@phdthesis{Rinn2023,
  author    = {Rinn, Robin},
  title     = {The Subjective Construction of Wealth and the Perception of Wealthy People. The Role of the Social Sample, Social Comparisons, and Mental Representations},
  doi       = {10.25972/OPUS-32789},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-327894},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2023},
  abstract  = {Although the concept of wealth is a topic that ancient philosophers have dealt with, relatively little attention is paid to it in psychology. This work sheds light on cognitive processes on how individuals derive a judgment about whether someone is rich and whether certain cues serve as subjective indicators of wealth. Based on three chapters that describe K = 11 observational and experimental studies (N = 2,315), three research questions shall be answered: First, to what extent do individuals differ when defining wealth? Secondly, are there universal cues of wealth that individuals use to identify rich people? And if yes, in what sense do these cues depend on the situation or context? Furthermore, it will be asked whether there are situational boundaries under which those cues do not apply. The present research shows that individuals differ in defining wealth and that they take their personal life circumstances and situational cues into account to define wealth. Moreover, evidence for a coherent wealth cue model was found that describes cues that are used by individuals to identify the rich (i.e., particularly wealthy people), whereby the validity of these cues depends on several contextual (e.g., cultural) factors. Lastly, it was found that by isolating individual wealth cues and looking at core mental representations of these cues, they may not be perceived as indicative for rich people anymore. The conclusions reported here set a foundation for further research on the perceptions of wealth which may be particularly relevant for the political discourse},
  subject      = {Milieu},
  language  = {en}
}