Does Socioeconomic Status Influence Societal Discontent and Does Societal Discontent Relate to Polarization?

Koelling, Lennart (2023) Does Socioeconomic Status Influence Societal Discontent and Does Societal Discontent Relate to Polarization? Bachelor thesis, Psychology.

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Abstract

Recent research shows that socioeconomic status seems to be related to how people feel about society and how much societal discontent they experience. In this research, we wanted to investigate how status could relate to our societal view through the mediation of meta-perceptions. Meta-perceptions are expectations about how you think other groups see you and societal discontent describes a global feeling of societal decline. Moreover, we aimed to study how societal discontent might relate to your political attitudes. We used a sample of Dutch psychology students as participants (N= 164) for our experiment in which we manipulated our participants’ self-perceived SES to see how it might influence their levels of meta-perceptions, societal discontent and by extension also polarisation. We found that status indirectly influences discontent through meta-perceptions and discontent predicts populism and opinions on the government. We could, furthermore, establish causality regarding the relationship of SES and meta-perceptions. This means that a person of low self-perceived SES is more likely to have negative meta-perceptions and consequently also likelier to experience societal discontent than a person with high self-perceived SES. People with higher levels of societal discontent then are also likelier to be polarized in their view on the government and populist rhetoric in politics. Keywords: Socioeconomic Status; Societal Discontent; Meta-perceptions; Polarization

Item Type:	Thesis (Bachelor)
Supervisor name:	Gordijn, E.H.
Degree programme:	Psychology
Differentiation route:	None [Bachelor Psychology]
Date Deposited:	24 Mar 2023 10:04
Last Modified:	24 Mar 2023 10:04
URI:	http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/1845

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