Perceptions Of Deservingness Research Articles

Wealth and Welfare: Divergent Moral Reactions to Ethical Consumer Choices

Abstract This article examines perceptions of low-income consumers receiving government assistance and the choices they make, showing that this group is viewed differently than those with more resources, even when making identical choices. A series of five experiments reveal that ethical purchases polarize moral judgments: whereas individuals receiving government assistance are perceived as less moral when choosing ethical (vs. conventional) products, income earners, particularly high-income individuals, are perceived as more moral for making the identical choice. Price is a central component of this effect because equating the cost of ethical and conventional goods provides those receiving government assistance some protection against harsh moral judgments when choosing ethically. Moreover, earning one’s income drives perceptions of deservingness, or the right to spend as one desires. Those who receive assistance via taxpayer dollars are under greater scrutiny (frequently resulting in harsher moral judgments) by others. In addition to influencing perceptions of individual consumers, the results demonstrate that such attributions extend to groups who make ethical choices on others’ behalf, and that these attributions have real monetary consequences for nonprofit organizations.

Compensating the Innocent: Perceptions of Exonerees’ Deservingness to Receive Financial Compensation for Wrongful Convictions

Those who have been wrongfully imprisoned face a variety of challenges upon reentering the community, and monetary compensation may be helpful in rebuilding one’s life following a period of incarceration. However, very little is known about factors that may impact public attitudes regarding compensation policy. Using a sample of 396 university students, we investigated the role of exonerees’ race/ethnicity and prior conviction history, as well as participants’ socially dominant and right-wing authoritarian attitudes in explaining beliefs about financial compensation. Results suggest that males, minority group members, and older participants tended to rate hypothetical exonerees as more deserving of financial compensation. Perceptions of deservingness for compensation did not differ according to the exonerees’ race/ethnicity, but exonerees who had no prior convictions were perceived as more deserving compared with those with prior misdemeanor or felony drug convictions. Participants’ right-wing authoritarianism scores were negatively associated with deservingness scores, whereas social dominance orientation scores were not significantly related to deservingness, after controlling for participant demographics and exoneree factors.

An experimental investigation into judgment and behavioral implications of disability‐based stereotypes in simulated work decisions: Evidence of shifting standards

AbstractWe investigated the explanatory relevance of the shifting standards model to the role of employee disability in two simulated organizational processes: (a) job performance appraisal and (b) resource allocation. Two experimental studies found evidence of the shifting standards effect—employees with and without a disability received similar ratings when subjective judgment standards were employed, but those without a disability received significantly higher performance ratings than their counterparts with a disability when rated with objective standards. Furthermore, the analysis of the ranking process on the dimension of deservingness of limited resources yielded evidence that disability‐related stereotypes can differentially affect perceptions of deservingness through the allocation of organizational resources.

Undeserving mothers? Shifting rationalities in the maternal healthcare of undocumented Nicaraguan migrants in Costa Rica

The case of Nicaraguan migrants in Costa Rica is emblematic of the issues that immigration generates in host countries. Undocumented Nicaraguan women seeking maternal care constitute a key challenge to the universal coverage of Costa Rica's health system. Can the long-standing commitment to universality, solidarity and equality expressed in the legislation be translated into practice? Discourses of health professionals in Costa Rica reveal a contradiction between merit and prejudice in prenatal and delivery care. Here, I present qualitative research based on semi-structured interviews with physicians and nurses at a Costa Rican National Hospital. The data show that migrant women, rejected from primary care, do find help in emergency services, but not without difficulties, as they must engage in individual negotiations centred on their bodies. The discourses of health providers reflect an ambivalence between the perceived undeservingness of undocumented migrant women and the medical realisation that two lives are at risk. While the foetus often evokes compassion, the mother commonly provokes repression, as specific and shifting rationalities reflect new moral regimes that are applied to this population. Women are perceived as being ‘illegal’, ‘immoral’ and ‘irrational’, and the baby, although legally Costa Rican due to jus solis policy, embodies ‘the other’. Ultimately, otherness frames perceptions of deservingness of maternal care for undocumented migrant women in Costa Rica.

