Positive stereotypes like ‘poor but happy’ legitimize inequality

Evidence

Kay and Jost (2003) suggested that “poor but happy” and “poor but honest” stereotypes would serve to increase support for the status quo, insofar as such stereotypes maintain the belief that every group in society has some rewards, and no group has a monopoly on valued characteristics. The authors demonstrated in four experiments that exposure to “poor but happy,” “poor but honest,” “rich but miserable,” and “rich but dishonest” stereotype exemplars led people to score higher on a general, diffuse measure of system justification, compared to control conditions. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1410

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the vault’s handling of Allport’s ‘cheerful and humorous’ African American stereotype claim and the reader’s system-justification thread. — connects to: Indiscriminate kindness and liberality become affirmation of everything bad that exists — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 87; Ordoliberals attacked redistributive wage policy by reframing well-being as feelings of satisfaction — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 513
• SEED: Angle: how ‘poor but honest’ framing launders inequality into moral virtue — an essay on benevolence as legitimation.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1410