The Effects of Poverty Stereotype Threat on Inhibition Ability in Individuals from Different Income-level Families

Introduction: Poverty is characterized by a scarcity of resources and a threat of certain stereotypes. However, the effects of stereotype threat are largely dependent on various factors, both negative and positive. Few psychophysiological studies have studied the effects of poverty stereotype threats on inhibition ability in wealth and impoverished individuals.

Methods: To fill this gap in the literature, this study used the event-related potential (ERP) technique to explore the brain mechanisms associated with stereotype threat in 135 participants.

Results: Behavioral results showed that the rich group (participants from higher-income families) had better inhibition ability than the impoverished group (participants from lower-income families), with significantly shorter reaction time and significantly greater accuracy for poverty-related stimuli when in the nonthreat condition. Additionally, poverty stereotype threat could improve performance of the impoverished group for poverty-related stimuli. The electrophysiological results showed significantly larger P3 mean amplitude and significantly longer P3 latency in the rich group than the impoverished group in the nonthreat condition. Although no significant between-group differences were found in the threat condition, the results show that the effect of poverty stereotype threat varies with different income-level persons, for both behavioral and P3 data.

Conclusion: These findings suggest that impoverished people have worse inhibition abilities. Further, poverty stereotype threat has different effects on people according to their income level and could help to explain irrational consumption behaviors in people.