People think the everyday effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are not as bad for people in poverty.

Abstract

Many of the everyday restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., lockdowns, being apart from loved ones) are even worse for those with fewer financial and material resources, but a series of experiments (total N = 1,452) suggests that people think the opposite. Indeed, participants consistently displayed a "thick skin bias," whereby they perceived effects of the pandemic such as sheltering at home or remaining apart from loved ones as less harmful for people in poverty. Directly providing information that contradicted this misguided stereotype reduced, but did not completely reverse, the thick skin bias. A failure to understand the full impact of the pandemic for those with the fewest resources may perpetuate and exacerbate inequalities during and after this unprecedented global crisis, making the identification of strategies to counteract biased understandings of poverty a pressing priority for future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).