Socio-Economic Predictors of Prejudice: Psychological Perspective

Abstract

Objective. To analyze and summarize the results obtained in various social sciences regarding the emergence and spread of prejudice. Background. Prejudice is a complex issue, which is represented in different spheres of social science. In psychology, researchers analyze individual or group-based factors, while in economics and sociology they investigate objective indicators of the socioeconomic development at the country-level. Today the data in the mentioned fields are not integrated. Conclusions. Previous studies showed that GDP might indicate a significant factor in reducing bias, but only in countries with low social inequality or stable economic growth. Moreover, people with lower socioeconomic status are more vulnerable to the consequences of economic and socio-political changes. Psychological factors, in particularly, the perceived inequality or intergroup threat defined additional perspective in the explanation of the relationship between objective socio-economic indicators and the level of prejudice. In addition, the ideological attitudes (e.g., system justification) also influence the perceived inequality or threat, and bias. These findings are used to define future directions for research related to integration of objective socio-economic indicators and psychological variables to analyze the nature of prejudices.