Attitudes toward equality derive from attitudes toward one’s own status.

Evidence

It is my thesis that attitudes toward equality rest in the first instance upon one’s attitude towards one’s own status. Like a large number of social beliefs, attitudes towards equality take their direction from beliefs about the self, the status of the self, and one’s self-esteem or lack thereof. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2152

Categorization

• QUESTION: If egalitarian belief is really a self-status reflex, does an ironic ‘strategic’ egalitarian identity survive any better as a collective program than individual workers’ essentialized ‘equality of the soul’? Worth chasing in the reader’s synthesis.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 2152
• XREF: connects to: One’s own social position predicts which prejudice type one will exhibit. — Susan T. Fiske et al., A Model of (Often Mixed) Stereotype…, 306