Do egalitarians always help the disadvantaged more than the advantaged? Testing a value‐norm conflict hypothesis in Malaysia

Owuamalam, Chuma Kevin; Matos, Andrea Soledad

Abstract

Do egalitarians always express greater compassion towards the disadvantaged than towards the advantaged? A closer look at existing scholarship on the topic suggests that they likely do. Here, we investigated whether such tendency is also apparent within interdependent high-power distant cultures where the high-status privilege prevails. Given the emphasis on harmony in social relations in interdependent cultures, we reasoned that egalitarians might experience a dissonance between their private equity values and a societal norm prescribing high-status privilege, which we refer to as the value-norm conflict. We therefore proposed and found evidence in Malaysia (N = 273) that egalitarians succumbed to the normative high-status privilege in their culture by displaying greater compassion towards higher- than lower-status victims, but only when the cost of doing so was low. Interestingly, anti-egalitarians showed equitable levels of compassion to high- and low-status victims, but only when the personal cost for taking such action was also low. Hence, we show that even egalitarians can, at times, favor the privileged and anti-egalitarians can act equitably, so long as the personal cost of doing so is trivial for them.

Citation

Owuamalam, C. K., & Matos, A. S. (2019). Do egalitarians always help the disadvantaged more than the advantaged? Testing a value‐norm conflict hypothesis in Malaysia. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 22(2), 151-162. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajsp.12351

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 2, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Dec 3, 2018
• Publication Date: 2019-06
• Deposit Date: Dec 6, 2023
• Journal: Asian Journal of Social Psychology
• Print ISSN: 1367-2223
• Electronic ISSN: 1467-839X
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 22
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 151-162
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ajsp.12351
• Keywords: General Social Sciences; Social Psychology
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1983746