Protestant work ethic’s relation to intergroup and policy attitudes: A meta‐analytic review

The Protestant work ethic (PWE), the belief that hard work leads to success, is prevalent in many cultures and has been related to negative attitudes toward disadvantaged groups (prejudice) and social policies targeting them. Given recent theorizing and findings suggesting that PWE is not necessarily associated with prejudice among all people or in all contexts, this meta‐analysis examined the direction and strength of PWE’s relation to prejudice (37 eligible studies) and policy attitudes (16 studies) among published and unpublished studies across 38 years. Results revealed not only significant positive relationships between PWE and both types of intergroup attitudes but also significant moderators of these relationships. There were significantly larger effect sizes for PWE’s relationship with both prejudice and policy attitudes among samples in Western countries (Canada, England, New Zealand, USA), and marginally significantly larger effect sizes for PWE’s relationship with both types of attitudes the older the mean age of the sample (within Western countries). PWE’s relationship with intergroup attitudes also varied by the target group of the attitudes. Findings support a more nuanced view of PWE’s relationship with intergroup attitudes, suggesting that PWE does not always promote greater prejudice; rather its consequences are culture and context bound. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. The Protestant work ethic (PWE; Weber, 1958), the belief that hard work leads to success, is a central guiding principle in several countries, such as Canada, England, and the United States (e.g., Furnham, 1982, 1985). PWE has long been discussed in the literatures in social psychology, social work, sociology, and political science, as a possible key ingredient in negative attitudes toward disadvantaged groups, such as low‐ income or homeless individuals (e.g., MacDonald, 1972; Somerman, 1993), African Americans (e.g., Katz & Hass, 1988; Monteith & Spicer, 2000), and women (e.g., Christopher & Mull, 2006), as well as disapproval of policies aimed at helping disadvantaged members of society, such as welfare programs (e.g., Hasenfeld & Rafferty, 1989; Heaven, 1990). In this vein, PWE has been viewed as a justifier of inequality or handy post hoc explanation to rationalize one’s prejudice and society’s differential treatment of disadvantaged persons (e.g., Crandall, 2000; Levy, West, Ramírez, & Karafantis, 2006). That is, less advantaged groups (e.g., low‐income individuals) are seen as not working hard enough and therefore at fault for their disadvantage (e.g., Kinder & Sears, 1981). Yet, researchers have increasingly begun to suggest that PWE may not always promote negative intergroup attitudes (e.g., Crandall & Martinez, 1996) and that PWE may even have an additional egalitarian meaning or implication (e.g., Levy, Freitas, Mendoza‐Denton, Kugelmass, & Rosenthal, 2010; Levy, West, & Ramírez, 2005; Levy, West, et al., 2006; *Correspondence to: Lisa Rosenthal, Department of Psychology Stony Brook U E‐mail: [email protected]; Sheri R. Levy, Department of Psychol E‐mail: [email protected] Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Ramírez, Levy, Velilla, & Hughes, 2010). These recent findings and theorizing suggest a more nuanced view of PWE’s relation to intergroup attitudes, namely that culture, age, and social status (e.g., racial/ethnic group) may be key factors in determining if and when PWE relates to negative intergroup attitudes. The main goal of this meta‐analysis is to use the available published and unpublished research to test whether PWE has a consistent relationship with greater prejudice and disapproval of policies aimed at helping disadvantaged groups, and to test several possible moderators of these relationships. Thus, this meta‐analysis seeks to test a more nuanced theoretical view of PWE’s implications for intergroup attitudes and therefore to inform and guide future theoretical work on PWE. Protestant work ethic has long been theorized to be associated with greater prejudice toward disadvantaged groups or to be a justifier of inequality, but the studies testing and supporting such hypotheses have been in mostly Western contexts. Researchers have recently begun to qualify those hypotheses regarding PWE, suggesting that PWE’s intergroup meaning and implications may be culturally bound (e.g., Crandall, 1994; Crandall & Martinez, 1996; Levy et al., 2010; Levy et al., 2005; Ramírez & Levy, 2010; Ramírez et al., 2010). Specifically, researchers have suggested that in Western, individualistic cultures, where personal responsibility for outcomes is emphasized, a belief in PWE is probably niversity, Stony Brook, NY, USA 11794‐2500. ogy Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA 11794‐2500, Received 27 May 2010, Accepted 21 May 2011 Protestant work ethic 875 related to prejudice toward disadvantaged persons, by justifying viewing them as not working hard enough and thus accountable for their poorer life outcomes (e.g., Christopher & Schlenker, 2005; Crandall & Martinez, 1996; Quinn & Crocker, 1999). In individualistic, Western cultures, PWE takes on a justifier of inequality meaning that is related to and influenced by cultural values that attribute disadvantage to individuals’ lack of hard work or laziness. However, in less individualistic cultures where prejudice is not as closely related to or supported by these attributions of responsibility and controllability, or where individual responsibility is less of a focus of cultural values (e.g., in Colombia, see Ramírez et al., 2010; in India, see Lazarus, 2001), PWE should be less likely to take on a meaning that justifies or is associated with prejudice. For instance, in many Latin American countries, such as Colombia, people’s beliefs about work traditionally have been connected to Catholicism, in which work has been thought to represent punishment rather than a pathway to prestige; because of this, people are encouraged to accept their disadvantage as a means to salvation and therefore are not directly blamed for their disadvantage (e.g., Ramírez et al., 2010). In non‐Western countries and cultures, then, PWE may be unlikely to take on the justifier of inequality meaning (e.g., Crandall & Martinez, 1996; Ramírez et al., 2010). In addition to beginning to spell out the potential boundaries of PWE’s meaning as a justifier of inequality across cultures, researchers have suggested that PWE may also sometimes have an egalitarian meaning even in Western cultures, with the implication that all people are equal and can succeed (e.g., Levy et al., 2010; Levy et al., 2005; Levy, West, et al., 2006). Ever‐ popular “rags to riches” stories in Western countries (e.g., J.K. Rowling, Oprah Winfrey) can suggest that hard