Some members of previously dominant groups react against social changes they perceive as lowering their relative status.
Research on status threat and backlash proposes that opposition can follow a perceived loss of relative standing even where absolute position is unchanged. Sometimes circulated as Yashar's citizenship rights paradox; Yashar's work concerns indigenous citizenship in Latin America and does not state this. Closely related to relative deprivation.
In practice
- A firm opens a promotion route previously limited to one department, and its loudest objections come from those who are already through it.
- A town whose incomes have risen for a decade votes down the development that would raise them further, because the newcomers would arrive on terms residents took thirty years to earn.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation is relative standing: opposition can follow a perceived loss of position even where absolute conditions are unchanged, because status is comparative by definition.
- In its favour
- Survey work does find perceived status threat predicting political attitudes, sometimes more strongly than measures of economic hardship, and the mechanism is specific.
- Against it
- Perceived status threat is difficult to separate from economic and cultural change occurring at the same time, the measures rely on self-report, and the label is sometimes attached to research that does not support it.
- Standing
- Sometimes circulated as "Yashar's citizenship rights paradox"; Yashar's work concerns indigenous citizenship in Latin America and does not state this. Closely related to relative deprivation.
- Subject
- Sociology & Culture
- Essay
- How societies hold together, sort people, and change