In addition to their beliefs about the reasons for status difference in society, it also matters what people think are the reasons for their own status. Do they prioritise the same explanations for status difference in general as they do for their own status, or do they emphasise different things? After asking them to select and rank their top reasons for status difference in society, the survey asked respondents to rank the same set of reasons as explanations for their own status, picking at least their top three. The results can be seen in Figure 1 (above, using weighted data).[1]
By far the most popular explanation for own status is hard work (panel B), which is ranked as the most important explanation by half of people (50.0%) and in the top three explanations by more than four fifths (81.3%). No other explanation comes close to the popularity of hard work but the second favourite is ambition (panel E), which three in ten people (30.5%) rank second and more than half (56.0%) place in their top three. Background (panel D), which was the most popular explanation for status difference in society, is the third most popular explanation for own status, with approaching half of people (47.1%) placing it in their top three. Two fifths of people (41.7%) rank luck (panel A) in their top three explanations, more than a fifth (23.3%) do so for inevitability (panel C), and the least popular explanation for own status is inequality (panel F), which is ranked in the top three by one in ten people (10.6%).
There is one particularly important conclusion that we can draw from the above results: people are much less willing to emphasise structural explanation, and especially background, for their own status than for status difference more generally. Whereas background was the most popular explanation for status difference in society, it is pushed into third place by hard work and ambition in relation to own status. Those two explanations were the second and third most selected in relation to status difference in society, so the top three reasons are the same in both cases but the prioritisation changes sharply. Thus, it seems that people are keen to take the credit (or blame) for their own statuses by emphasising individual explanations, whilst also being willing to accept that background plays a part, just much less than they think it plays in general.
| ariable names | priv_own_luck, priv_own_hardwork, priv_own_inevitable, priv_own_background, priv_own_ambition, priv_own_inequality, priv_own_other, priv_own_backnot |
| Number of cases | 1,405 |
| Number of categories | 8 |
| Categories to code as missing | None |
| Cases to code as missing | None |
| Recoded variable names | pr_roh_ir, pr_rov_ir, pr_rob_ir, pr_roa_ir, pr_roq_ir, pr_roo_ir |
| Number of cases | 1,405 |
| Number of categories | 8-9 |
| New and old categories | The original variables were inverse recoded so that higher values represent higher ranking of an explanation. As such the new and old variable values are: – ‘Not selected’ (0) = ‘Skipped’ (8) – ‘Ranked seventh’ (1) = ‘Ranked seventh’ (7) – ‘Ranked sixth’ (2) = ‘Ranked sixth’ (6) – ‘Ranked fifth’ (3) = ‘Ranked fifth’ (5) – ‘Ranked fourth’ (4) = ‘Ranked fourth’ (4) – ‘Ranked third’ (5) = ‘Ranked third’ (3) – ‘Ranked second’ (6) = ‘Ranked second’ (2) – ‘Ranked first’ (7) = ‘Ranked first’ (1) In addition, following the ranking of explanations, those who did not select ‘background’ were asked whether they thought it had played any part in their status (priv_own_backnot). Those who selected ‘Yes’ (1) were coded as ‘Selected when prompted’ (1) on the new ranking variable for the ‘background’ explanation (pr_rob_ir) and each of the other ranking categories had their numerical value increased by one. This means that the background explanation ranking variable alone has nine categories. |
Privilege and Participation 
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