Periodic Reporting for period 1 - merit (The impact of redistribution policies on inequality tolerance and beliefs in meritocracy)
Período documentado: 2020-08-01 hasta 2022-07-31
Growing economic inequality worldwide is characterized as one of the main challenges of our time with pervasive societal consequences. Despite the rampant inequality, people often tolerate and even support low levels of redistribution. This divergence represents a paradox especially for the poor who are harmed by economic inequality.
The absence of popular concern about growing inequality is a major explanatory factor for the longevity and escalating trend of inequality. In this respect, the benchmark accomplishment of this project is to provide novel insights into the antecedents of the inequality paradox.
In addition, the expected output may have profound implications for understanding reactions to inequality in organizational settings. Low-status employees often compete with each other to climb up the organizational ladder but may also collectively experience injustice or inequality, which create the need for collective action.
The project has two main objectives:
1. The main aim of this project is to provide a comprehensive examination of plausible explanations of the inequality paradox. In this effort, we compare a dominant approach that focuses on ideological factors such as the endorsement of meritocratic beliefs and optimistic view about the prospects of upward mobility with sociostructural factors such as the inability of disadvantaged individuals (i.e. low political efficacy) to collectively reduce inequality.
2. In the attempt to address the aforementioned questions, this project will also provide novel contributions regarding the extent to which powerless individuals justify the economic inequality in an attempt to reduce the cognitive dissonance between their fairness perceptions and their behavior.
The absence of popular concern about growing inequality is a major explanatory factor for the longevity and escalating trend of inequality. In this respect, the benchmark accomplishment of this project is to provide novel insights into the antecedents of the inequality paradox.
In addition, the expected output may have profound implications for understanding reactions to inequality in organizational settings. Low-status employees often compete with each other to climb up the organizational ladder but may also collectively experience injustice or inequality, which create the need for collective action.
The project has two main objectives:
1. The main aim of this project is to provide a comprehensive examination of plausible explanations of the inequality paradox. In this effort, we compare a dominant approach that focuses on ideological factors such as the endorsement of meritocratic beliefs and optimistic view about the prospects of upward mobility with sociostructural factors such as the inability of disadvantaged individuals (i.e. low political efficacy) to collectively reduce inequality.
2. In the attempt to address the aforementioned questions, this project will also provide novel contributions regarding the extent to which powerless individuals justify the economic inequality in an attempt to reduce the cognitive dissonance between their fairness perceptions and their behavior.
The project was splitted into two separate experimental studies.
The first study used modified Ultimatum Games to examine how two forms of power affect bargaining behavior and fairness perceptions, and how meritocratic considerations are incorporated into the fairness perceptions of powerful and powerless individuals. We identified an asymmetric power effect: having increased decision power increased self-advantageous allocations and self-serving fairness perceptions, whereas the combined lack of both power forms led to self-disadvantageous allocations but had no influence on fairness perceptions (Figure 1; luck condition). The power effect on fairness perceptions became symmetric when power was obtained through a meritocratic process (procedural justice; Figure 1; effort condition). We provide causal evidence that the powerful, but not the powerless, strive to minimize cognitive dissonance between behavior and fairness perceptions by interpreting fairness in self-serving ways. Taken together, these findings suggest that disadvantaged individuals may recognize the unfairness of wealth distribution, but they tolerate unfair distributions given their powerless position.
This conclusion raised the next question that I tried to address in the second study: To what extent the lack of political power of disadvantaged individuals affects their reactions to growing inequality? Specifically, I examined two distinct explanations of the inequality paradox. The first and most prominent explanation for the inequality paradox posits that reduced support for redistribution stems from increased meritocratic beliefs and increased optimism about the prospects of upward mobility (POUM hypothesis). An alternative and yet unexplored explanation postulates that low political efficacy of disadvantaged individuals undermines collective demand for redistribution.
In two preregistered studies, I create a dynamic interactive environment (Figure 2) where low-income individuals can collectively reduce intergroup inequality by contributing to a public pool (redistribution strategy), compete with each other for a high-income group position (mobility strategy), or avoid risks and disengage from both strategies (inaction strategy). Low political efficacy gradually crowded out demand for redistribution, while exposure to high prospects of mobility had no significant impact on redistribution (Figure 3).
The design and the findings of both studies were presented in internal seminars at SBE such as the BEELab meetings and the Neuroeconomics meetings. Preliminary results of both studies were also presented in the Social Psychology of Inequality lab in the University of Granada and in the Social and Political Psychology lab of Panteion University in Athens. To reach the wider scientific community, my findings were also presented in international conferences such as the NeuroPsychoEconomics Conferences, the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP) and the Social Affective Neuroscience Society (SANS) meeting.
The published article (Scientific Reports) is and the submitted article (PNAS) will be open access, and data and materials are shared through the Open Science Framework platform. The design and the hypotheses of both studies were preregistered in the Open Science Framework platform.
Part of this work was also presented at the M-BEPS symposium (MBE) which facilitates a dialogue between academics, and decision-makers in firms and public institutions including the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.
