The economic inequality that surrounds us worsens our quality of life. This is partly due to status anxiety: a tendency for people of all social backgrounds living in more unequal societies to constantly worry about socioeconomic status, because they perceive that they are competing to attain or maintain a social position that allows them to avoid being looked down upon by others.
However, the relationship between economic inequality and status anxiety is not direct. Researchers from the Social Psychology of Inequality Laboratory (http://wwwlocal.ugr.es/~psidesigualdad/) within the Psychology of Social Problems group (HUM-289), have shown that when people perceive greater economic inequality in their social environment, they modify their expectations of being able to increase or decrease their socioeconomic status, giving rise to opposing effects on status anxiety. More specifically, when people perceive greater inequality in their environment, they also perceive having less chance of achieving high socioeconomic status. This, in turn, increases status anxiety. However, at the same time, as they perceive greater inequality in their environment, they also believe that they will be less likely to lose their current socioeconomic status, which decreases status anxiety. Finally, these two opposing effects cancel each other out, and may explain why previous research has not obtained causal evidence of an effect of economic inequality on status anxiety.
To obtain these results, the researchers conducted two experimental studies with more than 1,000 participants from the University of Granada. The students performed a series of tasks in which they received fictitious information about the distribution of income among graduates of the University of Granada, and they had to imagine the differences in the lifestyles of those who would earn more and those who would earn less money.
This research highlights that the effects of economic inequality depend on how it is perceived. The perception of lower downward mobility may protect against greater status anxiety, but it may also contribute to a fatalistic perception of society and one's place in it, thus dampening motivation to try to improve one's social environment.
Reference:
Melita, D., Rodríguez-Bailón, R., & Willis, G. B. (2023). Does income inequality increase status anxiety? Not directly, the role of perceived upward and downward mobility. The British journal of social psychology, 62(3), 1453–1468. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12641
Contact:
Davide Melita (dmelita@ugr.es)
Rosa Rodríguez-Bailón (rrbailon@ugr.es)
Guillermo B. Willis (gwillis@ugr.es)