Papers from the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology Conferences
Publication Date
2024
Abstract
Three survey experiments examined the effect of cues describing a target’s socioeconomic status (SES) on participants’ judgements after the target transgressed the social norm of punctuality. Hypotheses were formulated based on Fiske’s (2018) stereotype content model. In Study 1 (N = 243) participants were randomly assigned to read a vignette describing a gender ambiguous student as low-SES (versus high-SES) arriving late to an exam and then judged the tardy student. Judges showed more leniency when the student was described as low-SES than high-SES. In Study 2 (N = 40), the target was a male job applicant arriving late to an interview. Hiring intentions were significantly higher for the low SES candidate. Study 3 (N = 69) described a gender-neutral job applicant and specified the job position status as managerial while exploring two punctuality-related covariates: participants’ own SES and ADHD symptoms. The same direction of bias was observed: A main effect of experimental condition in favor of the low SES applicant. In addition, we found a significant role of ADHD scores on hiring intentions and likability indicating overall higher scores from participants with more ADHD symptoms. Overall findings supported Weiner and Laurent’s (2021) wealth-based moral judgement gap.
ScholarWorks Citation
Basáñez, T., Barcena, B., Delgadillo, V., Ortiz Ayala, I., Ortiz, A., Andrade, S., Fajardo, A., and Stewart, C. (2024). The Effect of Socioeconomic Status Descriptors on Judgements about Unpunctuality. In E. E. Buchtel & W. Friedlmeier (Eds.), Year of the Golden Jubilee: Culture Change in the Past, Present and Future. Proceedings from the 26th Congress of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, 12. https://doi.org/10.4087/VFPZ9732
Acknowledgments
The first author would like to thank Dr. Miguel Moya for his guidance. We have been collaborating on subsequent experiments testing the main hypothesis presented here, and are presently writing a separate manuscript reporting consistent findings.