Research has shown that people sometimes display a “thick skin bias” whereby they believe that individuals in poverty are less harmed by negative events than individuals from higher socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. The perception that individuals or groups are less feeling, less vulnerable to harm, or otherwise less responsive or reactive is often thought to be a hallmark of dehumanization. Four preregistered studies tested whether several approaches to dehumanization—e.g., subtle and blatant; animalistic and mechanistic—could explain people's belief that lower-SES individuals are less harmed by negative events. Across studies, participants thought that a variety of negative events would be less harmful for lower-SES individuals than for higher-SES individuals even when not ascribing lower-SES individuals any less humanity. Participants did, however, judge that lower-SES individuals had adapted to hardship more than higher-SES individuals, and this judgment significantly mediated the thick skin bias. Thus, although people in poverty are dehumanized in some contexts, a theory of the causes of the perceived “toughness” of lower-SES individuals will likely require additional explanatory mechanisms, such as beliefs about human adaptation to the hardship of poverty.

中文翻译：

---

脸皮较厚但仍然是人：人们可能认为贫困的人更不容易受到伤害，即使将他们归结为完整的人性


研究表明，人们有时会表现出“厚脸皮偏见”，即他们认为贫困者比具有较高社会经济地位 （SES） 背景的人受到负面事件的伤害更小。认为个人或群体感觉较少、不易受到伤害、反应迟钝或反应迟钝的看法通常被认为是非人化的标志。四项预先注册的研究测试了几种非人化的方法——例如，微妙和公然;动物性和机械性——可以解释人们认为低 SES 个体受负面事件的伤害较小。在研究中，参与者认为，即使不将低 SES 个体归因于较低的人性，各种负面事件对低 SES 个体的危害也要小于对高 SES 个体的危害。然而，参与者确实判断出，低 SES 个体比高 SES 个体更能适应困难，并且这种判断显着介导了厚脸皮偏倚。因此，尽管贫困人口在某些情况下被非人化，但关于低社会经济地位个体感知到的“坚韧”原因的理论可能需要额外的解释机制，例如关于人类适应贫困困难的信念。