Considering class: Comparing the relative effects of personal vs. systemic conceptions of inequality

Abstract

Past research in social psychology has explored the effects of considering a given policy or issue from different perspectives. In the case of political information, for example, this might mean thinking about broad systemic factors or values that cause an outcome or alternatively focusing on the local actors who are responsible for and/or affected by that system. In the present studies, we explore whether beliefs about systemic (vs. personal) features of social class are more effective at predicting their positions about policies or norms that change inequality. Results consistently showed that system-level perceptions of social class were more predictive of support for social change than perceptions of personal disadvantage. We discuss the implications of these findings for work on the psychology of inequality.