On support for welfare state reforms and deservingness in the Netherlands

Since the mid-1980s, welfare state arrangements have become increasingly conditional and austere. Simultaneously, deservingness perceptions have become increasingly important. This paper examines preferences as to which social categories contemporary welfare state reforms should target. Using unique data from a 2006 Dutch survey, the results reveal that the Dutch discern two principles of welfare state reforms – the first tapping into distributive reforms – decreasing redistribution, the latter tapping into commodifying reforms – increasing recommodification. Moreover, the level of people's identification with social categories explains why the public prefers commodifying reform to be intensively targeted at some social categories, but not at others.

Street‐level Bureaucrats' and the General Public's Deservingness Perceptions of Social Assistance Recipients in Finland

AbstractPerceptions of deservingness are crucial when we attempt to explain public support for welfare policies or try to understand the development of modern welfare states. These perceptions also reveal the status of a particular population group in society and the social cohesion between marginalized groups and the general public. In this article, we are concerned about whether perceptions of the deservingness of social assistance recipients vary between different street‐level bureaucrat groups, citizens and those individuals who have received social assistance or whose family members have been recipients of social assistance at some stage of their life. We focus on the nature of the impact of various individual level factors in these perceptions. The studied street‐level bureaucrats are social workers in municipalities, deacons of the Church of Finland and benefit officials of the Social Security Institution of Finland. Two nationwide surveys among street‐level bureaucrats (N = 2,124) and citizens (N = 1,883) are used. Descriptive statistics and rank ordered logistic regression are utilized. According to the results, street‐level bureaucrats and the general public perceive social assistance recipients in quite a positive way. However, there are clear differences between and within these groups. Street‐level bureaucrats' attitudes towards social assistance recipients are more positive than those among the public. However, benefit officials have a more critical stance on the deservingness of social assistance recipients than social workers and deacons. Those who have received social assistance are more positive than those who have not had these experiences. Age, education and political identification further explain the attitudes of bureaucrats and citizens.

Getting "just deserts" or seeing the "silver lining": the relation between judgments of immanent and ultimate justice.

People can perceive misfortunes as caused by previous bad deeds (immanent justice reasoning) or resulting in ultimate compensation (ultimate justice reasoning). Across two studies, we investigated the relation between these types of justice reasoning and identified the processes (perceptions of deservingness) that underlie them for both others (Study 1) and the self (Study 2). Study 1 demonstrated that observers engaged in more ultimate (vs. immanent) justice reasoning for a “good” victim and greater immanent (vs. ultimate) justice reasoning for a “bad” victim. In Study 2, participants' construals of their bad breaks varied as a function of their self-worth, with greater ultimate (immanent) justice reasoning for participants with higher (lower) self-esteem. Across both studies, perceived deservingness of bad breaks or perceived deservingness of ultimate compensation mediated immanent and ultimate justice reasoning respectively.

Because I (Don't) Deserve It: How Relationship Reminders and Deservingness Influence Consumer Indulgence

Marketers regularly remind consumers of valued social relationships (e.g., close friends, family, romantic couples) to influence choice and consumption. However, the author's research reveals that such relationship reminders can backfire when consumers lack or no longer have these highlighted relationships. The author shows that reminding consumers of relationships they lack reduces their perceptions of deservingness and causes them to restrict indulgent consumption. Five studies establish the effect of relationship reminders on indulgence and provide support for the underlying process by both measuring and manipulating perceptions of deservingness.

Exploring intentions to discriminate against patients living with HIV/AIDS among future healthcare providers in Malaysia

Stigma towards people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) is strong in Malaysia. Although stigma has been understudied, it may be a barrier to treating the approximately 81000 Malaysian PLWHA. The current study explores correlates of intentions to discriminate against PLWHA among medical and dental students, the future healthcare providers of Malaysia. An online, cross-sectional survey of 1296 medical and dental students was conducted in 2012 at seven Malaysian universities; 1165 (89.9%) completed the survey and were analysed. Socio-demographic characteristics, stigma-related constructs and intentions to discriminate against PLWHA were measured. Linear mixed models were conducted, controlling for clustering by university. The final multivariate model demonstrated that students who intended to discriminate more against PLWHA were female, less advanced in their training, and studying dentistry. They further endorsed more negative attitudes towards PLWHA, internalised greater HIV-related shame, reported more HIV-related fear and disagreed more strongly that PLWHA deserve good care. The final model accounted for 38% of the variance in discrimination intent, with 10% accounted for by socio-demographic characteristics and 28% accounted for by stigma-related constructs. It is critical to reduce stigma among medical and dental students to eliminate intentions to discriminate and achieve equitable care for Malaysian PLWHA. Stigma-reduction interventions should be multipronged, addressing attitudes, internalised shame, fear and perceptions of deservingness of care.

