This paper reviews Bernice Lott's 2002 article "Cognitive and Behavioral Distancing From the Poor," published in the American Psychologist. The review summarizes Lott's examination of distancing — a key component of classism — across cognitive, institutional, and interpersonal dimensions. It covers Lott's critique of psychology's middle-class bias, the role of labeling in obscuring poverty, the pervasiveness of negative stereotypes about the poor, and structural inequalities in education, housing, healthcare, and politics. The paper concludes with Lott's call for the psychological community to actively research and combat distancing behaviors.
Bernice Lott's article Cognitive and Behavioral Distancing From the Poor examines one component of classism: distancing. Lott defines distancing as "separation, exclusion, devaluation, discounting, and designation as 'other'" (Lott, 2002, p. 100). The author's stated aim is to look specifically at how psychology contributes to the propagation of classism. The article describes the role psychologists can play in eliminating distancing. Lott tells the reader that this is a crucial time for attention to be focused on this issue, given how alarming the wage gap has become. Lott mentions the institution of the Resolution on Poverty and Socioeconomic Status, a "resolution [that] ends with the promise of advocacy for research, education, training, and public policy in the interest of low-income members of the national community," and its efforts to tie psychology to social justice with regard to poverty (Lott, 2002, p. 100).
Lott makes her case by citing research on a variety of topics — for example, she examines the visibility of issues affecting poor women in psychological literature. She implies that there is insufficient appreciation among psychologists that "social class functions…in interaction with other social categories" such as gender, race, and ethnicity (Lott, 2002, p. 101). She criticizes psychological inquiry for focusing disproportionately on the middle class, which she attributes to the fact that fewer psychologists come from poor backgrounds and therefore cannot easily relate to classist discrimination.
Lott then steps back to provide background on how power structures are formed. She discusses how labeling the poor as "racial minorities," "inner city," or "white trash" serves to obscure real definitions of poverty in the United States and to create divisions within groups of poor people (Lott, 2002, p. 102). The wealthy also construct moral divisions to distance themselves from those with fewer resources.
Cognitive distancing puts the poor at a significant disadvantage. It manifests as "negative beliefs about [the poor's] characteristics, negative expectations about their behavior, and the attribution that their poverty is caused by their own failings" (Lott, 2002, p. 102). Lott points out how pervasive stereotyping of the poor can be — particularly since middle-class people, and even politicians, will freely ascribe negative character traits to welfare recipients as a general group. Lott cites multiple studies measuring perceptions of poor people, all of which find that the stereotypical depiction of the poor as lazy or lacking in initiative is deeply embedded in American culture.
"Structural inequalities in education, housing, and healthcare"
"Daily mistreatment of poor and call to action"
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