Tipos de movilidad social y el mantenimiento de la desigualdad

Abstract

Contemporary societies are hierarchized along social classes (Kerbo, 2010; Piketty, 2014), ranging from the highest positions in the social structure—upper class— to the lowest positions—lower class. Social classes differ from each other by asymmetric access to material and service goods (Moya & Fiske, 2017; Müller & Pollak, 2015). The higher the social position in the social structure the greater the access to these resources. These positions in the social structure can be exchanged, moving from one social position to another. This phenomenon has been defined as social mobility. This doctoral thesis has as its main objective to study social mobility beliefs — subjective social mobility— and their psychosocial consequences. This is composed of several sections. The theoretical part is composed of four chapters. In Chapter 1 we review social stratification and social classes. In Chapter 2 we address different notions of the construct of "social mobility". In Chapter 3 we review the literature on the correlates of social mobility beliefs. Finally, in Chapter 4, we pose the research questions and specific objectives that guided this work. The empirical part of the thesis is composed of three chapters. Chapter 5 consists of two correlational studies. In this chapter, we set out to 1) determine to what extent people in Spain accurately perceive real social mobility; 2) examine whether there are differences between beliefs in personal and societal mobility; 3) study whether meritocratic beliefs affect beliefs in personal and societal mobility. Our results showed that people in Spain do not accurately perceive the actual economic social mobility. Moreover, people have pessimistic beliefs about the existing social mobility in the country (i.e., societal mobility), and optimistic beliefs about their future social mobility (i.e., personal mobility). Also, we found that meritocratic beliefs do not explain Spanish individuals' societal or personal mobility beliefs. In Chapter 6, we included two correlational studies through which we developed an instrument that allows us to discriminate between two different types of social mobility beliefs: upward and downward. Our results showed that the Bidimensional Social Mobility Beliefs Scale (BSMBS) has various validity and reliability evidences. We showed that the BSMBS discriminates between two types of social mobility beliefs according to their trajectory: upward and downward. In all correlations with the different constructs analyzed, upward social mobility showed positive effects for attitudes towards inequality, meritocratic beliefs, and justification of the economic system, and negative effects for status anxiety. In contrast, downward mobility showed the opposite result for each of these relationships. In Chapter 7, we set out to analyze the effect of upward and downward social mobility beliefs on attitudes toward redistribution and to study various psychological mechanisms that explain this effect. Throughout three studies (one correlational and two experimental) in two different countries (Spain and Italy), we observed that upward societal mobility is negatively related to attitudes towards redistribution, whereas downward societal mobility is positive. Furthermore, we found that meritocratic beliefs mediated the effect of upward societal mobility on attitudes toward redistribution, and that perceived economic risk mediated the effect of downward societal mobility on attitudes toward redistribution. Finally, Chapter 8 discusses the results based on our research questions. Also, the implications, limitations, and future lines of research of this work are pointed out. Overall, in this thesis we found that people in Spain have a biased view of actual economic social mobility; in short, they present an optimistic view of their social mobility. Also, we found that upward and downward social mobility beliefs can be considered different constructs, with different consequences for the maintenance of economic inequality. In particular, while upward mobility promotes the maintenance of economic inequality, downward mobility favors change toward more egalitarian societies.