Trust and social class : the complex relationship between explicit stereotypes (about dispositions and situations), implicit stereotypes, and trust
department or school: Arts, Faculty of
department or school: Psychology, Department of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Engstrom, Holly Rose
issued: 2023-10-05T19:31:32Z
issued: 2023
related degree: Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: Trust is vital for success in all kinds of social interactions. But how do people decide whether an individual can be trusted? The social class of the individual in question may be one important cue to trusting that they will behave in a moral and competent manner. We propose three mechanisms through which a person’s social class may influence how much we trust their morality and competence: Explicit dispositional stereotypes, explicit beliefs about situations, and implicit associations. We investigated this in two ways, with two opposing sets of findings. In Chapter Two, participants who played an economic game involving trust in morality trusted lower-class game partners more than higher-class partners. This was partially explained by people’s explicit stereotypes of lower-class people as more dispositionally moral than higher-class people. They also believed lower-class partners would be more tempted by their financial situation to betray them, but this did not predict trust. In Chapter Three, however, participants made repeated choices as to who they would trust in hypothetical scenarios involving trust in morality and in competence. Here, participants tended to trust higher-class partners in both morality and competence scenarios. We ran six additional studies testing potential explanations for the difference in results between Chapter Two and Three, finding some hints but no conclusive evidence. Finally, we considered whether implicit stereotypes might help to explain this difference. Across seven studies we developed a novel task to measure implicit associations with social class. Despite often reporting explicit stereotypes of lower- (vs. higher-) class people having more moral dispositions, people implicitly associated low social class with low morality. Both implicit and explicit morality stereotypes predicted decisions in the morality trust scenarios. We discuss additional possible resolutions to the discrepancy in results, as well as implications of our …
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/86083
note: TRUST AND SOCIAL CLASS: THE COMPLEX RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EXPLICIT STEREOTYPES (ABOUT DISPOSITIONS AND SITUATIONS), IMPLICIT STEREOTYPES, AND TRUST by Holly Rose Engstrom B.A., McGill University, 2016 M.A., University of British Columbia, 2019 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in The Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (Psychology) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) October 2023 © Holly Rose Engstrom, 2023 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: Trust and social class: The complex relationship between explicit stereotypes (about dispositions and situations), implicit stereotypes, and trust submitted by Holly Rose Engstrom in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology Examining Committee: Kristin Laurin, Associate Professor, Dept. of Psychology, UBC Supervisor Toni Schmader, Professor, Dept. of Psychology, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Gerry Veenstra, Professor, Dept. of Sociology, UBC University Examiner Mark Schaller, Professor, Dept. of Psychology, UBC University Examiner Additional Supervisory Committee Members: Andrew Baron, Professor, Dept. of Psychology, UBC Supervisory Committee Member iii Abstract Trust is vital for success in all kinds of social interactions. But how do people decide whether an individual can be trusted? The social class of the individual in question may be one important cue to trusting that they will behave in a moral and competent manner. We propose three mechanisms through which a person’s social class may influence how much we trust their morality and competence: Explicit dispositional stereotypes, explicit beliefs about situations, and implicit associations. We investigated this in two ways, with two opposing sets of findings. In Chapter Two, participants who played an…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2023-11
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0436954
language: eng
degree discipline: Psychology
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
contributor: Laurin, Kristin
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/86083