People would rather spend time with rich individuals who acquired their wealth through hard work than with a lottery winner, presumably because of their perceived differences in valence & competence

Cues of wealth and the subjective perception of rich people. Robin Rinn, Jonas Ludwig, Pauline Fassler & Roland Deutsch. Current Psychology, Oct 22 2022. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-022-03763-y

Abstract: These pre-registered studies shed light on the cues that individuals use to identify rich people. In two studies (N = 598), we first developed a factor-analytical model that describes the content and the mental structure of 24 wealth cues. A third within-subject study (N = 89) then assessed the perception of rich subgroups based on this model of wealth cues. Participants evaluated the extent to which the wealth cues applied to two distinct subgroups of rich people. The results show: German and US-American participants think that one can identify rich people based on the same set of cues which can be grouped along the following dimensions: luxury consumption, expensive hobbies, spontaneous spending, greedy behavior, charismatic behavior, self-presentation, and specific possessions. However, Germans and US-Americans relied on these cues to different degrees to diagnose wealth in others. Moreover, we found evidence for subgroup-specific wealth cue profiles insofar as target individuals who acquired their wealth via internal (e.g., hard work) compared to external means (e.g., lottery winners) were evaluated differently on these wealth cues, presumably because of their perceived differences in valence and competence. Together, this research provides new insights in the cognitive representation of the latent construct of wealth. Practical implications for research on the perception of affluence, and implications for political decision makers, are discussed in the last section.

General discussion

We examined the content and the structure of wealth cues, which are a part of the rich stereotype. So far, research has either asked participants to reproduce stereotypes about the rich without focusing on visible cues (e.g., Ragusa, 2015) or made a pre-selection of wealth cues (e.g., Bertram-Hümmer et al., 2015). But it remained unclear if these approaches appropriately reflect the full range of wealth cues and how these cues can be structured to aptly describe the mental representation of the latent wealth construct. Our work addressed this gap in the literature. We systematically studied wealth cues generated by participants through free association, rather than predefined attributes that qualify a person as rich. Our studies thereby added important novel insights to our understanding of the range of attributes taken to indicate wealth, and how these wealth cues are organized to form one complex cognitive representation of the social category of the rich.

First, regarding the content, the present research revealed subjective wealth cues that were rarely studied so far. To our knowledge, there are no studies that examined the role of charismatic behavior and only few that examined greedy behavior in the subjective perception of wealth in other people. One reason might be that traits in general are hard to observe and to operationalize. Greedy behavior might be overlooked, possibly because stereotypes about the rich are mainly positive (Christopher & Schlenker, 2000; Ragusa, 2015). Furthermore, we are also not aware of any study that examined the role of wasteful behavior in rich people, as indicated by the spontaneous spending dimension. Although there is one recent study that developed a ‘spending implies wealth belief scale’ (Kappes et al., 2021), our spontaneous spending dimension is more differentiated as it contains three sub-dimensions that are more specific about what individuals shall spend their money on to be identifiable as rich. Thus, contrary to earlier studies (e.g., Bertram-Hümmer & Baliki, 2015; Kappes et al., 2021; Ragusa, 2015), our research provides a validated model of various wealth cues.

Our wealth cue model also shows some parallels with earlier research regarding the content. We confirmed the prior findings that rich people are recognized by specific possessions (e.g., Bertram Hümmer et al., 2015; Ragusa, 2015). Moreover, we observed that individuals ascribed a high spending willingness (luxury consumption, expensive hobbies) to the rich, which is somewhat in line with what Maaravi and Hameiri (2019) have found in their examination of the influence of wealth cues (e.g., cars) on first offers in business negotiations. Based on their findings that wealth cues go along with high first offers, it may be concluded that individuals believe that rich people are more willing to spend than people who do not show such cues. In addition, our results further showed that rich people are also thought to have different looks because they present themselves with different symbols compared to people who are not rich (Gillath et al., 2012). And although some wealth cue dimensions do not appear to be new, or intuitively surprising, the present results allow a broader understanding of their meaning (i.e., their content) and yield possible operationalizations of the wealth cue dimensions.

Regarding the structure, our wealth cue model indicates that wealth cues cluster around latent dimensions just like stereotypes of the rich and other subgroups of the society do (Kornadt & Rothermund, 2011; Ragusa, 2015). Furthermore, the results indicate an overall latent factor that may reflect how individuals imagine how a rich person looks like. This is in line with the assumption that several directly observable cues combined serve as a lens through which it is possible to infer an underlying latent construct of wealth (Asendorpf, 2018; Brunswik, 1956). Notably however, results from a factorial invariance analysis show that although the structure of wealth cues is similar for participants in Germany and the USA, it seems that the abstract concept of what is typical for a rich person differs in both countries. We speculate that the different wealth concepts stem from different observations of conspicuous consumption behavior of rich people in Germany and the USA.

