A series of three studies in Germany found that people living in poverty frequently experience exclusion from different aspects of society and devaluation leading to the feeling of shame. Such shame, in turn, increases their support for authoritarianism due to the promise that that they will be included in the society again authoritarian leaders typically make. The study was published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Poverty is defined as a lack of the capability to live a minimally decent life. Aside from presenting a wide range of material problems related to daily life and survival, it is also a psychologically threatening to those experiencing it because it leads to shame. People living in poverty cannot afford to participate in various social activities (e.g. visiting a restaurant, movies, or various other communal events) and this creates an emotional experience of worthlessness, powerlessness, and exclusion from society.
Poverty is often linked with support for authoritarianism. Authoritarianism refers to a willingness to submit to authority and a preference for intense group cohesion and conformity (as opposed to autonomy and deciding on one’s behavior by oneself). However, the mechanism that might link poverty and authoritarianism is not known and is rarely discussed. Some authors have proposed that stress, anxiety, and shame created by a life in poverty might be key elements of this mechanism, but empirical research on has been lacking.
Study author Jasper Neerdaels and his colleagues wanted to explore this mechanism and proposed that shame and exclusion from society lead to increased support for authoritarianism. This happens “because authoritarian leaders and regimes promise a sense of social re-inclusion through their emphasis on strong social cohesion and conformity. As such, authoritarianism diffuses the sense of threat inherent in shame,” the researchers explained.
They conducted two experiments and analyzed data from a large field study. The first experiment was conducted on a group of 401 MTurk workers. The participants were divided into two groups. One group read a text describing characteristic aspects of everyday life of poor people in the United States, while the other read a similar text about wealthy people.
The text about poor people highlighted the lack of capabilities that were necessary for a “decent” life (“These people cannot afford most of the things they like, and they often cannot take part in their community’s cultural life, for example, going to concerts, movies or theaters”).
After reading the texts, participants were asked to write a few sentences describing how they are similar to the group they read about. They then completed assessments of support for authoritarianism, shame, anxiety, and stress.
Results of the first experiment showed that participants who read about lives of poor people felt more ashamed than those reading about lives of the wealthy. Participants who felt more ashamed also scored higher on support for authoritarianism. Statistical analysis showed that it is possible that effects of reading about poverty/wealth affect support for authoritarianism through shame, but not through stress or anxiety.
The second experiment included 259 MTurk workers. They first completed an assessment of support for authoritarianism and were then divided into two groups. One group was asked to recall and describe in writing an event where they felt shame. The other group was asked to recall what they did the previous day. After this, they again completed assessments of support for authoritarianism and how ashamed they felt.
The researchers found that participants who were asked to recall the event where they were ashamed were more likely to indicate support for authoritarianism than participants who were recalling their previous day.
The third study was a survey aiming to verify the association between poverty and support for authoritarianism on people outside the United States. The researchers analyzed data from the Longitudinal Internet Studies for Social Sciences (LISS) panel. This panel contains answers to surveys from samples of households in the Netherlands. They analyzed assessments of support for authoritarianism, poverty, and states of shame, stress, and anxiety.
A statistical analysis of the survey data from the Netherlands showed that it is possible that poverty affects the support for authoritarianism through the feelings of shame, but not through anxiety or stress.
“By showing that the relationship between poverty and authoritarianism can be explained via shame, not stress or anxiety, as previous notions assumed, our findings not only settle a scholarly debate, but also potentially expand the way we look at authoritarianism and its psychological functioning,” the researchers concluded.
“Authoritarian reactions may be psychologically protective because they serve an ego-enhancing function for several reasons, as we argue: First, authoritarianism provides a sense of oneness and sameness, therefore promising poor people social re-inclusion. Second, submission to authority and group norms diffuses personal responsibility, which, in the light of neoliberal ideology, exacerbates the shame of poverty. Third, a ‘strong leader’ provides a sense of strength and control, thereby potentially alleviating feelings of worth- and powerlessness.”
The study sheds light on the relations between poverty and political attitudes, but it also has limitations that need to be considered. Namely, all three studies were conducted in Western, high-income countries and results on other cultures might not be the same. Additionally, associations found in the survey were small, meaning that poverty is far from being the main explanation for the level of support for authoritarianism people feel.
The study, “It’s (a) Shame: Why Poverty Leads to Support for Authoritarianism”, was authored by Jasper Neerdaels, Christian Tröster, and Niels Van Quaquebeke.