Socioeconomic status self‐deception as a way to perpetuate classist societies
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6337017 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Davide Melita (0000-0003-2703-6735, Institute of Psychology Jagiellonian University Krakow Poland, corresponding author), Joaquín Alcañiz‐colomer (0000-0002-1706-2895, Department of Social Psychology, Faculty of Psychology University of Granada Granada Spain), Juan A Matamoros-Lima (0000-0001-6669-8745, Department of Social Psychology, Faculty of Psychology University of Granada Granada Spain), Silvestre Ariza Río (0009-0007-9938-1067, Department of Social Psychology, Faculty of Psychology University of Granada Granada Spain), Miguel Moya (0000-0003-2421-7282, Department of Social Psychology, Faculty of Psychology University of Granada Granada Spain) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Publication date | 2024-10-11 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Political Psychology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0162-895X • E-ISSN: 1467-9221 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/pops.13051 |
| OpenAlex | W4403338834 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 111 |
Socioeconomic status self‐deception refers to the motivated tendency to perceive oneself as having a higher subjective status than would correspond to objective conditions. This can be a powerful mechanism to legitimize the social order. We proposed that when people perceive the surrounding social environment to be classist, people tend to self‐deceive themselves by overestimating their socioeconomic status. This mechanism, in turn, would lead to justify the system to a higher extent and show less support for redistribution, and reduce relative deprivation and status anxiety. These hypotheses were tested across four pre‐registered studies on different high‐quality samples, different operationalization of the variables in our model, and both cross‐sectional and longitudinal observations. On the one hand, the results do not provide evidence of a link between perceiving a classist climate and socioeconomic status self‐deception. On the other hand, socioeconomic status self‐deception was confirmed to predict higher system justification, and lower support for redistribution, status anxiety and relative deprivation. The construct and operationalization of socioeconomic status self‐deception proposed in this research could help reconcile opposing predictions by system justification theory and social dominance theory, and understand why individuals low on socioeconomic status would oppose policies which could benefit them
Deception · Self-deception · Socioeconomic status · Sociology · Cultural Differences and Values · Demography · Psychology · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology · Sociopolitical Dynamics in Russia
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| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |