Recognition, Depreciation and Status Seeking

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jan Delhey
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2015 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 268293664

The Spirit Level theory as developed by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett claims that egalitarian societies have less social problems and enable better lives than inegalitarian societies. The assumed causal mechanism is inequality-induced status anxiety, which leads to behavior by which individuals harm themselves and society at large. The previous project "Inequality, Status Anxiety, and Quality of Life. An Examination and Extension of the Spirit Level Theory for Europe" examined key claims of this theory. Using data from the European Quality of Life Survey, the project mainly focused on individuals’ general sense of inferiority. The continuation project aims at addressing important research gaps, organized into two modules:Module 1, „recognition and depreciation“. We want to find out, first of all, in which specific situations people feel depreciated. Who feels looked down on, by whom, where and why? We further want to scrutinize positive status experiences, such as recognition. Who feels socially esteeemd, in which concrete situations, and with which consequences for subjective well-being? Our research will be based on a specifically designed survey module, „Recognition and Depreciation in Everyday Life“, which the applicant managed to place in the 2016 SOEP Innovation-Sample. These novel and representative primary data will be available for analysis in autumn 2017.Module 2, „status seeking and the middle class“. While inferiority feeflings are concentrated at the lower rungs of the social ladder (as the previous project has shown), our conjecture is that the status anxiety of the middle class will express itself differently: as status seeking. Since contemporary Western societies are still middle class societies, it is crucial to learn more about this specific type of status anxiety. Regarding key determinants, we expect status seeking to have an ascending social gradient, i.e. to be stronger among the middle class than among the lower class. We further expect status seeking to be higher in the most unequal societies, and lower in the most affluent societies. Regarding consequences, we assume individual status seeking to lower subjective well-being, and collective status seeking to be fertile ground for various social problems characterized by an indistinct or ascending social gradient. We test these assumptions against data for 22-29 countries from the European Social Survey covering the time period 2002-2014.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants