Oral Presentation by Mattis Hein¹, Guido Hertel¹
¹ University of Münster, Germany
TIME: Tuesday, 14 July, 14:30 – 16:00
Location: Room 1
Session: 5
Abstract
Over the last century, neoliberalism, has become the dominant philosophy in Western societies. Heralding an ideal of individual success through inherent personal merit and savviness in discovering and taking opportunities, the neoliberal worldview holds those that “lose in life” and achieve negative outcomes personally responsible, even when there is evidence towards the contrary. It is often argued that this attribution serves the purpose to justify inequalities and negative outcomes of the target persons to reduce negative emotions and cognitions. In contrast, we conceptualize neoliberal beliefs as a universal, generalized mode-of-thinking which influences the way individuals perceive the world. In this framework, neoliberal beliefs are not a mental instrument for emotional self-regulation, but directly determine how we perceive others’ outcomes. Specifically, we propose that higher neoliberal beliefs are associated with increased perception of competitiveness and fairness when observing performance situations, thereby suggesting that individuals in these situations have high control over their outcome. This perceived control over the outcome necessarily leads to less sympathy for target persons who achieve negative outcomes. An online field experiment (N=777) provided first empirical evidence for the viability of the model. Furthermore, our newly proposed model showed better fit compared to the alternative model of neoliberal beliefs only suppressing the emotional reaction and a model accounting for both a mode-of-thinking and emotional-regulative function. Implications for our understanding of the impact neoliberal beliefs in individuals have on their everyday thinking and social judgement in general will be discussed, along with limitations of our design and the implications for future research.