Economic Inequality Is Linked to Biased Self-Perception

Loughnan, Steve; Kuppens, Peter; Allik, Jüri; Balázs, Katalin; Lemus, Soledad de; Dumont, Kitty; Gargurevich, Rafael; Hidegkuti, István; Leidner, Bernhard; Matos, Lennia; Park, Joonha; Realo, Anu; Shi, Junqi; Sojo, Víctor; Tong, Yuyao; Vaes, Jeroen; Verduyn, Philippe; Yeung, Victoria Wai Lan; Haslam, Nick

doi:10.1177/0956797611417003

Cited by 139 publications

(152 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…The estimated levels of the better-than-average effect in each country correlated strongly with economic inequality, r=.72, confirming the finding of Loughnan et al (2011). However, the correlation between BAE levels and religiosity was somewhat stronger, r=.78, see Figure 1.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 72%

“…We discuss these findings in relation to relevant literature. Loughnan et al (2011) measured the better-than-average effect (BAE) in 15 countries across the world. They used a survey that presented a number of personal characteristics and asked participants to rate both the desirability of each characteristic and how much they possess it compared to the average person (or, in case of student samples, the average student).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Humble Self-Enhancement: Religiosity and the Better-than-Average Effect

Eriksson

Funcke

2012

SSRN Journal

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 72%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Humble Self-Enhancement: Religiosity and the Better-than-Average Effect

Eriksson

Funcke

2012

SSRN Journal

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“…A desire to blend in may cause them to believe their own income is closer to average than it actually is. The "self-enhancement" bias leads people at times to see themselves as better off than they actually are (Loughnan et al 2011). Individuals may also fail to distinguish clearly between reports of high inequality 28 worldwide and high inequality in their own country.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Misperceiving Inequality

Gimpelson¹,

Treisman²

2015

112

128

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.IZA Discussion Paper No. 9100 June 2015 ABSTRACTMisperceiving Inequality * Since Aristotle, a vast literature has suggested that economic inequality has important political consequences. Higher inequality is thought to increase demand for government income redistribution in democracies and to discourage democratization and promote class conflict and revolution in dictatorships. Most such arguments crucially assume that ordinary people know how high inequality is, how it has been changing, and where they fit in the income distribution. Using a variety of large, cross-national surveys, we show that, in recent years, ordinary people have had little idea about such things. What they think they know is often wrong. Widespread ignorance and misperceptions of inequality emerge robustly, regardless of the data source, operationalization, and method of measurement. Moreover, we show that the perceived level of inequality -and not the actual level -correlates strongly with demand for redistribution and reported conflict between rich and poor. We suggest that most theories about political effects of inequality need to be either abandoned or reframed as theories about the effects of perceived inequality.JEL Classification: D31, D63, D83, H24, H54, I30

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“…While outdegree signals the perceived support and status captured by conventional measures of social connectedness, indegree is more likely to reflect the social support, resources and recognition an individual actually receives. Furthermore, indegree is, by definition, less subject to individual variation in the perception and reporting of the psychosocial environment (such as potential gender effects on the self-reporting of social connections), or to cultural or socioeconomic differences in the 'self-enhancement' bias [38].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social connectedness is associated with fibrinogen level in a human social network

et al. 2016

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Socially isolated individuals face elevated rates of illness and death. Conventional measures of social connectedness reflect an individual's perceived network and can be subject to bias and variation in reporting. In this study of a large human social network, we find that greater indegree, a sociocentric measure of friendship and familial ties identified by a subject's social connections rather than by the subject, predicts significantly lower concentrations of fibrinogen (a biomarker of inflammation and cardiac risk), after adjusting for demographics, education, medical history and known predictors of cardiac risk. The association between fibrinogen and social isolation, as measured by low indegree, is comparable to the effect of smoking, and greater than that of low education, a conventional measure of socioeconomic disadvantage. By contrast, outdegree, which reflects an individual's perceived connectedness, displays a significantly weaker association with fibrinogen concentrations.

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Economic Inequality Is Linked to Biased Self-Perception

Cited by 139 publications

References 24 publications

Humble Self-Enhancement: Religiosity and the Better-than-Average Effect

Humble Self-Enhancement: Religiosity and the Better-than-Average Effect

Misperceiving Inequality

Social connectedness is associated with fibrinogen level in a human social network

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