16/03/2023 - Jennifer SHEEHY-SKEFFINGTON

Résumé

Ideals of merit and equal opportunities are held together by the assumption that individuals are driven to achieve happiness and prosperity and can get there against the odds if they adopt the right mindset. Seen through this lens, the challenge in addressing socioeconomic inequality is one of enabling and encouraging those experiencing adversity to engage psychological processes such as self-efficacy, mental discipline, self-regulation, positive thinking, and social trust. In this talk, I will give an overview of two streams of research that complicate this approach. First, I will present evidence for how the material and social reality of socioeconomic strain render the mindsets prescribed for those low in income less accessible, likely by altering the adaptiveness of particular decision-making orientations. Second, I will consider the extent to which these same mindsets that are linked to achievement in a Western context emanate from and thus act to reproduce particular ideologies associated with advanced free market capitalism. I will present evidence for how they converge into a measurable form of ’market thinking’ that may have a detrimental impact on well-being and social solidarity across the socioeconomic spectrum.

Conférencier

Jennifer SHEEHY-SKEFFINGTON London School of Economics