Socially motivated economic attitudes?: examining the impact of status desire on economic and social political attitudes

Although recent research has suggested that motivations such as disease avoidance and self-protection are associated with increased social conservatism, less is known about the impact of other fundamental motivations on political attitudes. This is particularly important given that the currently studied motivations do not consistently push around economic attitudes, which are an important determinant of voting. The current study investigated the impact of a different motivation, status desire, on both economic and social attitudes in a sample of undergraduate students at a large southwestern university. Participants first reported their overall, economic, and social ideology one month before participating in a lab study. Then, in the lab, they were presented either with a vignette designed to elicit status desire, or a closely matched control, before responding to a series of items about economic and social political attitudes. It was predicted that economic conservatives and liberals in the status desire condition would report more economically conservative attitudes relative to their counterparts in the control condition. By contrast, it was predicted that social conservatives in the status desire condition would report more socially conservative attitudes, whereas social liberals in the status desire condition would report more socially liberal attitudes, relative to their counterparts in the control condition. However, the use of hierarchical linear regressions showed no significant effects of motive activation condition, or interactions of motive activation condition with relevant pre-screen political ideology, in predicting either economic or social political attitudes. Implications of these results for future research are discussed.