Recent polls indicate attitudes towards benefits recipients have softened as more information comes out about the impact of the changes to the welfare system. However, having just completed a project with the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust where I interviewed about 150 families who will be directly affected by the cuts, I found the majority held the kind of attitudes that make the Daily Mail's headlines look positively leftwing.

While the latest British Social Attitudes Survey reflected less support among the overall population for unemployment benefits, what it doesn't tell you is that these anti-welfare attitudes are often held by those most in need of a comprehensive welfare state.

At JRHT I was given the unenviable task of informing people how welfare changes would personally affect them. Often people on the housing scheme were due to lose several benefits – losing their out-of-work employment and support allowance (ESA) as well as having to pay extra money for unusable box rooms as part of the bedroom tax, for example.

Logically, I'd expect those on the sharp end of things to be pro-welfare. But if anything, many interviewees had internalised a Thatcherite every-man-for-himself mentality, wanting benefits for themselves but resenting anyone else getting a handout.

There are almost too many examples to list but the kind of attitudes I heard daily went along these lines: the disabled man thinks it's wrong the drug user down the road gets methadone. The drug user is outraged that the large family next door gets a spare room and hopes they are hit by bedroom tax. The large family is sick of elderly people getting big houses they don't need. The elderly woman hopes these large families are forced to stop having kids once the money dries up. On and on it went in a circle, anger constantly directed at other victims of the coalition government's Welfare Reform Act instead of the politicians and policymakers responsible.

On being told of the cuts, one young mum exclaimed "Good! That means her down the road'll get her money taken away" referring to a resident with severe mental health issues (people with less visible disabilities like hers were all too frequently dismissed as "chancers").

Another tenant vented her frustration that her permanently disabled brother was having his support cut while in the same breath bitterly complaining about fraudulent disability living allowance (DLA) claimants (I contemplated having the comparatively low statistics for fraud tattooed on my face to save time repeating it).

One of the sentences I regularly heard – and was no less startled by each time – was "We're not on benefits." On a daily basis I spoke to people who were in receipt of tax credits, child benefit, ESA, DLA, income support and housing benefit yet still told me matter-of-factly "we don't claim benefits". Over time I understood that what this really meant was that they were striving to define themselves as something other than the endless media presentations of "scroungers".

The value of influencing attitudes towards social inequality is deeply underestimated. If you manage to persuade everyone that poverty is a moral condition and claiming benefits is the symptom, it's a guaranteed way to ensure those handing out the money treat recipients as guilty until proven innocent. Shame is being employed as an ingenious tool to ensure people feel constantly stigmatised. And if you feel undeserving you're hardly going to be forthcoming about what you're entitled to.

This isn't just about votes. The less people believe they're entitled to this money – and they are entitled – the less likely they are to maximise their income through benefits. It's ideal for the government because it fosters an environment in which people are less likely to appeal when their claim is rejected and less likely to support those around them who may be suffering as a result of the welfare changes.

In a way you have to marvel at it. How do you get people to accept a policy that's inexcusably prejudiced against the most vulnerable in society? Make sure they take on the same mean-spirited, self-serving attitude that influenced that policy in the first place. Genius.