How Information about Inequality Impacts Belief in Meritocracy: Evidence from a Randomized Survey Experiment in Australia, Indonesia and Mexico

Abstract

Most people misperceive economic inequality. Learning about actual levels of inequality and social mobility, research suggests, heightens concerns but may push people’s policy preferences in any number of directions. This mixed empirical record, we argue, reflects the omission of a more fundamental question: under what conditions do people change their understanding of the meritocratic or non-meritocratic causes of inequality? To explore mechanisms of belief change we field a unique randomized survey experiment with representative populations in Australia, Indonesia, and Mexico—societies with varying levels of popular beliefs about economic inequality. Our results highlight the importance of information, perceived social position, and self-interest. In Indonesia, information describing (high) income inequality and (low) social mobility rocked our participants’ belief in meritocracy. The same information made less of a splash in Mexico, where unequal outcomes are commonly understood as the result of corruption and other non-meritocratic processes. In Australia, the impact of our informational treatment was strongest when it provided justification for people’s income position or when it corrected their perception of relative affluence. Our findings reveal asymmetric beliefs about poverty and wealth and heterogeneous responses to information. They are a call to rethink effective informational and policy interventions.

Socioeconomic status, time preferences and pro-environmentalism

“…One possibility is that, rather than activating considerations about the future, our experimental treatment activated considerations about fairness, which may have had a downstream effect on participants' pro-environmental behaviour. There is a wealth of studies showing that correcting false beliefs about relative socioeconomic position indeed heightens concerns about inequalities (Cruces et al, 2013;Karadja et al, 2015;Mijs and Hoy, 2021;Nair, 2018). For instance, a recent large-scale study found that correcting false beliefs about relative socioeconomic position affects attitudes about fairness and redistribution but not other political attitudes (Hvidberg et al, 2020).…”

“…Other kinds of research have shown that it is possible to use information about income as an experimental treatment, so as to alter the perception of one's socioeconomic condition (Card et al, 2012;Cruces et al, 2013;Hvidberg et al, 2020;Karadja et al, 2015;Mijs and Hoy, 2021). Capitalizing on works demonstrating that faulty beliefs about one's own position in the national income distribution are common (see Fehr et al, 2019;Norton and Ariely, 2011;Norton et al, 2014), economists and psychologists have shown that informing people of their true position in the income distribution can have an impact on political attitudes.…”

Deliberating Inequality: A Blueprint for Studying the Social Formation of Beliefs about Economic Inequality

“…Arguably the most solid finding of scholarship on perceptions of inequality is that people are unaware of its extent. While exceptions exist in France, Hungary, or Mexico (Niehues, 2014;Campos-Vazquez et al, 2020;Mijs & Hoy, 2021), a host of survey research shows that in most societies the public underestimates income inequality (Clark & D'Ambrosio, 2015;Engelhardt & Wagener, 2014;Hauser & Norton, 2017;Osberg & Smeeding, 2006). This tendency is especially pronounced in countries that are themselves highly unequal, such as the USA, Chile, South Africa, or the UK (Gimpelson & Treisman, 2018;Norton & Ariely, 2011).…”

Belief in School Meritocracy and the Legitimization of Social and Income Inequality (In press)

“…(1) justify the places individuals occupy in the hierarchy, and (2) reaffirm the merit of their high-status and the privileges associated to this status (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999;Mijs & Hoy, 2021).…”