Cognitive factors in inequality perception

不平等认知中的认知因素

• 批准号: 441384741
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Roland Deutsch
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Lehrstuhl für Psychologie II
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/441384741?language=en
• 关键词: Cognitive; factors; inequality; perception

Economic inequality has many detrimental effects for societies and individuals. There is, however, growing evidence that a substantial part of these effects is not directly caused by objective inequality, but rather driven by subjective perceptions of inequality. If subjective perceptions of inequality are so consequential, it is crucial to understand how such perceptions are formed. Evidence suggests that subjective perceptions of economic inequality often significantly diverge from reality. Crucially, both over- and underestimation has been observed in earlier studies. Such biases may cause problematic psychological reactions. For example, overestimating inequality might cause dissatisfaction to a degree that is not warranted by the objective state of society. Underestimating inequality might cause acceptance of societal conditions that, if they were perceived correctly, would cause protest. As of today, the psychological mechanisms and situational moderators that cause these biases are poorly understood. To overcome this shortage, the present project will study psychological processes underlying the perception of economic inequality as well as motivational consequences of perceptual biases.The project will focus on the phenomenon that people's perceptions of income distributions typically underestimate the skew of such distributions. In most societies, income distributions are right-skewed (i.e., more people with low than with high incomes). Underestimating the skew results in characteristic biases in inequality perception. For example, evidence suggests that this causes overestimation of the income of people belonging to upper income quartiles. Why do people misperceive skew? The first set of experiments, based on preliminary evidence and an experimental laboratory paradigm, tests the operation of three different potentially underlying psychological mechanisms related to learning, memory, and heuristic thinking. Results will help to better understand, predict, and perhaps change misperceptions of economic inequality. The second line of experiments focuses on the motivational consequences of biased perceptions of economic inequality. We will test hypotheses about how misperceiving the skew of income distributions will determine (a) satisfaction with one's own position in an income distribution as well as intentions to change one's situation, (b) perceptions of (un-)fairness of one's own income relative to one's performance, and (c) one's income aspirations in the case of economic ascent. We also test how socio-political attitudes affect perceptions of income inequality. We will finally test the generality of select laboratory findings by drawing on general population samples in two studies. The project contributes to further developing the Inequality Cycle Framework of RU 2847 by expanding knowledge about how objective inequality translates into subjective representations of inequality, which are the basis for all further processing steps.

经济不平等对社会和个人有许多不利影响。然而，越来越多的证据表明，这些影响中有很大一部分不是由客观的不平等直接造成的，而是由对不平等的主观看法造成的。如果对不平等的主观看法如此重要，那么了解这种看法是如何形成的就至关重要了。有证据表明，对经济不平等的主观看法往往与现实大相径庭。至关重要的是，在早期的研究中观察到了高估和低估。这种偏见可能会引起心理上的不良反应。例如，过高估计不平等可能会导致不满的程度，而这种不满是社会客观状况所不允许的。低估不平等可能会导致接受社会状况，而如果这些状况被正确理解，就会引起抗议。到目前为止，导致这些偏见的心理机制和情境调节因素还知之甚少。为了克服这一不足，本项目将研究经济不平等感知背后的心理过程以及感知偏差的激励后果。该项目将重点关注人们对收入分配的感知通常低估了这种分配的倾斜度的现象。在大多数社会中，收入分配是向右倾斜的（即，低收入者多于高收入者）。低估这种倾斜会导致不平等感知中的特征偏差。例如，有证据表明，这导致高估了属于高收入四分位数的人的收入。为什么人们会误解歪斜？第一组实验基于初步证据和实验室范式，测试与学习、记忆和启发式思维相关的三种不同的潜在心理机制的运作。研究结果将有助于更好地理解、预测甚至改变对经济不平等的误解。实验的第二条线侧重于对经济不平等的偏见的动机后果。我们将检验关于对收入分配偏斜的误解将如何决定（a）对自己在收入分配中的地位的满意度以及改变自己处境的意图，（B）对自己收入相对于自己业绩的（不）公平性的看法，以及（c）在经济上升的情况下自己的收入愿望的假设。我们还测试了社会政治态度如何影响收入不平等的看法。最后，我们将通过两项研究中的一般人群样本来测试所选实验室结果的一般性。该项目有助于进一步发展RU 2847的不平等循环框架，扩大有关客观不平等如何转化为不平等的主观表现的知识，这是所有进一步处理步骤的基础。