Publications
Journal Articles
The Distinctive Nature and Effects of Deep Poverty: a Hybrid
Case for Minimum Income Schemes
Social Indicators Research · 2026
Where should finite resources be targeted when tackling poverty? To answer this question,
this article draws on new analysis of the largest nationally representative household
panel study in the UK to explore what bearing shallower and deeper forms of poverty
have on financial trajectories, as well as health and well-being over time. While distinguishing
between those above and below the relative poverty line has clear analytical and
empirical value, our results show that this approach risks obscuring important dynamics
and outcomes associated with varying degrees of poverty. In line with previous studies,
we find that income increases improve health and well-being. However, we also find that
deep poverty as a social kind is considerably and consistently harder to escape, as well
as more damaging to mental health well-being, loneliness and life satisfaction. Crucially,
transient experiences of deep poverty also prove more damaging than chronic, shallower
forms of poverty. As such, we present evidence of distinct and profound effects of deep
poverty that offer new grounds upon which to justify, time and target policy interventions
across the low-income distribution. We employ income-based, material deprivation, and
multidimensional measures of poverty, with the latter providing the most robust results for
identifying the distinctive nature of deep poverty. The evidence presented helps establish
an empirically informed case for Minimum Income Schemes (MIS) and the relatively
superior returns on public social spending these could offer on both prioritiarian and consequentialist
grounds.
When those fleeing the war are blue-eyed and blond: The effects of message content and social identity on blatant dehumanization in four nations
International Journal of Intercultural Relations · 2025
Varying behaviours and attitudes towards those who experience the same devastating event are increasingly becoming the focus of criticism. Open expressions of these distinctions based on group membership, such as Kelly Cobiella's statement on NBC about refugees who fled Russia's invasion of Ukraine, "These are not refugees from Syria; these are refugees from neighbouring Ukraine", have raised the question of the social psychological antecedents of these varying attitudes. This research examines how refugees' social identity (ingroup vs. outgroup) and the given reason for their fleeing from a regional war (fear vs. human rights violations) affect the blatant dehumanization of refugees by receiving country communities in four different countries (Ntotal = 1274). In Study 1, we found that Turks in Türkiye showed higher dehumanization toward Syrian refugees (outgroup members compared to Turkmen refugees) and toward those portrayed as fleeing the war due to fear (vs. human rights violations). Study 2, which focused on Germans' attitudes toward Ukrainian and Afghan refugees, showed that dehumanization was negatively associated with the perception of ingroup similarity. In Study 3, with a Spanish sample, we found that ethnic outgroup refugees (Syrians) were more dehumanized than ethnic ingroup refugees (Ukrainians). Similarly, Study 4, which sampled British participants and focused on the same ingroup and outgroup, found that ethnic outgroup refugees were more dehumanized than ethnic ingroup refugees. We discuss the consisted findings in four countries that there is more dehumanization towards members of groups that are less similar to participants from the perspective of the social identity approach.
Socioeconomic status self-deception as a way to perpetuate classist societies
Political Psychology · 2024
Socioeconomic status self-deception refers to the motivated tendency to perceive oneself as having a higher subjective status than would correspond to objective conditions. This can be a powerful mechanism to legitimize the social order. We proposed that when people perceive the surrounding social environment to be classist, people tend to self-deceive themselves by overestimating their socioeconomic status. This mechanism, in turn, would lead to justify the system to a higher extent and show less support for redistribution, and reduce relative deprivation and status anxiety. These hypotheses were tested across four pre-registered studies on different high-quality samples, different operationalization of the variables in our model, and both cross-sectional and longitudinal observations. On the one hand, the results do not provide evidence of a link between perceiving a classist climate and socioeconomic status self-deception. On the other hand, socioeconomic status self-deception was confirmed to predict higher system justification, and lower support for redistribution, status anxiety and relative deprivation. The construct and operationalization of socioeconomic status self-deception proposed in this research could help reconcile opposing predictions by system justification theory and social dominance theory, and understand why individuals low on socioeconomic status would oppose policies which could benefit them.
Educational level and social attitudes: unraveling patterns and methodological considerations
Psychology, Society & Education · 2024
Educational level is a fundamental variable that has been widely studied in the social sciences.