work is a social equalizer. Indeed, PWE is part of an enduring literature in not just the social domain but also in the academic domain, with PWE being used to motivate children to work diligently toward valued outcomes, and to suggest that people of all backgrounds are equally capable of succeeding (e.g., see work on the achievement motive, McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, & Lowell, 1953). This may be particularly emphasized not only to children in educational contexts but also to people of all ages and backgrounds in that it conveys that effort potentially equalizes people from different social groups. Indeed, this equalizer meaning of PWE is generally equally endorsed by privileged groups and disadvantaged groups (Levy et al., 2010; also see Ramírez et al., 2010). However, as described above, in Western cultures and contexts in which PWE has links to attributions of controllability and responsibility, PWE is expected to also have a justifier of inequality meaning for people, which may be acquired simultaneously with the equalizer meaning of PWE or be a later acquired meaning through age, experience, and personal needs to justify prejudice in that culture (e.g., Levy et al., 2010; Levy et al., 2005; Levy, West, et al., 2006; Ramírez et al., 2010). This theorizing also suggests that there would be within‐ culture differences, namely that the justifier of inequality meaning of PWE may be less likely to be emphasized to or accepted by members of disadvantaged groups. This meaning should resonate most with advantaged group members in that it justifies their place in society. Unsurprisingly, this notion is supported, and the justifier of inequality meaning of PWE is Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. generally more widely endorsed by privileged groups than disadvantaged groups (e.g., Levy et al., 2010). As one example consistent with the idea that PWE has a learned justifier of inequality meaning with age or experience in a culture, Levy, West, et al. (2006) found that among European American children (ages 10–15 years), PWE was related positively to beliefs in social equality but with increased experience in the US (i.e., with age), PWE was associated with intolerance in older European Americans. An experimental induction of PWE lent further support to this finding (Levy, West, et al., 2006; Study 2). One way in which the justifier of inequality meaning may arise is through repeated exposure to others who use PWE to argue that disadvantaged groups and their members are to blame for their disadvantage (thus drawing on a cultural context in which prejudice is linked to attributions of personal responsibility and controllability). Indeed, US college students who were led to think about past instances of others using PWE in support of such arguments were less egalitarian (reported less support for social equality and donated less money to a homeless shelter) compared with students in a control condition (Levy, West, et al., 2006). The justifier of inequality meaning of PWE could also emerge among adults living in individualistic, Western contexts in other ways. As another example, with age, as people’s educational and career prospects are increasingly being evaluated, advantaged group members may be increasingly motivated to take credit for their own (or their group’s) accomplishments, and seek ways to deny disadvantaged groups preferential treatment in education and work, and thus may be particularly likely to make or be receptive to a connection between PWE and justifying inequality and prejudice (see Levy et al., 2005). Essentially, these examples highlight an associated meaning mechanism in which PWE is linked to other beliefs within the relevant cultural context, which make it possible for PWE to have a justifier of inequality meaning in Western cultures. The notion of an associated meaning mechanism derives from the long‐ standing social psychological literature indicating that the same construct can be perceived differently by different people or in different contexts (e.g., Bruner, 1957; Turner & Oakes, 1997). Lewin (1951), for instance, noted that children hold a narrow view of the implications of their actions but gain a broader view with experience, which applied to PWE suggests that people in some contexts could acquire a growing understanding of PWE’s implications with age and experience (e.g., Levy et al., 2005; Levy, West, et al., 2006; Ramírez et al., 2010). Taken together, recent theorizing and findings suggest a more nuanced view of PWE’s relation to intergroup attitudes, namely that culture, age, and social status (e.g., racial/ethnic group) may be key moderators of the relationship between PWE and intergroup attitudes. In this meta‐analysis, we hypothesized that the country the study was conducted would moderate the association between endorsement of PWE and both types of intergroup attitudes, such that samples from Western countries (Canada, England, New Zealand, US) would show larger effect sizes (stronger positive associations with prejudice and negative attitudes toward policies) than samples that were from non‐Western countries (India, Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 41, 874–885 (2011) 876 Lisa Rosenthal et al. Jamaica, Singapore). Because of the theorized relevance of PWE with prejudice specifically in Western cultures, we also hypothesized that when focusing only on study samples from Western countries, the mean age of the sample would be a moderator, such that the higher the age, the larger (more positive) the effect sizes would be. Furthermore, we hypothesized that in Western countries, racial/ethnic group (one important indicator of relative social status in much past work on PWE) would be a moderator, namely that the greater the percentage of the sample that was white/European, the larger the effect sizes would be. We also examined percentage of the sample that was female as a possible moderator (given that gender is another indicator of relative status, e.g., Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), also focusing on Western samples. We also pursued several auxiliary hypotheses. PWE has been associated with prejudice toward a wide range of stigmatized groups, and research has shown differences in the expression of prejudice depending on the perceived controllability of the particular stigma in places like US (e.g., Crandall & Martinez, 1996; Weiner, 1995). As already mentioned, past work has found a positive relationship between PWE and perceived personal responsibility and control over one’s situation and behaviors (e.g., Christopher & Schlenker, 2005); therefore, we examined whether in Western samples the effect sizes would be larger for prejudice toward groups thought to have controllable stigmas (e.g., social class, weight) versus uncontrollable stigmas (e.g., race, gender).