“Luxury beliefs”: Signaling through ideology?

Abstract

The concept of “luxury beliefs”—ideological stances used to signal status—has attracted growing attention in public discourse. Using a set of statements commonly described as “luxury beliefs”, I conduct an online experiment with a nationally representative U.S. sample ($n=715$) to examine how widely these beliefs are recognized, whether they are associated with higher socioeconomic status (proxied by education and income), and whether individuals use them for status signaling toward relevant audiences. I find that: (i) Only 39% of the participants, primarily Republicans, report having heard of “luxury beliefs”. (ii) Agreement with luxury beliefs is not associated with higher education or income. (iii) There is little evidence of signaling behavior, aside from suggestive evidence that Independents express higher agreement with luxury beliefs when paired with a Democrat. These results indicate that luxury beliefs are not widely recognized or used as status signals in the general population.