Publications
Here you can find an overview of all my first-authored publications.
See for a full list of publications my Google Scholar profile (including non-first author publications).
2025
Caught Between Ideology and Self-Interest: Subjective Social Status and Meritocratic Beliefs Shape Whether People Perceive, Feel Anger About, and Want to Change Economic Conflict
Published in The British Journal of Sociology with
Bram Spruyt, Filip Van Droogenbroeck, & Toon Kuppens.
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Belief in meritocracy and social status are central to understanding how people think and behave in relation to economic conflict. In this paper, we investigate how belief in meritocracy is moderated by (subjective) social status for three different aspects of citizens' attitudes towards economic inequality and conflict, namely (1) perceived conflict, (2) anger about economic inequality and (3) intentions to change economic conflict (egalitarianism). Data from the International Social Survey Programme on 29 countries reveal that the effect of meritocracy depends on social status and differs meaningfully across the three attitudes. For people high in social status, belief in meritocracy relates to lower perceptions of conflict, anger, and egalitarianism. For people with a low subjective social status there is no or a weak relation of belief in meritocracy with the outcomes. In addition, when belief in meritocracy was low, those with a high subjective social status appeared to be concerned about inequality as they perceived more economic conflict and felt more anger than those with a low subjective social status. However, this was not the case for intentions to reduce inequality. Hence, these effects of meritocracy and social status should be understood in light of self-interest concerns of social groups, rather than solely ideological domination.
2024
The nature and structure of European belief systems: Exploring the varieties of belief systems across 23 European countries
Published in European Sociological Review with Felicity M.
Turner-Zwinkels, Rebekka Kesberg, Mark J. Brandt, Matthew J. Easterbrook, Toon Kuppens,
& Bram Spruyt.
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We investigate the structure of political belief systems across Europe to investigate what belief systems in European societies, and those who hold them, have in common. In doing so, we answer three questions: First, are political belief system structures similar across Europe? Second, which demographic groups are likely to have similar belief systems within countries? Third, how are belief systems related to voting behavior? Results from Correlational Class Analyses on data from 23 European countries indicate that a wide variety of belief systems exist in Europe (2-5 per country), but that these can be summarized into two diverse groups, although belief systems in one group were more similar than in the other. Unexpectedly, the groups did not differ in the strength of association between beliefs. While cultural and economic belief dimensions were not consistently found, and tended to be weak, they were positively associated in the first group, and negatively associated in the second. Belief systems of the first group were more likely to be from Western European countries and its members more likely to be higher educated compared to the second group. Membership in the second group was associated with more populist far right voting and vote abstention.
Education-based affective attitudes: higher educated-bias is related to more political trust and less populism
Published in Acta Politica with Toon
Kuppens, Bram Spruyt, Leandros Kavadias, Céline Darnon, & Medhi Marot.
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Recent political trends and events have been marked by strong educational differences. In addition, education has also been shown to be a basis for group identity and group conflict. In this paper, we argue that educational groups are likely to understand their position in society and their inclusion or exclusion (in politics) as being related to their educational level. Thus, it is likely that education-based affective attitudes are related to evaluations of the societal and political status quo. Using data from nine European countries, this article charts the relationships of higher educated-bias (i.e., the preference for higher educated compared to less educated groups) with different political outcomes. In analyses of preregistered hypotheses, we demonstrate that the higher educated show ingroup bias, in particular those who identify strongly with their educational group. The less educated do not show (significant) ingroup bias. Those who have a stronger (positive) bias towards the higher educated display more political trust and satisfaction with democracy, and are less likely to be populist. We measured support for populism in four different ways with populist attitudes, populist voting, affective attitudes towards populist party supporters compared with mainstream party supporters, and identification with ‘the common people.’
2023
Classified out of society? How educational classification induces political alienation through feelings of misrecognition
Published in The British Journal of Sociology with
Bram Spruyt, Toon Kuppens, & Russell Spears.
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Less educated citizens are both descriptively and substantively outnumbered by higher educated citizens in political and societal institutions. While social science has devoted much time to explain why such education effects exist, it has largely neglected the role of feelings of misrecognition in inducing political alienation among less educated citizens. We argue that education has become so central in processes of economic and social stratification that it is likely that less educated citizens feel misrecognized due to their marginal presence in societal and political institutions, which would then lead to their political alienation. This would in particular be the case in societies that are more 'schooled', that is, societies where schooling is a more dominant and steering institution. We analysed data from 49,261 individuals in 34 European countries and found that feelings of misrecognition were strongly related to political distrust, dissatisfaction with democracy, and vote abstention. These relations explained a significant part of the difference between higher and less educated citizens in political alienation. We also found that this mediation effect was larger in countries that are more schooled.
2022
When and why people prefer higher educated politicians: Ingroup bias, deference, and resistance
Published in Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin with Toon Kuppens, Bram Spruyt, & Russell Spears.