The first study used modified Ultimatum Games to examine how two forms of power affect bargaining behavior and fairness perceptions, and how meritocratic considerations are incorporated into the fairness perceptions of powerful and powerless individuals. We identified an asymmetric power effect: having increased decision power increased self-advantageous allocations and self-serving fairness perceptions, whereas the combined lack of both power forms led to self-disadvantageous allocations but had no influence on fairness perceptions (Figure 1; luck condition). The power effect on fairness perceptions became symmetric when power was obtained through a meritocratic process (procedural justice; Figure 1; effort condition). We provide causal evidence that the powerful, but not the powerless, strive to minimize cognitive dissonance between behavior and fairness perceptions by interpreting fairness in self-serving ways. Taken together, these findings suggest that disadvantaged individuals may recognize the unfairness of wealth distribution, but they tolerate unfair distributions given their powerless position.
This conclusion raised the next question that I tried to address in the second study: To what extent the lack of political power of disadvantaged individuals affects their reactions to growing inequality? Specifically, I examined two distinct explanations of the inequality paradox. The first and most prominent explanation for the inequality paradox posits that reduced support for redistribution stems from increased meritocratic beliefs and increased optimism about the prospects of upward mobility (POUM hypothesis). An alternative and yet unexplored explanation postulates that low political efficacy of disadvantaged individuals undermines collective demand for redistribution.
In two preregistered studies, I create a dynamic interactive environment (Figure 2) where low-income individuals can collectively reduce intergroup inequality by contributing to a public pool (redistribution strategy), compete with each other for a high-income group position (mobility strategy), or avoid risks and disengage from both strategies (inaction strategy). Low political efficacy gradually crowded out demand for redistribution, while exposure to high prospects of mobility had no significant impact on redistribution (Figure 3).
The design and the findings of both studies were presented in internal seminars at SBE such as the BEELab meetings and the Neuroeconomics meetings. Preliminary results of both studies were also presented in the Social Psychology of Inequality lab in the University of Granada and in the Social and Political Psychology lab of Panteion University in Athens. To reach the wider scientific community, my findings were also presented in international conferences such as the NeuroPsychoEconomics Conferences, the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP) and the Social Affective Neuroscience Society (SANS) meeting.
The published article (Scientific Reports) is and the submitted article (PNAS) will be open access, and data and materials are shared through the Open Science Framework platform. The design and the hypotheses of both studies were preregistered in the Open Science Framework platform.
Part of this work was also presented at the M-BEPS symposium (MBE) which facilitates a dialogue between academics, and decision-makers in firms and public institutions including the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.
Many scholars attribute the absence of widespread public demand for redistribution to the tendency to legitimize inequalities by perceiving them as fair. An alternative explanation posits that disadvantaged individuals recognize the unfairness of wealth distribution, but the imbalance of political power instills a growing sense of powerlessness to disadvantaged individuals that results in political apathy. Our findings are predominantly consistent with the latter explanation.
The first study showed that extremely powerless individuals accepted self-disadvantageous allocations but did not deem them fair. In a similar vein, the second study did not confirm the dominant hypothesis that high prospects of upward mobility undermine support for redistribution. Instead, we show that when disadvantaged individuals lack the means to collectively address inequality, they cease demanding redistribution and opt for individual mobility or inaction even when they perceive inequality as unfair.
Taken together, the results of both studies challenge the popular ideological explanations (i.e. meritocratic beliefs and optimism about upward mobility) of the inequality paradox. In this respect, my findings are inconsistent with a system-justifying account whereby powerless individuals legitimize disadvantageous inequality.
Instead, the present project offers novel causal evidence that political inequality contributes substantially to the perpetuation of economic inequality by impeding the cultivation of massive opposition to growing inequality. These results become more relevant in light of the general crisis of democratic institutions. To date, the growing sense of powerlessness) of the poor has been mostly considered as a consequence rather than a cause of economic inequality. Our work reverses this argument in an attempt to understand how the dynamics between economic and political inequality reinforce each other.
These insights are relevant for the EU’ policy agenda since many EU member states still face pronounced inequalities and a large proportion of the EU population (in 2016 23.5%) is still at risk of poverty or social exclusion
The first study showed that extremely powerless individuals accepted self-disadvantageous allocations but did not deem them fair. In a similar vein, the second study did not confirm the dominant hypothesis that high prospects of upward mobility undermine support for redistribution. Instead, we show that when disadvantaged individuals lack the means to collectively address inequality, they cease demanding redistribution and opt for individual mobility or inaction even when they perceive inequality as unfair.
Taken together, the results of both studies challenge the popular ideological explanations (i.e. meritocratic beliefs and optimism about upward mobility) of the inequality paradox. In this respect, my findings are inconsistent with a system-justifying account whereby powerless individuals legitimize disadvantageous inequality.
Instead, the present project offers novel causal evidence that political inequality contributes substantially to the perpetuation of economic inequality by impeding the cultivation of massive opposition to growing inequality. These results become more relevant in light of the general crisis of democratic institutions. To date, the growing sense of powerlessness) of the poor has been mostly considered as a consequence rather than a cause of economic inequality. Our work reverses this argument in an attempt to understand how the dynamics between economic and political inequality reinforce each other.
These insights are relevant for the EU’ policy agenda since many EU member states still face pronounced inequalities and a large proportion of the EU population (in 2016 23.5%) is still at risk of poverty or social exclusion