A 32-society investigation of the influence of perceived economic inequality on social class stereotyping

International audienceThere is a growing body of work suggesting that social class stereotypes are amplified when people perceive higher levels of economic inequality-that is, the wealthy are perceived as more competent and assertive and the poor as more incompetent and unassertive. The present study tested this prediction in 32 societies and also examines the role of wealth-based categorization in explaining this relationship. We found that people who perceived higher economic inequality were indeed more likely to consider wealth as a meaningful basis for categorization. Unexpectedly, however, higher levels of perceived inequality were associated with perceiving the wealthy as less competent and assertive and the poor as more competent and assertive. Unpacking this further, exploratory analyses showed that the observed tendency to stereotype the wealthy negatively only emerged in societies with lower social mobility and democracy and higher corruption. This points to the importance of understanding how socio-structural features that co-occur with economic inequality may shape perceptions of the wealthy and the poor

Explaining illness with evil: pathogen prevalence fosters moral vitalism

Pathogens represent a significant threat to human health leading to the emergence of strategies designed to help manage their negative impact. We examined how spiritual beliefs developed to explain and predict the devastating effects of pathogens and spread of infectious disease. Analysis of existing data in studies 1 and 2 suggests that moral vitalism (beliefs about spiritual forces of evil) is higher in geographical regions characterized by historical higher levels of pathogens. Furthermore, drawing on a sample of 3140 participants from 28 countries in study 3, we found that historical higher levels of pathogens were associated with stronger endorsement of moral vitalis- tic beliefs. Furthermore, endorsement of moral vitalistic beliefs statistically mediated the previously reported relationship between pathogen prevalence and conser- vative ideologies, suggesting these beliefs reinforce behavioural strategies which function to prevent infection. We conclude that moral vitalism may be adaptive: by emphasizing concerns over contagion, it provided an explanatory model that enabled human groups to reduce rates of contagious disease

How political identities are developed and maintained

In a time of heightened partisanship and political polarization, people’s political identities are increasingly producing detrimental outcomes. To address the dangers of extreme political identities, we need to understand how such identities form and are maintained. My overarching goal is to examine how people’s political identities develop and how people protect such identities from threat. Specifically, after an introductory chapter (Chapter 1), I examine how political identities develop via everyday social interactions with fellow group members (Chapter 2), and how people protect their political identities when they are faced with threat from political opponents (Chapters 3) or from fellow partisans (Chapter 4). The dissertation features several distinct methodological approaches. In Chapter 2, I analyze daily conversations occurring within three large online political groups to understand the processes through which people’s political identities develop over time. Chapter 3 examines how people protect their political identities from identity-threatening content on social media. Chapter 4 examines how people strategically respond to reputational threat caused by the moral transgressions of fellow partisans. Each of these chapters is comprised of an article that either has been published at peer-reviewed journals or is in preparation for submission (Ashokkumar & Pennebaker, in prep; Ashokkumar et al., 2020; Ashokkumar et al., 2019). Bringing together insights from the three sets of studies, the dissertation concludes with a discussion of dynamic processes associated with political identities and argues for taking a multimethod approach to studying identity.Psycholog

Social media conversations reveal large psychological shifts caused by COVID's onset across US cities

The current research chronicles the unfolding of the early psychological impacts of COVID-19 by analyzing Reddit language from 18 US cities (200,000+ people) and large-scale survey data (11,000+ people). Large psychological shifts were found reflecting three distinct phases. When COVID warnings first emerged (“warning phase”), people’s attentional focus switched to the impending threat. Anxiety levels surged, and positive emotion and anger dropped. In parallel, people’s thinking became more intuitive rather than analytic. When lockdowns began (“isolation phase”), analytic thinking dropped further. People became sadder, and their thinking reflected attempts to process the uncertainty. Familial ties strengthened, but ties to broader social groups weakened. Six weeks after COVID’s onset (“normalization phase”), people’s psychological states stabilized but remained elevated. Most psychological shifts were stronger when the threat of COVID was greater. The magnitude of the shifts produced by the pandemic dwarfed responses to other events that occurred in the previous decade

Responses to Ingroup Moral Transgressions

When ingroup members behave immorally, when do other group members seize the moral high ground and denounce them? The current research probes the mechanisms that motivate such acts of moral courage. Materials used in all studies and our pre-registration of Study 2a and 2b in the manuscript are avaliable here