It’s (a) Shame: The Effect of Poverty on Authoritarianism

Authors: Jasper F. Neerdaels¹, Christian Tröster¹, and Niels Van Quaquebeke^1,2

¹ Kühne Logistics University, Germany

² University of Exeter, United Kingdom

Abstract. Poverty is a popular explanation for authoritarianism, yet the literature on the topic is inconclusive, often not finding the effect and also being unclear regarding the underlying psychological mechanism. To address this, we firstly hypothesize that it is lived poverty, defined as the lack of capability to live a minimally decent life, rather than low income that leads individuals to support authoritarianism. Secondly, we hypothesize that lived poverty evokes a sense of shame, which captures one’s experience of social exclusion due to failure, which then explains individuals’ support for authoritarianism. Our analysis of the World Values Survey, including 91,952 participants from 60 countries, provides support for the first hypothesis and a subsequent online vignette experiment including 259 American participants supports the extended second mediation hypothesis.

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