Numerous studies have shown its relevance in explaining different attitudes and behaviors related
to both personal and social well-being. However, except for a few exceptions, less attention has
been paid to how this variable is measured and operationalized. In this article, we illustrate
the effects that the operationalization of education can have on a series of variables relevant
to satisfaction with society: attitudes towards immigration (Study 1), technocratic attitudes
(Study 2), trust in the police (Studies 3a and 3b), and attitudes toward poverty reduction
(Study 4). We use data from the EVS/WVS 2017–2022, European Social Survey Round 10, and a
representative national sample from Spain.
Psychometric properties of the Spanish adaptation of the General Phubbing Scale
Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología · 2024
The increased use of information and communication technologies, the internet and social
networking sites has led to a new phenomenon called phubbing: the act of ignoring those around
you by focusing on your mobile phone instead. This paper presents the psychometric properties
of the Spanish adaptation of the General Phubbing Scale (GPS), examining its factor structure,
reliability, and validity in a Spanish-speaking sample.
Gendered Social Perceptions of "The Poor": Differences in Individualistic Attributions, Stereotypes, and Attitudes Toward Social Protection Policies
Sex Roles · 2023
Poverty is a phenomenon that affects men and women differently. In the current research,
we examined social perceptions of poor men and women across three experiments focusing on
attributions for poverty, classist attitudes, and stereotypes about poor people.
Participants made more individualistic (dispositional) attributions for men's poverty
compared to women's poverty, blaming men more for their poverty. These patterns were
observed across all three studies. More individualistic attributions predicted more
negative attitudes toward social protection policies concerning men. We interpret these
results considering the operation of traditional gender roles as well as the parallelism
between stereotypes of women and poor people.
The different effects of income and educational level on prosocial behaviour and related ideological variables
International Journal of Social Psychology · 2023
Studies on socioeconomic status (SES) have recently increased in social psychology.
The most used indicators to measure objective SES are income and educational level
(usually standardizing and summing the scores of these variables). However, income and
education possibly have different, even opposite effects on certain variables. Across
seven studies, using data from previous research and international databases, we show
that a higher educational level tends to positively predict prosocial behaviour and
structural attributions of poverty, and negatively predict meritocratic and just world
beliefs. In most cases, income showed a reverse trend or did not predict the outcome.
Social justice orientations: Exploring their impact on poverty attributions and support for social protection
Political Psychology · 2023
Distributive justice remains a central issue in contemporary welfare states.
In this article, we analyze how attitudes toward the principles of normative
distributive justice (equality, need, equity, and entitlement) are related to
support for the redistribution of resources and attitudes toward social protection
policies. Across three studies (N = 325, N = 49,519, N = 494), equality and need
positively predicted attitudes toward social protection policies while equity and
entitlement negatively predicted these attitudes. Attributions for poverty mediated
the relationship between orientations toward justice principles and attitudes toward
social protection policies.
Inhuman animals: moving dehumanization into the domain of human–animal relations
Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences · 2023
Dehumanization researchers have robustly shown that people display remarkable variability
in attributing humanity to others and outgroups, often with negative consequences for the
dehumanized. We argue that a similar process operates at an interspecies level; people
attribute less mind and humanity to animals, often with negative consequences for animals'
moral standing and treatment. We outline recent work demonstrating that people attribute
farmed animals less mind and do so in a motivated fashion, and examine evidence that this
denial of mind undermines moral concern for farmed animals.
Not all poor are equal: the perpetuation of poverty through blaming those who have been poor all their lives
Current Psychology · 2023
People who have always lived in poverty face negative public views that affect the perceived
legitimacy of public aid, which can in turn be a mechanism for perpetuating their situation.
Two studies (N = 252 and N = 266) analyse how a person in persistent poverty is perceived
compared to a person in circumstantial poverty (due to the 2008 crisis). Results indicated
that people showed more favourable attitudes toward social protection policies for those in
circumstantial poverty. Individualistic attributions for poverty mediated this effect.
Study 2 showed that participants perceive people in poverty because of economic crisis as
more deserving of help than people who have always been poor.