Relación entre la desigualdad económica y la ansiedad por el estatus

Abstract

Economic inequality is one of the most pressing issues of our times. Although it is not a new issue, the accumulation of resources by elites across the globe has been exacerbating the gap between the haves and the have-nots during the last decades (Alvaredo et al., 2017; Piketty, 2014). Economic inequality is comparable to a lethal pandemic, which deteriorates population’s health and life expectancy along the entire social ladder once it exceeds a threshold (approximately 0.3 points in the Gini Index; Kondo et al., 2009). Nowadays, more than two thirds of world countries exceed this threshold1. A large share of the negative effects of economic inequality on individuals’ health and wellbeing have been attributed to status anxiety (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009b). This phenomenon has been defined as a constant concern people experience about their socioeconomic status and about not meeting society’s standard of success (De Botton, 2004). On the one hand, materialistic values are enhanced in unequal societies (Walasek & Brown, 2019). On the other hand, humans are highly vigilant about any threat toward their social esteem (Dickerson, & Kemeny, 2004). Hence, when socioeconomic status become highly relevant for their social esteem a competitive climate could be generated, which potentially could rise status anxiety and, in turn, chronically activate stress reactions. Some evidence supports the status anxiety hypothesis. However, the evidence so far has been based on indirect indicators of status anxiety or related variables (e.g., status seeking). Moreover, the mechanisms involved in the effect of economic inequality on status anxiety have not been explored. The main goal of this doctoral thesis is to analyze the influence of economic inequality on status anxiety, and to explore the psychological processes involved. To that end, a direct measure of status anxiety was adapted and validated in the Spanish context, and both a consolidated and a new experimental paradigm were employed to manipulate economic inequality and test its effect on status anxiety.