#3: When Having Thick Skin Isn't A Compliment
Why we don't think others feel or need the same things we do
A recent creation by my friend, Chigozie Akah, who’s picked up embroidery during the pandemic.
Hello hello, I hope you’re faring well on all fronts.
From my perch as an employed person who can work from home and has no dependents, I often have to remind myself that I’m protected from the most damaging parts of the pandemic. So much research and reporting has uncovered vast racial and class disparities in the effects of COVID-19 and the economic collapse that has accompanied the pandemic. In other words, people who were facing hardship pre-pandemic are even worse off now. A couple of recent papers made me wonder how I perceive the fortitude and suffering of people who are no strangers to hardship.
The first, by Nathan Cheek and Eldar Shafir from Princeton, interrogates an intuition that many of us have: that getting through hardships makes us better able to handle future challenges. Or as Kelly Clarkson has so succinctly put it, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” (Lest you think academics are stale, this lyric is cited in the paper). Poverty tends to bring distress, so, the authors want to know, do Americans perceive people from a low socioeconomic status (SES) as being better able to handle future hardships than high SES people?
The answer from Cheek and Shafir is a resounding yes. In their words:
“People view poverty as hardening those who are poor and increasing their tolerance for negative events and emotional turmoil."
They didn’t just find this consistent pattern in a series of lab studies, but also in surveys of chefs, social workers, teachers, and therapists-in-training, and in a nationally representative survey of Americans.
There’s an error at the heart of this widespread perception. Low-SES people tend to experience negative life events more intensely than high-SES people. Think about it: if you’re in poverty, you probably have less access to support and resources than your higher-income peers, making any misfortune that comes your way more daunting to handle. The authors note how absurd it is that participants in their study judged the hardships they listed — such as a heating system breaking in the winter, an apartment flooding, tap water that needs to be filtered, or being stranded in the rain without a ride — as less inconvenient or intolerable for low-SES folks than for wealthier people.
“Obviously, it is much easier for the rich to check into a hotel when there is no heat, to call someone to deal with the flood and resulting mold, to pay to install a filter, to hail a cab or to call a limo.”
Cheek and Shafir created a term for this faulty perception that poverty fortifies people against hardship: “thick skin bias.” They speculate on the possible consequences of this bias, such as lighter prison sentences for wealthier people who commit crimes, perhaps because they’re seen as less equipped to handle the punishment than poorer people. They also think it’s likely that poorer people are treated worse in interpersonal and institutional settings because of this bias. For instance, low SES people may be perceived as less bothered by long lines (see disparities in lines at the polls) and impolite treatment (welfare receipt isn’t exactly known for having great customer service) than wealthier people.
Americans don’t just show class bias in how they think people handle hardship, but also in their perceptions of people’s needs. UChicago’s Juliana Schroeder and Nick Epley studied how people ranked the importance of their needs, ranging from those that are “low-level” (e.g. physical needs like food, shelter) to “high level (e.g. psychological needs sense of meaning and purpose). The part of the study that I think is most worth highlighting is their survey of people experiencing homelessness. Just like every other demographic group, people experiencing homelessness reported that all of their needs are similarly important to them.
But that’s not what participants in their study assumed. The study participants predicted that homeless people’s psychological needs were less important than their physical ones. Schroeder and Epley see clear implications for charity: there’s often a gap between the type of gifts that recipients say they prefer (cash or cash-equivalent) and what donors actually give (in-kind items like food or clothing). Schroeder and Epley suggest that one reason for this gap may be people’s inaccurate perceptions of others’ needs; those in a position to donate may believe that lower income people don’t crave dignity and purpose as desperately as something like shelter.
The paper reminded me of the logic behind GiveDirectly, a charity that gives unconditional cash transfers: people donating to or running charitable organizations shouldn’t assume they know what the people they’re serving most need. Schroeder and Epley’s findings feel especially relevant now, when political interest in UBI and other forms of cash transfers are growing thanks to the pandemic and recession.
I’m still thinking about
Words: Why the conspiracy theory QAnon has particular resonance with Evangelical Christians.
“Like thousands of other church leaders across the United States, Frailey had shut down in-person services in March to help prevent the spread of the virus. Without these gatherings, some of his churchgoers had turned instead to Facebook, podcasts, and viral memes for guidance. And QAnon, a movement with its own equivalents of scripture, prophecies, and clergy, was there waiting for them.”
If, like me, you want a follow up to this article, I’d recommend this piece on how the Right’s longstanding preoccupation with child abuse is tied up with the backlash against feminism.
Sounds: If you haven’t already listened to Nice White Parents, go plug your headphones in and start now. In my search for something similarly bingeable and deeply reported, I started listening to Wind of Change, a podcast that investigates whether the CIA wrote a rock song that became an anthem across Europe amid the fall of the Soviet Union. My takeaway from these podcasts is that the best works of journalism are those that the reporter started working on many years ago.
I made
...it to my 28th birthday. And I have a birthday-related request for anyone who’s interested. I encourage you to send either:
A prompt for reflecting on the last year or for thinking about the year ahead
One idea you’ve encountered that’s changed the way you see the world or act (feel free to link to an article etc. if you don’t want to spend time explaining the idea)
Now you know
“When whales exhale through their blowholes, the vapor is so dense that it produces rainbows.” [Source: New Yorker]
Credit: Indi Samarajiva (Creative Commons)
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P.P.S. Don’t be shy: send me research that you think I should cover. Or photos of your artwork/crafts. Or your thoughts on the newsletter. Or all of the above.
Great piece. I had not thought about thick-skin bias in the social sphere. An interesting orthogonal phenomenon is the persistent (and well-documented) myth that black individuals feel less pain. Fortunately, the academic data has accumulated enough that the problem has come to the attention of those in charge - https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/how-we-fail-black-patients-pain