A theme that has emerged in recent discourse around classism is that
compared to other forms of prejudice it is still relatively socially
acceptable, even in progressive environments. While progressives may not
stereotype the lower class as lacking in work ethic or educational
ambition, many were quick to blame them for political events like
Brexit, the rise of nationalism and right-wing parties or the result of
last year's US election, even when this was not supported by the
evidence. We tested the hypothesis that liberals and conservatives
endorse different stereotypes of lower class people, consistent with the
violation of their respective values. We found that classism can be
divided into two clusters of stereotypes. Those stereotypes that
characterize the lower class as not adhering to self-enhancement and
conservation values were strongly correlated with Social Dominance
Orientation (SDO), Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and political and
economic conservatism in our two samples (n1=220; n2=183) whereas only a
small correlation with SDO but not with the other measures was found for
stereotypes that describe lower class people as lacking
self-transcendence and openness values. This effect was not found in the
control condition (n=192) which used refugees as the target group. In
this condition, stereotype endorsement was significantly lower and both
dimensions were linked to political and economic conservatism, RWA and
SDO. This suggests that there is a form of classism that, unlike other
types of prejudice, is equally prevalent on both ends of the political
spectrum.