I’m not sure I follow that, exactly, but it happens often enough, elitist expectation or not. Among the most well known societal instances of it have historically occurred in the most dire of times. For example, in the Civil War, WWI, WWII, the Korean and Vietnam wars, racial minorities in great numbers, including Native Americans, Negroes, the impoverished of all ethnicities, set aside their individual and collective interests despite their disadvantaged states, and fought for what they saw as something beyond their own bounded ethnocentric interests, and in many cases to their detriment. In any case, elitist expectation or not, the expectation was there, and they were actively recruited to do just that. It’s an amazing feature of history.