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Nepotistic Hiring and Poverty From Cultural, Social Class, and Situational Perspectives

Being poor can influence how one makes ethical decisions in various fields. Nepotism is one such area, emerging as kinship-based favoritism in the job market. People can be poor on at least three levels: one can live in a poor country (cross-cultural poverty), be poor compared to others around them...

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Autores principales: Jain, Luke, Gál, Éva, Orosz, Gábor
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8980472/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35391963
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.780629
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author Jain, Luke
Gál, Éva
Orosz, Gábor
author_facet Jain, Luke
Gál, Éva
Orosz, Gábor
author_sort Jain, Luke
collection PubMed
description Being poor can influence how one makes ethical decisions in various fields. Nepotism is one such area, emerging as kinship-based favoritism in the job market. People can be poor on at least three levels: one can live in a poor country (cross-cultural poverty), be poor compared to others around them (socio-economic poverty), or feel poor in their given situation (situational poverty). We assumed that these levels can simultaneously influence nepotistic hiring decisions among Hungarian (N = 191) and US participants (N = 176). Prior cross-cultural, non-experimental studies demonstrated that nepotism is more prevalent in poorer countries such as Hungary than in richer countries such as the United States. However, contrary to our expectations, in our non-representative, preliminary study, US participants showed stronger nepotistic behavioral tendencies than Hungarians (cross-cultural level). Furthermore, people with lower socioeconomic status had less nepotistic intentions than richer people (socio-economic level). When participants were asked to imagine themselves as a poor person (situational level), they tended to be more nepotistic than had they imagined themselves to be rich. Finally, nepotistic hiring intentions were in general stronger than non-nepotistic hiring intentions. These seemingly paradoxical results were interpreted in the light of the COVID-19 job market context and were explained by the mechanisms described by research on wealth and immoral behaviors, as well as the presence of risk aversion.
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spelling pubmed-89804722022-04-06 Nepotistic Hiring and Poverty From Cultural, Social Class, and Situational Perspectives Jain, Luke Gál, Éva Orosz, Gábor Front Psychol Psychology Being poor can influence how one makes ethical decisions in various fields. Nepotism is one such area, emerging as kinship-based favoritism in the job market. People can be poor on at least three levels: one can live in a poor country (cross-cultural poverty), be poor compared to others around them (socio-economic poverty), or feel poor in their given situation (situational poverty). We assumed that these levels can simultaneously influence nepotistic hiring decisions among Hungarian (N = 191) and US participants (N = 176). Prior cross-cultural, non-experimental studies demonstrated that nepotism is more prevalent in poorer countries such as Hungary than in richer countries such as the United States. However, contrary to our expectations, in our non-representative, preliminary study, US participants showed stronger nepotistic behavioral tendencies than Hungarians (cross-cultural level). Furthermore, people with lower socioeconomic status had less nepotistic intentions than richer people (socio-economic level). When participants were asked to imagine themselves as a poor person (situational level), they tended to be more nepotistic than had they imagined themselves to be rich. Finally, nepotistic hiring intentions were in general stronger than non-nepotistic hiring intentions. These seemingly paradoxical results were interpreted in the light of the COVID-19 job market context and were explained by the mechanisms described by research on wealth and immoral behaviors, as well as the presence of risk aversion. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-03-22 /pmc/articles/PMC8980472/ /pubmed/35391963 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.780629 Text en Copyright © 2022 Jain, Gál and Orosz. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Jain, Luke
Gál, Éva
Orosz, Gábor
Nepotistic Hiring and Poverty From Cultural, Social Class, and Situational Perspectives
title Nepotistic Hiring and Poverty From Cultural, Social Class, and Situational Perspectives
title_full Nepotistic Hiring and Poverty From Cultural, Social Class, and Situational Perspectives
title_fullStr Nepotistic Hiring and Poverty From Cultural, Social Class, and Situational Perspectives
title_full_unstemmed Nepotistic Hiring and Poverty From Cultural, Social Class, and Situational Perspectives
title_short Nepotistic Hiring and Poverty From Cultural, Social Class, and Situational Perspectives
title_sort nepotistic hiring and poverty from cultural, social class, and situational perspectives
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8980472/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35391963
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.780629
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