Rising income inequality is a global trend. Increased income inequality has been associated with higher rates of crime, greater consumer debt, and poorer health outcomes. The mechanisms linking inequality to poor outcomes among individuals are poorly understood. This research tested a behavioral account linking inequality to individual decision making. In three experiments ( = 811), we found that higher inequality in the outcomes of an economic game led participants to take greater risks to try to achieve higher outcomes. This effect of unequal distributions on risk taking was driven by upward social comparisons. Next, we estimated economic risk taking in daily life using large-scale data from internet searches. Risk taking was higher in states with greater income inequality, an effect driven by inequality at the upper end of the income distribution. Results suggest that inequality may promote poor outcomes, in part, by increasing risky behavior.

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The Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) is a measure of implicit evaluations, designed to index the automatic (unintentional) retrieval of evaluative knowledge. The AMP effect consists in participants evaluating neutral target stimuli more positively when preceded by positive primes and more negatively when preceded by negative primes. Hughes et al. (2022) questioned the automaticity of the AMP based on an awareness effect, i.e., the finding that AMP effects were larger when participants indicated that their response was influenced by the prime than when they did not. Here we present seven experiments (six preregistered; N = 2,350) investigating the nature of the awareness effect and, more broadly, the automaticity features of the AMP. In Experiments 1–4, the awareness effect was robust but highly variable as a function of procedural changes and stimulus valence. Critically, Experiments 5–7 provided evidence for an alternative explanation of the awareness effect, namely that awareness can be the outcome, rather than the cause, of evaluative congruency between primes and responses: Awareness effects emerged even under conditions that made it impossible for awareness to contribute to AMP effects, including when participants judged influence awareness for third parties or primes were presented post-hoc, following influence judgments. Finally, increasing evaluative strength of the primes increased participants’ tendency to misattribute AMP effects to the influence of target stimuli. Together, these findings support the construct validity of the AMP as a measure of implicit evaluations by suggesting that AMP effects are unintentional and can create awareness effects rather than vice versa.

Contrary to the expectations of many, Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The initial shock to her supporters turned into despair for most, but not everyone was affected equally. We draw from the literature on political activism, identity, and self-other overlap in predicting that not all Clinton voters would be equivalently crushed by her loss. Specifically, we hypothesize that pre-election measures of political activism, and level of self-other identification between participants and Clinton–that is, how much a person was “with her”–will interact to predict the level of distress of Clinton voters two months later. Longitudinal data support our hypothesis. Notably, among Clinton voters, greater activism negatively predicted depressive symptoms, and positively predicted sleep quality, but only when participants were highly identified with Clinton. We discuss the implications of the results for theory and research on social action and well-being.

The present research proposes and tests the “hedonic risk hypothesis” that affective experiences of pleasure provide a common currency that people use to equate economic and hedonic inequality. As a result, economic inequality can increase risk-taking in pursuit of pleasure even in noneconomic domains. Study 1 showed that higher economic inequality at the state level was associated with people in those states spending more time pursuing pleasure. Studies 2–4 were experiments, which demonstrated that when people perceive inequality in other people’s hedonic experience, they become riskier in their pursuit of pleasure for themselves. The relationship between inequality and risk-taking in pursuit of pleasurable experiences was moderated by upward social comparisons. Both monetary and hedonic inequality caused participants to become riskier in their pursuit of pleasure. The findings suggest a psychological pathway by which systemic effects of income inequality may affect individual health and social outcomes.