Regarding the wealth cue profiles, we found that some wealth cues are more indicative for people who acquired their wealth via internal compared to external means than other wealth cues. So far, studies that examined these subgroups of the rich (e.g., Sussman et al., 2014; Wu et al., 2018) have only investigated the likeability of those rich groups (Sussman et al., 2014), for example with the use of stereotypes from the stereotype content model (Sarkar et al., 2020; Wu et al., 2018). In contrast to this, Study 3 revealed that people relate specific behaviors and use different wealth cues to identify these rich subgroups, because the subgroups are seen as differently competent and likeable. The results revealed that wealth cues can be distinguished in their perceived valence and competence which shows that the developed wealth cues have a good predictive validity.

Limitations

The wealth cues that were generated in the Pilot Study stem from students and two experts in this research area. It is thereby possible that there could be further relevant wealth cues that were not covered through our sample and could in the future be included by asking participants from other classes of society. Moreover, our research is likely to be subject to cultural dependency (Bonn et al., 1999) because wealth cues might differ across cultures (especially within the ‘possessions’ domain), meaning that depending on the cultural background, different cues are believed to indicate that a person is rich. Furthermore, this study relied on semantic descriptions of participants and what cues they use to identify rich people. Research has shown that individuals, however, can identify affluence based on non-verbal cues that did not show up in the verbal descriptions of the participants (such as positive affect, Bjornsdottir & Rule, 2017). Thus, it seems that there are cues that are hard to verbalize but that still are used to identify the rich.

Directions for future research

Our studies provide a broader understanding of the content and the structure of wealth cues. Future research might examine whether the wealth cues that we identified here are ecologically valid cues of rich people. Brunswik’s (1956) lens model might be a framework for such research. Furthermore, we found that although the wealth cue structure was similar among two countries that share a similar living standard, there were systematic differences regarding the relative importance of individual cues. This prompts further cross-cultural research regarding the perception of wealthy people.

Furthermore, Maaravi and Hameiri (2019) showed that individuals received higher first offers in business negotiations when they were perceived being rich. Given the insights from our studies, there is now a set of cues that are related to rich people that goes beyond money and single indicators of wealth (or status), such as cars or leather-bound books. It may be an interesting avenue for future research to experimentally manipulate these wealth cues to check which of them are most important for certain behaviors related to wealthy people.

Implications

The findings of our studies are relevant for theories on the perception of wealth since they suggest that wealth cues are not ‘absolute’. That is, people differ to some extent regarding what wealth cues they deem to be indicative of richness (see e.g., the results of the pilot study), the country of origin seems to make a difference in what kind of wealth cue concept people have in mind, and wealth cues differ depending on what subgroups of rich people individuals think of. Thus, the stereotype activation and the subsequent judgement of others is not only subject to visible cues but also the context in which these cues are presented (Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2000).

The findings of our studies are also of practical relevance. One major implication for individuals working as legal decision makers (e.g., political decision makers or judges) is the following: Earlier research has shown that wealth triggers social expectations (e.g., Götte, 2015). Since wealth cues might be used to categorize someone being rich, individuals who display such cues are admired by others as they are also perceived as competent (Wu et al., 2018) and assumed to have desirable personality traits (Christopher & Schlenker, 2000; Leckelt et al., 2019) that lead to great social advantages. A recent paper for example, reports on a court case in the USA which involved two comparable crimes (two juveniles who drove drunk and killed pedestrians) (Weiner & Laurent, 2021). One of the two cases was committed by a poor person and the other was committed by a rich person. In both cases, the attorneys used the same defense strategy. Notably, however, the rich defendant was sentenced to only 10 years’ probation whereas the poor defendant was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment. It seems as if the presence (or absence) of wealth cues leads to certain decisions that are at risk to turn out to be unfair probably because judges ascribe more positive personality traits to rich individuals than to poorer ones. We therefore recommend that individuals who work in legal decision-making contexts should be aware of the existence of such social class stereotypes and try to counteract against them to not be at risk to make unfair decisions.

For researchers who aim to examine the perception of wealthy people, the model that we developed indicates what cues individuals use to identify rich people. Thus, there is now a set of replicated wealth cues that might help to categorize earlier research. Furthermore, these wealth cues might serve as dependent variables in future studies like we used them in our Study 3, or to measure perceived wealth without directly asking individuals how much money this person earns or how rich they are.

There are also implications for the legislative branch. As outlined above, there is no uniform definition of wealth and research demonstrates that individuals form their impression of wealth and probably wealth cues based on other people around them (Galesic et al., 2018). Thus, debates (e.g., about whom to tax) are prone to be influenced by individuals with whom a person interacts on a regular basis and not by uniform definitions. When addressing, for instance, tax or social security reform, legislators should clearly define who the rich are before they start to talk about them. Otherwise, it is likely that they disadvantage certain social classes because they base their reasoning on their own experiences or on wealth cues that might be perceived differently depending on one’s own social standing.