Thicker-skinned but still human: People may think individuals in poverty are less vulnerable to harm even when ascribing them full humanity

Abstract

Research has shown that people sometimes display a “thick skin bias” whereby they believe that individuals in poverty are less harmed by negative events than individuals from higher socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. The perception that individuals or groups are less feeling, less vulnerable to harm, or otherwise less responsive or reactive is often thought to be a hallmark of dehumanization. Four preregistered studies tested whether several approaches to dehumanization—e.g., subtle and blatant; animalistic and mechanistic—could explain people's belief that lower-SES individuals are less harmed by negative events. Across studies, participants thought that a variety of negative events would be less harmful for lower-SES individuals than for higher-SES individuals even when not ascribing lower-SES individuals any less humanity. Participants did, however, judge that lower-SES individuals had adapted to hardship more than higher-SES individuals, and this judgment significantly mediated the thick skin bias. Thus, although people in poverty are dehumanized in some contexts, a theory of the causes of the perceived “toughness” of lower-SES individuals will likely require additional explanatory mechanisms, such as beliefs about human adaptation to the hardship of poverty.