Shifting Societal Attitudes: Examining the Effects of Perspective Taking on Attitudes toward and Derogation of the Poor

ABSTRACT

People tend to hold negative attitudes about and derogate those in poverty to varying degrees, often relying on indivi-dualistic explanations of poverty that largely ignore systemic sources. This study (N = 208) examined a perspective-taking strategy that could be used to reduce distancing behaviors and negative attitudes toward the poor. Perspective takers distanced less and reported fewer negative attitudes than others. An additional finding was that men (n = 57) were more likely to derogate/distance than women, showed greater agreement with personal deficiency explanations for poverty, and reported stronger stereotypic attitudes toward people who are impoverished.

KEYWORDS:

• attitudes
• Canada
• low-income
• perspective taking
• poverty
• social distance

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge Mary MacKeigan, former Executive Director of a regional not-for-profit organization dedicated to ending poverty. Her passion for and commitment to shifting societal attitudes toward people living in poverty was the impetus for this study. She asked us to use research to uncover unconscious biases against people living in poverty.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). We thank the SSHRC grant Principal Investigator Ted Jackson for mobilizing resources for this research through a National Poverty Reduction Hub, Communities First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CF:ICE) co-lead by Vibrant Communities Canada and Carleton University (SSHRC Grant Number: 895-2011-1003).