The Effects of Different Types of Classism on Psychological Outcomes: Preliminary Findings

In interpersonal relationships, people make assumptions about others’ social class standing and interact with them based on these assumptions, which constitutes classism. Classism has an adverse impact on people’s overall functioning, although scholarly attention on the unique impact of different types of classism, as proposed the Social Class Worldview Model-Revised (SCMW-R; Liu, 2011), has lagged behind. To address this gap in the literature, we explored how different types of classism (i.e., downward, upward, and lateral) can account for unique variance as predictors of psychological outcomes. Overall, our findings indicate that there is a unique impact of different types of classism on psychological outcomes (i.e., stress, anxiety, well-being, attitudes toward mental health care), beyond social status and overall discrimination alone.