Prosperous But Fearful of Falling: The Wealth Paradox,Collective Angst,and Opposition to Immigration

Abstract

Building on growing evidence that relative economic gratification may be associated with prejudice toward minorities, such as immigrants, the question remains when and why prosperity and wealth may enhance opposition to immigration. In a correlational study (Study 1, N = 498), we show that increased fear of falling in the future (individually or collectively) is associated with greater opposition to immigration. We then experimentally studied the effects of potential (Study 2, N = 294) and actual (Study 3, N = 166) downward mobility among the relatively wealthy, as well as of relatively stagnating wealthy in the context where an initially poorer group is quickly gaining wealth over time (Study 4, N = 151). We find that fear of falling among the wealthy is associated with more opposition to immigration, mediated by collective angst. We conclude that the anticipation that the economic future looks less rosy than the present evokes collective angst, which, in turn, fuels prejudice toward immigrants.

Keywords

wealth wealth paradox social mobility opposition to immigration relative gratification

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bettencourt

B. A.

Dorr

Charlton

Hume

D. L.

(2001). Status differences and in-group bias: A meta-analytic examination of the effects of status stability, status legitimacy, and group permeability. Psychological Bulletin, 127, 520–542.

Dambrun

Taylor

D. M.

McDonald

D. A.

Crush

Meot

(2006). The relative deprivation-gratification continuum and the attitudes of South Africans toward immigrants: A test of the V-curve hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 1032–1044.

De Botton

(2004). Status anxiety. Hamish Hamilton.

De Tocqueville

(1835/2000). Democracy in America. University of Chicago. (Original work published 1835).

Ehrenreich

(1990). Fear of falling: The inner life of the middle class. Harper Perennial.

Ellemers

van Knippenberg

de Vries

Wilke

(1988). Social identification and the permeability of group boundaries. European Journal of Social Psychology, 18, 497–513.

Esses

V. M.

Dovidio

J. F.

Jackson

L. M.

Armstrong

T. L.

(2001). The immigration dilemma: The role of perceived group competition, ethnic prejudice, and national identity. Journal of Social Issues, 57, 389–412.

Guimond

Dambrun

(2002). When prosperity breeds intergroup hostility: The effects of relative deprivation and relative gratification on prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 900–912.

Harvey

S. P.

Bourhis

R. Y.

(2011). Discrimination in wealth and power structures. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 15, 21–38.

10.

Hayes

A. F.

(2013). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis. The Guilford Press.

11.

Hochschild

(2016). Strangers in their own land: Anger and mourning on the American right. The New Press.

12.

Jetten

(2019). The wealth paradox: Prosperity and opposition to immigration. European Journal of Social Psychology, 49, 1097–1113.

13.

Jetten

Mols

Healy

Spears

(2017). “Fear of falling”: Economic instability enhances collective angst among societies’ wealthy. Journal of Social Issues, 73, 61–79.

14.

Jetten

Mols

Postmes

(2015). Relative deprivation and relative wealth enhances anti-immigrant sentiments: The v-curve re-examined. PLOS ONE, 10(10), Article e0139156. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0139156

15.

Jetten

Wohl

(2012). The past as a determinant of the present: Historical continuity, collective angst, and opposition to immigration. European Journal of Social Psychology, 42, 442–450.

16.

Kahneman

Tversky

(1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47(4), 263–291. https://doi.org/10.2307/1914185

17.

LeBlanc

Beaton

A. M.

Walker

(2015). The downside of being up: A new look at group relative gratification and traditional prejudice. Social Justice Research, 28, 143–167.

18.

Major

Blodorn

Major-Blascovich

(2016). The threat of increasing diversity: Why many White Americans support Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 21, 931–940. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430216677304

19.

Mols

Jetten

(2015). Explaining the appeal of populist right-wing parties in times of economic prosperity. Political Psychology, 37, 275–292. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12258

20.

Mols

Jetten

(2017). The wealth paradox: Economic prosperity and the hardening of attitudes. Cambridge University Press.

21.

Mullainathan

Shafir

(2013). Scarcity: Why having too little means so much. Times Books.

22.

Mutz

D. C.

(2018). Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115, E4330–E4339.

23.

Norris

(2005). Radical right: Voters and parties in the electoral market. Cambridge University Press.

24.

Olson

(1963). Rapid growth as a destabilizing force. The Journal of Economic History, 23(4), 529–552.

25.

Piff

P. K.

Kraus

M. W.

Côté

Cheng

B. H.

Keltner

(2010). Having less, giving more: The influence of social class on prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(5), 771.

26.

Sapolsky

R. M.

(2004). Social status and health in humans and other animals. Annual Review of Anthropology, 33, 393–418.

27.

Scheepers

D. T.

Ellemers

(2005). When the pressure is up: The assessment of social identity threat in low and high status groups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41(2), 192–200. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2004.06.002

28.

Smith

(1776). The wealth of nations. Strahan & Cadell.

29.

Tajfel

Turner

J. C.

(1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In Austin

W.G.

Worchel

(Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33-48). Brooks/Cole.

30.

Wang

Jetten

Steffens

N. K.

(2019). The more you have, the more you want? Higher social class predicts a greater desire for wealth and status. European Journal of Social Psychology, 50(2), 360–375.

31.

Wohl

M. J. A.

Branscombe

N. R.

(2009). Group threat, collective angst and ingroup forgiveness for the war in Iraq. Political Psychology, 30, 193–217.

32.

Zweig

(2009). The world of yesterday: Memoirs of a European. Pushkin Press. (Original work published 1942).

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

34.53 MB