How the Poor Deal with Their Own Poverty: A Social Psychological Analysis from the Social Identity Perspective

Abstract

The focus of psychological studies of poverty is usually on the psychological outcomes, causal attributions and the personality characteristics of the poor. Different from previous psychological accounts, the present study considered poverty as a group level phenomenon in the frame of Social Identity Theory, addressing the question of how poor people deal with the negative poor identity. In order to explore which of the three identity management strategies suggested by SIT (so-called individual mobility, social creativity and collective effort) would most likely be adopted by the poor to deal with the negative poor identity, a semi-structured interview study (N = 50) and a survey study (N = 170) were conducted of a sample of Turkish adults living below the poverty line, based on data from a 2011 Report of Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions (TURK-IS, 2011). The analysis of the interviews showed that when people see group boundaries as permeable and the social structure as unstable, they tend to move into higher status groups, even if they perceive the unequal social structure to be illegitimate. On the other hand, when the social structure is perceived as stable, they tend to use creative strategies. The analysis of the survey data mostly confirmed the proposed model, which suggests that a poor identity leads poor people to endorse one of the three identity management strategies through the perceptions of permeability between the poor and the wealthy, and through the perceptions of stability and illegitimacy of the status relations between the poor and the wealthy group.

The Wealth State Awareness Effect on Attention Allocation in People From Impoverished and Affluent Groups

“…Poverty poses a major issue as it can restrict the development of human beings and society. Defined as a scarcity of financial resources or material possessions (Flythe, 2013;Akfirat et al, 2016), poverty has a cumulative long-term impact on cognition from childhood. It can hinder brain development (Cowell, 2008) and eventually reduce adult cognitive capacity (Evans and Schamberg, 2009), especially damaging attention (Hunt, 2011).…”

“Poor is pious”: Distinctiveness threat increases glorification of poverty among the poor

“…Even though poverty can be defined in individualistic, absolute terms (United Nations, ), it always occurs in a context of social relations embedded in power inequalities (Lemieux & Pratto, ). As such poverty can be considered as a group‐based phenomenon in which the poor are members of an economically disadvantaged social group relative to the more affluent group in society (Akfirat, Polat, & Yetim, ). Psychological processes associated with social identities and related threats may therefore be applied to the understanding of poverty.…”

“…Moreover, even low income individuals explain poverty in terms of victim‐blaming attributes, such as individual responsibility and personality weakness of the poor (Hunt, ; Kluegel & Smith, ; Napier, Mandisodza, Andersen, & Jost, ). Notwithstanding this impressive work, there is relatively little research which directly examines how the poor themselves react to, and manage their disadvantaged social status position (see Akfirat et al, for one example of the positive evaluation of poverty).…”

“…In cases where group‐based poverty is rather stable with a relatively little possibility for change in the social hierarchy (Corak, ; Moore, ), the poor could potentially adopt a social creativity strategy to manage their disadvantaged group position. For example, a survey study conducted among a poor population in Turkey by Akfirat et al () showed that to the extent that they perceived the social structure as stable, they were more likely to adopt a positive perspective on their poor identity (e.g., “What is important is not economic wealth, but richness of the heart”). In the current work we wish to go beyond Akfırat et al's work by demonstrating the psychological mechanism that may underlie a relatively positive view of poverty by the poor.…”

“…In the current work we wish to go beyond Akfırat et al's work by demonstrating the psychological mechanism that may underlie a relatively positive view of poverty by the poor. Unlike Akfirat et al (), our research focus was to understand what motivates the poor to glorify poverty and under which circumstances this tendency is likely to be most pronounced.…”