Aporophobia (rejection Of The Poor): Causes Of This Phenomenon
Phobias are anxiety disorders characteristic of people who develop an irrational fear of people, animals, objects or situations that do not represent a real threat. However, outside the psychiatric field and Clinical Psychology this term has also been used to create words that denote social rejection or unjustified hatred of people from a certain group.
Aporpophobia is one of the neologisms that have been created to refer to this psychological and social phenomenon related to a feeling of repulsion towards those who are different. Specific, “Aporophobia” means hatred or rejection of the poor, something that is reflected both in the way of thinking and acting of many people. In this article we will see its causes.
Aporophobia is, in short, the rejection of poor people for the simple fact of being poor The term appeared for the first time in publications by the Spanish philosopher Adela Cortina to have a word with which to differentiate this phenomenon from xenophobia or chauvinism.
Thus, it is not a mental disorder, but rather a social dysfunction that reinforces the marginalization of people in a vulnerable position
Unlike what normally happens with phobias that have diagnostic criteria because they are medical entities, in aporophobia the person who sees their quality of life as lower is not the person who has internalized this fear or rejection, but rather the person to whom this fear is directed. rejection. That is why can be an easy behavior pattern to learn since it does not have direct and immediate negative consequences on whoever reproduces that attitude.
In aporophobia, poverty, a circumstance about living conditions that has a multi-causal origin and that often escapes one’s control, is identified with its own essence. as if they were part of your identity Thus, the lack of resources goes from being a situation to being part of who one is, regardless of the context in which one grew up and one’s starting situation.
Now… what drives many people to reproduce aporophobia against the most vulnerable people? Let’s see it.
1. Ideological bias
There are several ideologies that lead to contempt for the poor Some of them linked to the political right, for example, are based on the idea of ​​meritocracy to start from the presupposition that being poor or not is fundamentally a matter of personal attitude and willpower.
This, in addition to being false (the best predictors of poverty are variables that are beyond the control of the individual: family income, country of birth, parents’ health and even their IQ), reproduces a discourse that favors marginalization of the poor.
This bias towards meritocracy usually fits with an individualistic mentality, but in other cases it can also be related to a totalizing collectivism. For example, certain variants of the national-socialist ideology lead to considering poor people individuals who do not want to adapt to a strongly hierarchical system that protects everyone if they work for it.
3. Cognitive dissonance
Aporophobia can also be based on the discomfort caused by having poor people in close proximity and doing nothing to improve their situation. This fact can lead to creating prejudices simply to justify this lack of help something related to the concept of cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive dissonance is a state of psychological tension and discomfort that appears when two contradictory ideas collide. To eliminate this discomfort, an attempt is made to “readapt” one of these ideas (or both) so that one triumphs over the other or both can exist at the same time in a different thinking scheme.
In the case of aporophobia, a positive self-concept what self-esteem is based on clashes with the fact that the majority of poor people you come into contact with are not helped (for example). Creating reasons to reject them is a way to make this not uncomfortable.
3. Prejudice due to lack of contact
It is also possible that aporophobia is caused by the lack of direct contact with poor people, which means that the vision we have of them is based on prejudices, stereotypes and even criminalization reproduced by some political agents or the media. . This is something that is also often at the root of racism or xenophobia.
What to do against aporophobia?
Fighting aporophobia is complicated, since poverty is widespread throughout the world and it is easy for this social rejection to spread from one place to another. Furthermore, there are few entities committed to defending the interests of people with few resources.
In this sense, one way to combat aporophobia is disseminate an anti-essentialist vision of poverty, which is not linked to “the essence” of people but to the way in which, due to various circumstances, they must live. It is also important to do this without normalizing poverty, as if it were something predestined and inherent to all societies, which cannot be avoided.
