Does Income Inequality Increase Status Anxiety? Not Directly, the Role of Perceived Upward and Downward Mobility
Metadatos
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Wiley
Materia
Economic inequality Social mobility Socioeconomic status Status anxiety
Date
2023-03Referencia bibliográfica
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, https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12641
Patrocinador
SRA (State Research Agency /10.13039/501100011033) of the Spanish Government; SRA Grant BES-2017-082707; European Social Fund (PSI2016-78839-P and PID2019-105643GB-I00)Résumé
Status anxiety theory posits that higher income inequality leads people to attribute more importance to their socioeconomic status and to worry about the position they occupy on the social ladder. We investigated through two experimental studies (N = 1117) the causal effect of economic inequality on status anxiety and whether expected upward and downward mobility mediates this effect. In Study 1, perceived economic inequality indirectly increased status anxiety through lesser expected upward mobility. In Study 2, perceived economic inequality decreased both expected upward and downward mobility, with opposite indirect effects on status anxiety. This suggests that the relationship between inequality and status anxiety is not straightforward, and could implicate the presence of multiple processes working at the same time—whereas lower expected downward mobility could suppress the effect of inequality, lower expected upward mobility could exacerbate it.