How Perceptions of Deservingness and Permanence Affect Peripheral Group Member’ Helping Behavior

Drawing upon organizational justice and social identity theories, the author examined how peripheral members of workgroups (i.e., individuals who perceive that they are on the fringes of their group) respond to their marginal group status. Specifically, in a cross-sectional field study, the paper explored the role of perceived deservingness of peripherality and perceived permanence of peripherality in shaping peripheral group members’ supervisor-rated helping behavior. Data from 36 matched supervisor-employee pairs were used to test this hypothesis. Results indicate that there is a negative relationship between perceived deservingness of peripherality and supervisor-rated helping behavior and that this effect is stronger when the peripheral position is perceived to be less permanent. In developing and testing these arguments, the goal is to contribute to literature on peripherality and status by examining how perceptions about the nature of one’s peripheral status affect helping behavior in groups. Implications of the findings for practitioners and future research are discussed.

Three ways to defend social security in Britain

British social security is now in a time of crisis, where cuts are being made to a system that was already struggling to provide decent security. In this paper I argue that successful proposals to combat this must (i) lead to reductions in poverty/inequality; (ii) fit existing perceptions of claimant ‘deservingness’; and (iii) change deservingness perceptions in the long run. I conclude that three influential recent proposals – ‘Decent Childhoods’, ‘National Salary Insurance’, and ‘The Solidarity Society’ – are only partially successful in meeting these criteria, and that successful reform requires a fusion of the respective insights of each proposal.

Deservingness versus values in public opinion on welfare: The automaticity of the deservingness heuristic

Public attitudes towards welfare policy are often explained by political values and perceptions of deservingness of welfare recipients. This article addresses how the impact of values and perceptions varies depending on the contextual information that citizens have available when forming welfare opinions. It is argued that whenever citizens face deservingness-relevant cues in public debate or the media, a psychological ‘deservingness heuristic’ is triggered prompting individuals spontaneously to think about welfare policy in terms of who deserves help. This is an automatic process, equally influential among the least and the most politically sophisticated. Moreover, when clear deservingness cues are present, the impact of values on opinions vanishes. These arguments are supported by data from two novel experimental studies embedded in separate nationwide opinion surveys. The findings revise conventional wisdom of how values and heuristics influence public opinion and have major implications for understanding dynamics in aggregate welfare opinion and attempts from political elites to manipulate public opinion.

What gives victims satisfaction when they seek revenge?

The present paper aims to elucidate under what conditions victims of injustice who seek revenge feel satisfied and perceive that everybody got what he or she deserved. Two hypotheses are discussed: The comparative suffering hypothesis states that seeing the offender suffer from fate is sufficient for evoking satisfaction and perceptions of deservingness among victims. The understanding hypothesis states that revenge can only be satisfactory when the offender understands it as a response to his or her prior behavior. These hypotheses were tested in three experimental studies. The comparative suffering hypothesis received only weak support. The understanding hypothesis, on the other hand, received much stronger support: When the offender understood revenge as punishment, revenge led to satisfaction and deservingness among victims. These findings are discussed with regard to the question why people take revenge. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Culture and welfare state: values and social policy in comparative perspective

