The consequences of economic threat for motivated social cognition and action

Economic threat (e.g., low or precarious socio-economic status) motivates social psychological responses to restore or maintain a sense of control and self-esteem, thwarted under conditions of personal or collective economic crisis. We review recent research showing that these processes elicit personal or collective attitudes and action tendencies that may either contribute to alleviate the source of the threat (e.g., collective action toward equality) or to be merely palliative (e.g., displaced intergroup conflict, ethnic prejudice). Further research should focus more on testing the motivational processes underlying the effects of economic threat.