The advantages of some or the disadvantages of others – choice of and reactions to (dis)advantage framing of inequality

Topic

Overview

In this project, we investigate how people speak about inequality between social groups. In particular, we are interested in the choice of linguistic focus. Do people rather speak about the advantages of some social groups or the disadvantages of others? For example, the gender income gap can be framed as an advantage of men (“men earn more than women”) or as a disadvantage of women (“women earn less than men”). Such linguistic variation (framing) can influence how people emotionally react to inequality, or whether and how they want to change something about it.

In the first part of the project, we examine how people react to different framings of inequality. So far, we have conducted two online experiments. We investigated how members of a privileged group want to help a relatively disadvantaged group – depending on whether they hear about in-group privileges or out-group disadvantages. In further experiments, we will consider the role of identification with the in-group for these processes.

In the second part of the project, we look into which framings are used to describe social inequality on social media, and how users react to them. To this end, we collect and classify tweets with different framings, using a Python script. We analyze whether framing influences whether and how often tweets are liked, retweeted, quoted, and replied to. In a next step, we plan to examine whether the characteristics of users (e.g., group membership, political attitudes) influence which framing of social inequality they choose.

Funding

PhD scholarship, Friedrich Ebert Foundation

PI

Annette Malapally, M.Sc., Prof. Dr. Susanne Bruckmüller

Literature

Branscombe, N. R., Schmitt, M. T., & Schiffhauer, K. (2007). Racial attitudes in response to thoughts of White privilege. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37(2), 203-215. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.348

Bruckmüller, S., & Abele, A. E. (2010). Comparison focus in intergroup comparisons: Who we compare to whom influences who we see as powerful and agentic. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(10), 1424-1435. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0146167210383581

Dietze, P., & Craig, M. A. (2021). Framing economic inequality and policy as group disadvantages (versus group advantages) spurs support for action. Nature human behaviour, 5(3), 349-360. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-00988-4

Nadler, A., & Halabi, S. (2006). Intergroup helping as status relations: Effects of status stability, identification, and type of help on receptivity to high-status group’s help. Journal of personality and social psychology, 91(1), 97. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.1.97