system justification by members of low-status (disadvantaged) groups. Contrary to this claim, we provide several elaborations of SIT that explain when and why members of low-status groups show system justification independent from any separate system justification motive. According to the social identity model of system attitudes (SIMSA), the needs for social accuracy and a positively distinct social identity fully account for system justification by members of low-status groups. In the present article, we (a) explain SIMSA's accounts of system justification, (b) develop associated hypotheses, (c) summarise evidence that supports each hypothesis, and (d) highlight issues to be addressed in future research. We conclude that SIMSA provides a more parsimonious explanation of system justification by the disadvantaged than SJT, because it does not refer to an additional separate system justification motive.
A critical review of the (un)conscious basis for system supporting attitudes of the disadvantaged
Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2018
Is support for societal systems amongst the disadvantaged driven by an (un)conscious system justification motive that is independent from self-interests? System justification theory (SJT) is unique in its affirmative answer to this question. SJT proposes (a) that support for societal systems operates in the service of maintaining the status quo, (b) that the evidence for this system justification motive lies with the fact that members of disadvantaged groups (un)consciously support societal systems that are detrimental to their interests, and (c) that these processes are most apparent when group interests are weak. The present article reviews emerging evidence for these propositions and concludes that: (a) an unconscious manifestation of system justification is unlikely based on SJT’s “strong” dissonance-based predictions, which assumes that competing group and system motives are cognitively salient, and (b) a conscious system justification motive is also unlikely amongst the disadvantaged when group interests are weak. In addition, we suggest ways in which to explain system justification effects amongst the disadvantaged without recourse to an (un)conscious system justification motive.
Legitimacy Moderates the Relation Between Perceived and Ideal Economic Inequalities
In this paper we examined the joint effects of perceived economic inequality and legitimacy on ideal economic inequality. We hypothesized that only for those individuals who legitimize inequality, perceived inequality will be positively related to ideal inequality. Conversely, for individuals that do not legitimize inequality, a weaker relation between these variables will be observed. We tested these ideas in two studies. In Study 1, we measured perceived and ideal inequalities (i.e., pay gap) and individual differences in the legitimization of inequality. In Study 2, we measured perceived and ideal inequalities using a novel abacus procedure in which participants had to allocate resources to the different income quintiles, and we then manipulated the legitimacy (vs. illegitimacy) of economic inequality. According to our hypothesis, in both studies we found that when individuals legitimize inequality (vs. when they do not), the relation between perceived and ideal economic inequalities tends to be stronger.
European Journal of Social Psychology, 2003
According to system justification theory, people are motivated to preserve the belief that existing social arrangements are fair, legitimate, justifiable, and necessary. The strongest form of this hypothesis, which draws on the logic of cognitive dissonance theory, holds that people who are most disadvantaged by the status quo would have the greatest psychological need to reduce ideological dissonance and would therefore be most likely to support, defend, and justify existing social systems, authorities, and outcomes. Variations on this hypothesis were tested in five US national survey studies. We found that (a) low-income respondents and African Americans were more likely than others to support limitations on the rights of citizens and media representatives to criticize the government; (b) low-income Latinos were more likely to trust in US government officials and to believe that 'the government is run for the benefit of all' than were high-income Latinos; (c) low-income respondents were more likely than high-income respondents to believe that large differences in pay are necessary to foster motivation and effort; (d) Southerners in the USA were more likely to endorse meritocratic belief systems than were Northerners and poor and Southern African Americans were more likely to subscribe to meritocratic ideologies than were African Americans who were more affluent and from the North; (e) low-income respondents and African Americans were more likely than others to believe that economic inequality is legitimate and necessary; and (f) stronger endorsement of meritocratic ideology was associated with greater satisfaction with one's own economic situation. Taken together, these findings are consistent with the dissonance-based argument that people who suffer the most from a given state of affairs are paradoxically the least likely to question, challenge, reject, or change it. Implications for theories of system justification, cognitive dissonance, and social change are also discussed.
Acta Psychologica, 2023
Members of disadvantaged groups sometimes support societal systems that enable the very inequalities that disadvantaged them. Is it possible to explain this puzzling system-justifying orientation in terms of rational groupinterested motives, without recourse to a separate system motive? The social identity model of system attitudes (SIMSA) claims that it is. SIMSA proposes that the system justification shown by a disadvantaged group (e.g., African American women) can sometimes support identity needs that are tied to a more inclusive (superordinate) in-group (e.g., Americans). There is already some supportive evidence for this proposition, but it is not yet clear whether: (1) such trends are visible in a wider range of disadvantaged contexts, and (2) this explanation also applies to those who are strongly invested in their subgroup (e.g., feminists). In two waves of a large nationally representative survey from 21 to 23 European states (N total = 84,572) and two controlled experiments (N total = 290 women), we found that: (a) system justification was positively associated with superordinate ingroup identification across multiple cases of disadvantage (Studies 1-3), (b) system justification increased when this inclusive identity was made more salient (Studies 2 & 3), and (c) system justification was visible even amongst feminists when they activated their superordinate (Italian) identity (Study 3).