Why people prefer unequal societies

Starmans, Christina; Sheskin, Mark; Bloom, Paul

doi:10.1038/s41562-017-0082

Cited by 304 publications

(257 citation statements)

References 79 publications

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“…The conviction that the prevailing economic system is fair, legitimate, and justified is associated with reduced inequality aversion, thus providing evidence for the ideological palliation thesis (see also ref. 38 ). There may be more than one way in which system-justifying beliefs palliate negative hedonic experiences associated with economic suffering and inequality.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic system justification predicts muted emotional responses to inequality

et al. 2020

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Although humans display inequality aversion, many people appear to be untroubled by widespread economic disparities. We suggest that such indifference is partly attributable to a belief in the fairness of the capitalist system. Here we report six studies showing that economic ideology predicts self-reported and physiological responses to inequality. In Studies 1 and 2, participants who regard the economic system as justified, compared with those who do not, report feeling less negative emotion after watching videos depicting homelessness. In Studies 3-5, economic system justifiers exhibit low levels of negative affect, as indexed by activation of the corrugator supercilii muscle, and autonomic arousal, as indexed by skin conductance, while viewing people experiencing homelessness. In Study 6, which employs experience-sampling methodology, everyday exposure to rich and poor people elicits less negative emotion among system justifiers. These results provide the strongest evidence to date that system-justifying beliefs diminish aversion to inequality in economic contexts.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic system justification predicts muted emotional responses to inequality

et al. 2020

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“…While from the egalitarian perspective there are specific ideal distributive patterns (such as equality of income or wealth), from a liberal perspective there are no normative goals regarding the distributive outcome of economic interaction (Nozick, ; Hayek, [1973]). According to Starmans, Sheskin, and Bloom (), people have a preference for a just process as opposed to an equal outcome.…”

Section: Justice and Acceptance Of The Economic Ordermentioning

confidence: 99%

Monetary policy, inequality and political instability

Duarte

Schnabl

2018

World Economy

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Voters in the industrialised countries are increasingly expressing dissatisfaction by dissenting from the established political parties and candidates. Based on the concepts of justice by Hayek, Rawls and Buchanan, we argue that the growing dissatisfaction is rooted in the asymmetric pattern of monetary policies since the mid‐1980s for two reasons. First, the structurally declining interest rates and the unconventional monetary policy measures have granted privileges to specific groups. Second, the increasingly expansionary monetary policies have negative growth effects, which have reduced the scope for compensation of the ones excluded from the privileges. As a result, the acceptance of the prevailing economic and political order is undermined and political instability increases.

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“…Skewed distributions of resources within societies have been made responsible for a range of political and social issues. Yet, rising levels of inequality have not increased public demand for redistributive measures [1], as the political economy literature would suggest [2]. As Dahl [3] (p. 95) pointed out, however: "Between a condition of objective inequality and the response of a disadvantaged person lie the perceptions, evaluations, expectations-in short, the psyche of the individual."…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inequality Perceptions, Preferences Conducive to Redistribution, and the Conditioning Role of Social Position

Fatke

2018

Societies

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Inequality poses one of the biggest challenges of our time. It is not self-correcting in the sense that citizens demand more redistributive measures in light of rising inequality, which recent studies suggest may be due to the fact that citizens’ perceptions of inequality diverge from objective levels. Moreover, it is not the latter, but the former, which are related to preferences conducive to redistribution. However, the nascent literature on inequality perceptions has, so far, not accounted for the role of subjective position in society. The paper advances the argument that the relationship between inequality perceptions and preferences towards redistribution is conditional on the subjective position of respondents. To that end, I analyze comprehensive survey data on inequality perceptions from the social inequality module of the International Social Survey Programme (1992, 1999, and 2009). Results show that inequality perceptions are associated with preferences conducive to redistribution particularly among those perceive to be at the top of the social ladder. Gaining a better understanding of inequality perceptions contributes to comprehending the absence self-correcting inequality.

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Why people prefer unequal societies

Cited by 304 publications

References 79 publications

Economic system justification predicts muted emotional responses to inequality

Economic system justification predicts muted emotional responses to inequality

Monetary policy, inequality and political instability

Inequality Perceptions, Preferences Conducive to Redistribution, and the Conditioning Role of Social Position

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