Economic system justification predicts muted emotional responses to inequality

Abstract

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.

Expressive suppression as an obstacle to social change: Linking system justification, emotion regulation, and collective action

“…People’s system justification tendencies are associated with their emotional experiences. Adopting system justification beliefs increases subjective well-being, positive affect, life satisfaction, a subjective sense of security, and reduces moral outrage, cognitive dissonance, anger, frustration, and helplessness (Goudarzi, Pliskin, Jost, & Knowles, 2020 ; Jost, Wakslak, & Tyler, 2008 ; Li et al, 2020 ; Harding & Sibley, 2013 ; Napier et al, 2020 ; Suppes et al, 2019 ; Rankin et al, 2009 ; Vargas-Salfate et al, 2018 ; Wakslak et al, 2007 ).…”

Inequality in Researchers’ Minds: Four Guiding Questions for Studying Subjective Perceptions of Economic Inequality

“…Once researchers have clearly identified the type of inequality they are interested in examining, and the level of analysis on which they wish to focus, they need to consider whether they are interested in perceptions of inequality for the entire income distribution or for specific aspects of it. Consider some recent immersive manipulations of inequality: in Sands (2017), as part of an unobtrusive field experiment (Hauser, Linos, & Rogers, 2017), participants walked past a confederate who was either poor or rich, and subsequently responded to a petition to support redistribution; in García-Castro, Rodríguez-Bailón, & Willis (2020), participants were asked to think about the poorest and richest person they know; in Goudarzi et al (2020), participants watched videos depicting homelessness; and in Sands and de Kadt (2019), participants responded to the presence of a luxury car in a poor neighborhood. This creative set of manipulations all have in common their focus on poverty in studying inequality and redistribution.…”

“…This creative set of manipulations all have in common their focus on poverty in studying inequality and redistribution. However, they also differ in the degree to which they spotlight the difference between the poor and the rich (e.g., Sands, 2017) versus the difference between the poor and participants' own socioeconomic standing (e.g., Goudarzi et al, 2020). As a result, these manipulations may implicitly generate different perceptions of inequality in people's minds, even if the overall degree of inequality was the same.…”

Asymmetries in Mutual Understanding: People With Low Status, Power, and Self-Esteem Understand Better Than They Are Understood

“…As a result, high-status people (who are more likely to view the system as just; Brandt, 2013) may be motivated to avoid understanding low-status people. Indeed, people with high levels of economic-system justification show blunted physiological responses to people in need (Goudarzi, Pliskin, Jost, & Knowles, 2020). Likewise, belief in a just world is associated with a tendency for people to underestimate the inequality between Blacks and Whites (Kraus et al, 2017).…”