The Effect of Social Exclusion on Perceptions of Poverty and American Identity

The current study aims to unveil how social exclusion and physical vulnerability influence personal perception. We hypothesized that social exclusion (versus acceptance and a neutral control) would facilitate negative perceptions of people in poverty and racial ethnic minorities and limit who is perceived as possessing an American identity. We utilized the reliving task paradigm to manipulate the experience of social exclusion and participants completed questionnaires assessing thoughts of physical vulnerability, perceptions of the poor and middle-class, and attributions for poverty, as well as questionnaires assessing personal impressions and perceptions of Americanness amongst various ethnic Americans. Although our hypotheses were largely unsupported, supplemental analyses including political orientation suggest this may be an important moderator