Nations' income inequality predicts ambivalence in stereotype content: How societies mind the gap

Federica Durante, Susan T. Fiske, Nicolas Kervyn, Amy J. C. Cuddy, Adebowale Akande, Bolanle E. Adetoun, Modupe F. Adewuyi, Magdeline M. Tserere, Ananthi Al Ramiah, Khairul Anwar Mastor, Fiona Kate Barlow, Gregory Bonn, Romin W. Tafarodi, Janine Bosak, Ed Cairns, Claire Doherty, Dora Capozza, Anjana Chandran, Xenia Chryssochoou, Tilemachos Iatridis, Juan Manuel Contreras, Rui Costa‐Lopes, Roberto González, Janet I. Lewis, Gerald Tushabe, Jacques‐Philippe Leyens, Renée Mayorga, Nadim N. Rouhana, Vanessa Smith Castro, Rolando Perez, Rosa Rodríguez‐Bailón, Miguel Moya, Elena Morales Marente, Marisol Palacios Gálvez, Chris G. Sibley, Frank Asbrock, Chiara C. Storari

Income inequality undermines societies: The more inequality, the more health problems, social tensions, and the lower social mobility, trust, life expectancy. Given people's tendency to legitimate existing social arrangements, the stereotype content model (SCM) argues that ambivalence-perceiving many groups as either warm or competent, but not both-may help maintain socio-economic disparities. The association between stereotype ambivalence and income inequality in 37 cross-national samples from Europe, the Americas, Oceania, Asia, and Africa investigates how groups' overall warmth-competence, status-competence, and competition-warmth correlations vary across societies, and whether these variations associate with income inequality (Gini index). More unequal societies report more ambivalent stereotypes, whereas more equal ones dislike competitive groups and do not necessarily respect them as competent. Unequal societies may need ambivalence for system stability: Income inequality compensates groups with partially positive social images.