Your freedom to choose is important to me, isn't it?

Abstract

Being socially mindful is important for constructing and maintaining social relationships and social interactions. Social mindfulness, which requires an acknowledgement of another person’s interests and needs, is reduced when the other person is perceived as a member of the upper social class as shown repeatedly for relatively socially and economically better off majority groups from Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democracies (i.e., WEIRD countries). The overall question addressed in the present research project asked, and tested in two experimental studies (Study 1: N = 266; Study 2: N = 448) whether these findings also hold for relatively socially and economically worse off majority groups in non-WEIRD countries. Different from previous findings, the results for the South African sample showed that the other person’s social class does not influence social mindfulness and that only objective self-social class but not subjective self-social class is related to social mindfulness. More specifically, the results showed that the majority group (i.e., Black South Africans) was less socially mindful than the minority groups (i.e., White, Indian, and Coloured South Africans) which, however, are not explainable by economic differences alone. These findings have significant implications for research on social mindfulness and social class in non-WEIRD contexts.