Income inequality, conflict and ambivalence in stereotype content.

According to Wilkinson & Pickett (2010), the quality of life in a society is built on material foundations, but in affluent developed countries the relationship between economic growth and several components of the quality of life (i.e., life expectancy, health, happiness, wellbeing, social relations) has levelled off. What instead seems to matter the most is the level of income inequality, considered as an indicator of the scale of social stratification in a society (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2007). As noted by Fiske (2011), comparisons up and down the social hierarchy divide people, but often people at both ends of the social ladder prefer a stable society and tend to justify all sorts of system inequalities, even if they are not beneficiaries. How come? We argue that ambivalent stereotypes―perceiving groups as either warm or competent, but not both―may help maintain socio-economic disparities. To explore the ambivalence-inequality association, we used SCM (Fiske et al., 2002) theory and method to investigate the ambivalent warmth–competence relationship and its relationship with an income inequality measure (the Gini index), in 43 samples, collected in 31 nations from all continents. Furthermore, because recent research has shown that inequality significantly increases the likelihood of conflict onset, we have explored the impact of conflict (measured by the GPI) on ambivalence. Results showed first that more unequal societies report more ambivalent stereotypes, second that very low and very high conflict countries are relatively equal, finally and consistently that very high and very low conflict countries show low ambivalence. Data suggest that peaceful and equal countries show low ambivalence because they include most groups in the social safety net, whereas in conflicting contexts, group stereotypes polarized into an Us-Them categorization (friends vs. foes). Unequal but relatively conflict-ridden societies may need ambivalence for system stability: Income inequality compensates groups with partially positive social images.