Is higher inequality less legitimate? Depends on How You Frame it!

Bruckmüller, Susanne; Reese, Gerhard; Martiny, Sarah E.

doi:10.1111/bjso.12202

Cited by 27 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…But the questions about how poor they felt their ingroup to be was not included in all the experiments and when was included was written in different ways (see supplementary material for details in https:// osf.io/hu9wm/). Previous studies have shown that the consequences of inequality are different when focusing on those who have more versus those who have less (Bruckmüller, Reese, & Martiny, 2017). In particular, asking participants how wealthy they felt may have triggered a comparison with the richest group.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High Economic Inequality Makes Us Feel Less Wealthy

Sánchez‐Rodríguez

Jetten

Willis

et al. 2019

rips

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Economic inequality and relative wealth Economic inequality affects how people appraise the importance of money and wealth. In particular it has been argued that economic inequality enhances the importance of socioeconomic status (SES; Jetten et al., 2017; Layte & Whelan, 2014; Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009) because, among others, inequality enhances the likelihood that people compare their own wealth to others (Adler et al.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High Economic Inequality Makes Us Feel Less Wealthy

Sánchez‐Rodríguez

Jetten

Willis

et al. 2019

rips

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“…Also relevant to the likelihood of people taking social action on this issue is how descriptions of inequality are framed. Bruckmüller, Reese, and Martiny () have shown that relatively subtle variations in such framing, such as whether an advantaged group is described as having more or a disadvantaged group is described as having less, influence perceptions of the legitimacy of these differences; larger differences between groups were evaluated as less legitimate when the disadvantaged group was described as having less. Perceptions of the illegitimacy of inequality in group outcomes are likely to evoke group‐based anger, which in turn is known to be one of the predictors of collective action (Van Zomeren, Spears, Fischer, & Leach, ).…”

Section: Prospects For Social Changementioning

confidence: 99%

The psychology of social class: How socioeconomic status impacts thought, feelings, and behaviour

Manstead

2018

British J Social Psychol

540

345

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Drawing on recent research on the psychology of social class, I argue that the material conditions in which people grow up and live have a lasting impact on their personal and social identities and that this influences both the way they think and feel about their social environment and key aspects of their social behaviour. Relative to middle‐class counterparts, lower/working‐class individuals are less likely to define themselves in terms of their socioeconomic status and are more likely to have interdependent self‐concepts; they are also more inclined to explain social events in situational terms, as a result of having a lower sense of personal control. Working‐class people score higher on measures of empathy and are more likely to help others in distress. The widely held view that working‐class individuals are more prejudiced towards immigrants and ethnic minorities is shown to be a function of economic threat, in that highly educated people also express prejudice towards these groups when the latter are described as highly educated and therefore pose an economic threat. The fact that middle‐class norms of independence prevail in universities and prestigious workplaces makes working‐class people less likely to apply for positions in such institutions, less likely to be selected and less likely to stay if selected. In other words, social class differences in identity, cognition, feelings, and behaviour make it less likely that working‐class individuals can benefit from educational and occupational opportunities to improve their material circumstances. This means that redistributive policies are needed to break the cycle of deprivation that limits opportunities and threatens social cohesion.

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“…Focusing on one side or another has different effects on how people understand and react to inequality. For instance, framing economic inequality as people having more than the average (e.g., the rich have more than…) led conservatives to support heavier taxation for the rich ( Chow and Galak, 2012 ), average individuals to delegitimize economic inequality ( Bruckmüller et al, 2017 ) and support measures that take more resources from the rich ( Lowery et al, 2009 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceptions of Economic Inequality in Colombian Daily Life: More Than Unequal Distribution of Economic Resources

et al. 2018

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Research on perceptions of economic inequality focuses on estimations of the distribution of financial resources, such as perceived income gaps or wealth distribution. However, we argue that perceiving inequality is not limited to an economic idea but also includes other dimensions related to people’s daily life. We explored this idea by conducting an online survey (N = 601) in Colombia, where participants responded to an open-ended question regarding how they perceived economic inequality. We performed a content analysis of 1,624 responses to identify relevant topics and used network analysis tools to explore how such topics were interrelated. We found that perceived economic inequality is mainly represented by identifying social classes (e.g., the elites vs. the poor), intergroup relations based on discrimination and social exclusion, public spaces (e.g., beggars on streets, spatial segregation), and some dynamics about the distribution of economic resources and the quality of work (e.g., income inequality, precarious jobs). We discuss how different perceptions of economic inequality may frame how people understand and respond to inequality.

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Is higher inequality less legitimate? Depends on How You Frame it!

Cited by 27 publications

References 49 publications

High Economic Inequality Makes Us Feel Less Wealthy

High Economic Inequality Makes Us Feel Less Wealthy

The psychology of social class: How socioeconomic status impacts thought, feelings, and behaviour

Perceptions of Economic Inequality in Colombian Daily Life: More Than Unequal Distribution of Economic Resources

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