Social cognition
Does Economic Inequality Make Us Worry About Our Social Status?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Perceiving high economic inequality increases people's anxiety about their social status because they believe their social environment has become intensely competitive.
Key findings
The first study showed that people who perceived higher inequality reported greater status anxiety, a link that was partially explained by a highly competitive social climate. In the experiment, participants in the high-inequality condition believed that others in their social group would feel more status anxiety (an effect size of 0.36) compared to those in the low-inequality group. However, the study did not find a direct effect on participants' own status anxiety, though an indirect effect emerged through their perceptions of others' status anxiety.
Methodology
In an initial cross-sectional study, researchers surveyed a sample of 297 participants in Spain to analyze the relationship between perceived inequality, competitive climate, and status anxiety. In a second experimental study, the researchers randomly assigned a sample of 200 participants to imagine living in a fictional society with either high or low income disparities. The researchers measured how much participants expected to worry about their own social standing and how much they thought others in their same income group would worry.
Limitations
The experimental manipulation did not directly change the participants' own levels of status anxiety, only how they expected others to feel. Additionally, the experimental design required participants to imagine their lives in a hypothetical society, which might not fully capture the deep-seated, long-term anxiety felt in real-world environments. Lastly, because the studies were conducted entirely within Spain—a relatively wealthy country with moderate inequality—the findings may not easily generalize to other cultural and economic systems.
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