A growing number of studies investigate the relative importance of the major deservingness
criteria (control, attitude, reciprocity, identity, need) in explaining the perceived
welfare deservingness of different social groups. This paper addresses the roles of
those criteria in predicting the perceived deservingness of a rarely examined group,
single mothers. We conducted a survey in Hungary and compare the responses to direct
questions about deservingness to the results of a vignette-based survey experiment
in which the deservingness criteria were translated to characteristics of hypothetical
mothers. Our results show that in the absence of deservingness cues (direct questions),
respondents relied on the attitude, reciprocity/control, identity (measured by traditional
family values), and need criteria to the same extent. On the other hand, in the presence
of specific deservingness cues (vignette experiment), people disregarded their family
values and stereotypes, and the perceived need became the strongest predictor of single
mothers’ deservingness. These results support the existence of the deservingness heuristic,
however, compared to previous literature that emphasized the role of perceived control
and reciprocity of recipients, in the case of single mothers, the deservingness heuristic
seems to direct people’s attention to the perception of need.
