People Think the Everyday Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic Are Not as Bad for People in Poverty

Many of the everyday restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., lockdowns, being apart from loved ones) are even worse for those with fewer financial and material resources, but a series of experiments (total N = 1,452) suggests that people think the opposite. Indeed, participants consistently displayed a "thick skin bias," whereby they perceived effects of the pandemic such as sheltering at home or remaining apart from loved ones as less harmful for people in poverty. Directly providing information that contradicted this misguided stereotype reduced, but did not completely reverse, the thick skin bias. A failure to understand the full impact of the pandemic for those with the fewest resources may perpetuate and exacerbate inequalities during and after this unprecedented global crisis, making the identification of strategies to counteract biased understandings of poverty a pressing priority for future research. Public Significance Statement The present research reveals that people sometimes show a dramatic misunderstanding by thinking that people of lower socioeconomic status (SES) are less rather than more harmed by the everyday restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This bias leads people to assume that low-SES individuals need less interpersonal support than higher SES individuals. Informational interventions such as those provided by news media may be able to at least somewhat change this stereotype, though the bias did not fully reverse even when participants were directly provided with opposing information. The thick skin bias has potentially profound implications for inequality and inequity during the coronavirus pandemic and beyond, but informational interventions may be a promising path to reducing it.