An Exploration of How Millennial Australian Conservative Voters Conceptualize Privilege.

Research has identified variability in the way people see and understand privilege and their desire to address inequality. Generational and political ideological differences may be factors that shape such variability. Despite considerable inequality and a growing class system, to date, little research has been conducted in Australia to consider how people conceptualize these issues. Given this, the aim of this research was to explore how millennial Australian conservative voters conceptualize privilege. 10 semi‐structured interviews were conducted with millennial conservative party voters, and transcripts were analyzed thematically. Four themes were identified: (1) defining privilege (an advantage over others without effort); (2) comparisons: self to others (empathic downward comparisons saw participants identify qualities of their life that were privileged); (3) value tensions (tensions between participants political ideology and personal views) (4) disadvantage: individual or collective responsibility? (who and how inequality should be addressed). Combined, these themes revealed a highly contextual and nuanced conceptualization of privilege and how at times participants contested the conservative belief in meritocracy when empathically engaging in downward comparison of other's circumstances, recognizing some positions of disadvantage could not be remedied by individual effort. Findings contribute to understandings in political psychology regarding downward comparisons and meritocracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]