Opposing effects of income inequality on health: The role of perceived competitiveness and avoidance/approach motivation

Abstract

Income inequality is commonly posited to elevate concerns about social status that undermine psychological health, but the empirical evidence is inconsistent. Here we propose that these inconsistencies conceal opposing processes: Income inequality prompts perceived competitiveness, which can both negatively predict psychological health via avoidance motivation and positively predict psychological health via approach motivation. First, we conducted a two-year longitudinal study (1,700+ participants from 500+ county identifiers) and provided support for our opposing processes model. Second, we conducted three pre-preregistered studies using an experimental-causal-chain design. We sequentially showed that induced income inequality increased perceived competitiveness (Study 2a; 444 participants), induced perceived competitiveness increased avoidance and approach motivation (Study 2b; 1,018 participants), and induced avoidance/approach motivation decreased/increased psychological health (Study 2c; 562 participants). These findings suggest that scholars should shift from studying the main effects of income inequality on psychological health to studying the psychological processes involved in the inequality-health relation.

The effect of Black–White income inequality on perceived interracial psychological outcomes via perceived interracial competition.

“…Past experimental work supports the causal link between perceptions of competition and these motivational goals (e.g., Pekrun et al, 2014; Shin et al, 2017), and the present findings suggest that perceptions of interracial competition can elicit approach- and avoidance-oriented responses. However, the link between racial income inequality, perceived interracial competition, and approach-avoidance motivation have yet to be examined (although has been investigated on the subject of general income inequality and competition broadly; see Sommet & Elliot, 2023). As such, future research may benefit strongly from expanding the present work by integrating race-based income inequality, intergroup competition, and motivational processes together in a comprehensive model.…”

A Competitiveness-Based Theoretical Framework on the Psychology of Income Inequality

“…Sommet and Elliot (2023) recently proposed that the absence of an overall link between income inequality and well-being concealed opposing motivational processes. In a 2-year longitudinal study, they found that income inequality predicted perceived competitiveness, which itself (a) negatively predicted well-being via avoidance motivation (sample item: “In general, I am focused on preventing negative events in my life”) and (b) positively predicted well-being via approach motivation (sample item: “I typically focus on the success I hope to achieve in the future”).…”

A socioecological approach to explaining how economic inequality and psychological tendencies mutually constitute each other.

“…Individuals exposed to chronic or temporary inequality are more individualistic and competitive (Moreno-Bella et al, 2019;Sánchez-Rodríguez et al, 2019). Under conditions of high economic inequality, social strategies based on dominance and competition become more frequent (Sommet et al, 2019;Sommet & Elliot, 2022b), because the world might be construed as one where the winner takes it all (Ongis & Davidai, 2022). Economic inequality also heightens individuals' concerns about their standing in society and that they receive enough positive recognition from others (Layte & Whelan, 2014;Melita et al, 2021).…”