Marginal-status people tend to denigrate those below them when opportunity ideology is strong.

Evidence

3.The greater the emphasis in a society upon equality of opportunity, the greater the tendency for those of marginal status to denigrate those lower than themselves. This view seems to such people to have the factual or even moral justification that if the lower classes “cared” enough they could be better off. It has a psychological “justification” in that it draws attention to one’s own relatively better status and one’s own relatively greater initiative and virtue. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2267

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to downward comparison theory and the ‘just world’ belief; also to the working-class-conservatism paradox in American politics. — connects to: Newly empowered groups often secure status by denigrating those they just left. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 112