Contents:1. The Culture of the Welfare State: Historical and Theoretical ArgumentsWim van Oorschot, Michael Opielka and Birgit Pfau-EffingerPART I: CULTURAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE WELFARE STATE: IDEAS OF THE GOOD SOCIETY2. Liberalism, Citizenship and the Welfare StateJulia O'Connor and Gillian Robinson3. Social-democratic Values in the European Welfare StatesSteinar Stjerno4. Conservatism and the Welfare State: Intervening to PreserveKees van Kersbergen and Monique Kremer5. Christian Foundations of the Welfare State: Strong Cultural Values in Comparative PerspectiveMichael OpielkaPART II: WORLDS OF WELFARE CULTURE6. European and American Welfare Values: Case-studies in Cash Benefits ReformRobert Walker7. Is There a Specific East-Central European Welfare Culture?Zsuzsa Ferge8. Welfare Policy Reforms in Japan and Korea: Cultural and Institutional FactorsIto PengPART III: CULTURAL CHANGE AND WELFARE REFORM9. Cultural Change and Path Departure: The Example of Family Policies in Conservative Welfare StatesBirgit Pfau-Effinger10. Cultures of Activation: The Shifting Relationship between Income Maintenance and Employment Promotion in the Nordic ContextBjorn Hvinden11. Unsettled Attachments: National Identity, Citizenship and WelfareJohn Clarke and Janet FinkPART IV: POPULAR WELFARE VALUES AND BELIEFS12. European Scope-of-Government Beliefs: The Impact of Individual, Regional, and National CharacteristicsJohn Gelissen13. Popular Deservingness Perceptions and Conditionality of Solidarity in EuropeWim van Oorschot14. Values of Work and Care Among Women in Modern SocietiesDetlev Lueck and Dirk Hofacker

Framing Deservingness to Win Support for Welfare State Retrenchment

Recent studies of welfare state retrenchment have argued that policy makers can win public support for welfare state reform by framing the issue in terms of deservingness of welfare recipients. However, this literature has not tested the argument at the individual level. Using a Scandinavian context, this experimental study investigates how alternative framing of a welfare state retrenchment proposal affects citizens’ perception of welfare recipients’ deservingness, policy support and whether perceptions of deservingness mediate policy opinion. A news story was manipulated to present welfare recipients as either deserving or undeserving of welfare benefits. This issue framing affected citizens’ perception of deservingness as well as support for retrenchment policy. Opinion change was partly explained by differences in perceptions of deservingness. These results provide strong support for the effectiveness of the deservingness frame.

Making the difference in social Europe: deservingness perceptions among citizens of European welfare states

Welfare states treat different groups of needy people differently. Such differential rationing may reflect various considerations of policymakers, who act in economic, political and cultural contexts. This article aims at contributing to a theoretical and empirical understanding of the popular cultural context of welfare rationing. It examines European public perceptions of the relative deservingness of four needy groups (elderly people, sick and disabled people, unemployed people, and immigrants). Hypotheses, deduced from a literature review, are tested against data from the 1999/2000 European Values Study survey. It is found that Europeans share a common and fundamental deservingness culture: across countries and social categories there is a consistent pattern that elderly people are seen as most deserving, closely followed by sick and disabled people; unemployed people are seen as less deserving still, and immigrants as least deserving of all. Conditionality is greater in poorer countries, in countries with lower unemployment, and in countries where people have less trust in fellow citizens and in state institutions. At the national level there is no relation with welfare regime type or welfare spending. Individual differences in conditionality are determined by several socio-demographic and attitudinal characteristics, as well as by certain features of the country people live in.

A Deservingness Approach to Respect as a Relationally Based Fairness Judgment

Value judgments, attributional judgments, and self-esteem are predicted to moderate the relationship between respectful treatment and procedural justice. In three studies, the moderation hypothesis is supported. In Studies 1 and 2, attributional and value judgments are shown to moderate the effect of respect so that respect is most important for those individuals who perform positively valued behaviors, particularly those who are responsible for those behaviors. Path analyses in Study 2 reveal that the respect-justice relationship is mediated by perceptions of deservingness. Study 3, a field survey, shows that respect is more important for the procedural fairness judgments of high self-esteem individuals. Several theoretical perspectives support the argument that these variables moderate the relation between respectful treatment and procedural fairness because of their impact on deservingness judgments. This deservingness effect is proposed to have implications for understanding the moderating effects of situational and personality variables for numerous fairness models.

The counterfactual fallacy: Confusing what might have been with what ought to have been

The thesis of this article is that reactions to misfortunes are often biased by the counterfactual fallacy: the tendency to view events that can easily be imagined otherwise as events that ought not to have been. Drawing upon a diverse set of empirical findings we demonstrate that victims' and observers' reactions to misfortunes depend on the extent to which the event prompts them to generate counterfactual thoughts or images of more positive alternatives. We discuss the factors that determine the ease with which a negative event can be imagined otherwise, along with their relevance to a variety of justice-relevant responses, including perceptions of deservingness, recommendations for compensation, and blame assignment.