Lifestyle Discrimination and Inequality 

What?

Does your taste and lifestyle signal who you are and where you belong in the social hierarchy? Gucci, Nespresso, and indie rock bands certainly bet on this. In this project, we ask if lifestyle, say a taste for opera rather than heavy metal and haute cuisine rather than fast food, shapes others' perceptions of social status and personal traits. Do others perceive you as in a higher social class, or as more economically competent and cultured, if you have highbrow rather than lowbrow tastes?  

Why?

Taste and lifestyle are easy-to-understand and ubiquitous forms of social distinction.  In addition, they enhance inequality because those at the top of society tend to like "fancy" things (which make them appear even more "classy" to others), while those at the bottom like "un-fancy" things (which make them appear "pleb").  Yet, research has two limitations: (1) It does not address which aspects of lifestyles (e.g., genres of music and food) people consider to have high (opera?) and low (heavy metal?) status and (2) It provides little evidence on the causal effect of lifestyles on others' perceptions of social status and personal traits.  

How?

We use surveys and experiments to address limitations in existing research. First, we run surveys with representative samples in Denmark to map the "cultural hierarchy" in Denmark, i.e., the status people attribute to different aspects of lifestyles. A paper from a previous project did a small-scale version of this. Second, we design survey experiments to uncover the effect of lifestyles on perceptions of social status and personal traits. In the experiments, we focus on lifestyles that vary along two axes: Highbrow vs. lowbrow and Omnivore vs. Univore. 

The figure below depicts the cultural hierarchy in Denmark. We asked a representative sample to rate the implied social rank of different lifestyle activitivities on a 1-10 scale, i.e., whether respondents associate each activity, genre, or object with people located at the top (10) or bottom (1) of society. The figure shows that lifestyle activities differ significantly in terms of implied social rank.