Lay beliefs of privilege: Consequences of the invisible knapsack

Recent widespread social movements (e.g., Occupy) stress the importance of dismantling societal privilege-group-based advantages such as White privilege or class privilege. Although research shows that recognizing privilege can increase advantaged group members' support for equality between groups, such recognition is often avoided (Knowles et al., 2014; Shuman et al., 2025), and it is unclear whether there is even consensus about what privilege "is." We test how lay people define privilege (i.e., lay beliefs of privilege) across 12 studies, using both qualitative and experimental methods. We find substantial variance in people's lay beliefs of privilege and, furthermore, that these variations are related to support for equality-enhancing action. Specifically, lay beliefs encompassing the structural and pervasive nature of privilege are associated with greater recognition of privilege and support for equality-enhancing action, whereas conceptualizations emphasizing invisibility and controllability can impede recognition. Overall, results suggest that privilege discourse ought to consider people's underlying lay beliefs of privilege, which can affect support for equality-enhancing efforts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).