Journal
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PERSONALITY SCIENCE
Volume 12, Issue 5, Pages 687-696Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
DOI: 10.1177/1948550620934597
Keywords
behavioral economics; decision making; social comparison
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
- National Science Foundation [1729446]
- Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellowship
- Division Of Behavioral and Cognitive Sci
- Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie [1729446] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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As economic inequality grows, more people could benefit from wealth redistribution, yet many do not support it, possibly due to cognitive tendencies such as comparing income through social comparison and being insensitive to large numbers.
As economic inequality grows, more people stand to benefit from wealth redistribution. Yet in many countries, increasing inequality has not produced growing support for redistribution, and people often appear to vote against their economic interest. Here we suggest that two cognitive tendencies contribute to these paradoxical voting patterns. First, people gauge their income through social comparison, and those comparisons are usually made to similar others. Second, people are insensitive to large numbers, which leads them to underestimate the gap between themselves and the very wealthy. These two tendencies can help explain why subjective income is normally distributed (therefore most people think they are middle class) and partly explain why many people who would benefit from redistribution oppose it. We support our model's assumptions using survey data, a controlled experiment, and agent-based modeling. Our model sheds light on the cognitive barriers to reducing inequality.
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