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When choosing between political candidates of different educational levels, do voters show ingroup bias or base their vote choice on candidates' perceived competence? We aim to investigate how (fictional) political candidates of different educational levels are evaluated and voted for, how this is affected by voters' educational level, and the role of perceived (Study 1) and manipulated competence (Study 2). Higher educated participants preferred higher to less educated candidates over and above their level of competence, particularly when they identified strongly with their educational level. This reflects ingroup bias among the higher educated. Less educated participants preferred higher educated candidates in Study 1, but did not prefer higher educated candidates when competence was manipulated independently from education in Study 2. The less educated, unlike the higher educated, therefore, seem to show deference to the assumed competence of the higher educated, because it disappears when more reliable competence information is available.
2021
In the shadow of the schooled society: Feelings of misrecognition and the education ladder
Published in Social Problems with Bram
Spruyt, Toon Kuppens, & Russell Spears.
Show abstract
Over the past decades, the education system has gradually grown into a central and universal institution of society, the impact of which plays a primary role in economic and social stratification. This stratification, and the way this inequality is legitimated, contains serious moral judgements that favor the higher educated over the less educated. This article focuses on the socio-psychological consequences of living in such “schooled societies” for those who are more or less successful in education. We use three waves of the European Quality of Life survey with data on 65,208 individuals across 36 countries. We investigate (1) the extent to which different educational groups feel dissatisfied about and misrecognized by virtue of their education and (2) whether the centrality of the education system in society broadens the gap between educational groups in their dissatisfaction with education and feelings of misrecognition. Results show that (1) the less educated are more likely to feel misrecognized and dissatisfied with their education than the higher educated, and (2) in countries where education is more central, the education gap in feelings of misrecognition is substantially larger.
Education-based status: exploring the institutional effects of education
PhD Dissertation.
Promotors: Bram Spruyt, Russell Spears, & Toon Kuppens.
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Education features almost constantly in political and social discussion, but its value and its effects are often understood as secondary to other realms of our societies. So, while education's wide-ranging influence should be apparent due to its ceaseless presence in our society, it's often not understood as having its own distinctive influence on for instance, the economy, culture, and how people perceive themselves and others. In this doctoral thesis I investigate how educational level influences the 'status' of individuals, in other words their esteem in society, and how this can affect their behavior. In this thesis I show that educational level indeed influences how people experience their own status position in society. I also document that this influence is a more direct repercussion of educational level in countries with more higher educated, such as The Netherlands. In these countries there is a larger difference in feelings of misrecognition between higher and less educated, and these feelings of misrecognition are then likely to increase political alienation. Concerning voting behavior, both higher and lower educated have a preference for higher educated political candidates. This seems to be the results of a perception of higher educated as more competent, but for higher educated individuals specifically this also seems to result from intentionally favoring one's own group. With equal competence the less educated do not or barely seem to focus on the educational level of political candidates.
2019
Education-based status in comparative perspective: The legitimization of education as a basis for social stratification
Published in Social Forces with Bram Spruyt,
Toon Kuppens, & Russell Spears.
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Classical and recent accounts of education posit that education legitimately, and authoritatively, classifies individuals to positions of lower or higher status. However, despite these general theoretical claims, empirical evidence that provides an in-depth picture of the relationship between educational attainment and social status remains scarce. In this paper, based on a dataset of 31 countries (International Social Survey Programme), we investigate the extent to which education is related to subjective social status, the degree to which this is seen as legitimate, and how this relationship varies between countries. We contextualize this relationship with the influence of the centrality of education in countries (operationalized as the share of higher educated). Results showed that education is an important source of subjective social status for individuals across all countries, and is seen as relatively legitimate and uncontroversial among all educational groups. Moreover, among those who perceive education to be more important for status, subjective status differences between educational groups are larger. Additionally, in countries with larger shares of higher educated, educational differences in subjective social status correlate more strongly with whether or not people obtained a degree of higher (tertiary) education. Lastly, the relationship between education and subjective social status in these countries is more independent from other sources of status, such as income and gender. It therefore seems to be that as higher education becomes more central and widely shared in a society, rather than leveling social differences, ironically it also becomes more distinctive and diagnostic in distinguishing people along group lines.
2018
Order please! How cultural framing shapes the impact of neighborhood disorder on law-and-order voting
Published in Political Geography with
Willem de Koster & Jeroen van der Waal.
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Local conditions shape voting behavior. Extant research has primarily scrutinized one specific relationship: the association between the share of ethnic minorities in a local context and voting for right-wing populist or anti-immigration parties. The electoral relevance of neighborhood disorder, another potentially salient local factor, has been unexplored, even though this social problem has received much attention in the field of criminology. We therefore assess whether neighborhood disorder underlies support for law-and-order parties. In so doing, we incorporate insights from the literature on cultural framing and theorize that the electoral relevance of neighborhood disorder is not the same for everyone, because different individuals may have different interpretations of the same local conditions. We thus hypothesize that neighborhood disorder more strongly inspires law-and-order voting among residents with an authoritarian disposition, that is, an aversion to diversity and difference and an inclination toward social conformity. Multilevel logistic regression analyses of nationally representative Dutch data (1678 Dutch natives in 180 neighborhoods) corroborate this hypothesis: while we find no overall effect of neighborhood disorder on law-and-order voting, there is evidence of a strong positive effect among residents with a very authoritarian disposition. We discuss the relevance of these results and provide suggestions for further research.