Political cognition helps explain social class divides: Two dimensions of candidate impressions, group stereotypes, and meritocracy beliefs

•Commonsense analysis of the current political-economic system guides voting.•Voters judge political actors’ warmth (trustworthy, friendly) and competence.•Elites seem competent but cold, lower classes incompetent but warmer, supporting meritocracy and resentment.•Impressions of politicians as untrustworthy do not help bridge the divide.•The system seems rigged: incompetent, untrustworthy immigrants cut in line, guided by elites. Political cognitions—particularly impressions and stereotypes along two fundamental dimensions of social evaluations—play some role in explaining social class divides and accompanying resentments. First, the Big Two dimensions (warmth/communion and competence/agency) describe candidate perception, person perception, and group stereotypes. In particular, the stereotype content model and related perspectives show social-class stereotypes depicting elites as competent but cold and lower-income groups as incompetent but warm. This trade-off justifies the system as meritocractic, because elites’ stereotypic competence supports their status based on deservingness. Nevertheless, varied evidence (from social psychology, political science, and sociology) indicates common beliefs that support cross-class resentments: In particular, many citizens express political resentment both downward (toward cheats) and upward (toward elites). In this context, backlash against the system results. Anticipated by systematic theories, these political cognitions (impressions, stereotypes, beliefs) help explain the populist and nativist resentments in current political discourse; all support polarized, dysfunctional politics.