How Economic Inequality Shapes Thought and Action

The degree of economic inequality in a given time and place sets the context in which people understand how they measure up to others. Because of this, inequality does not just describe how outcomes are distributed. It also serves as a kind of input into people’s thinking and decision making. In this paper, we provide an overview of our recent work examining the ways that inequality can function as a social context that shapes people’s expectations, needs, desires, and attributions. We argue that people’s positions in economic hierarchies can shape perceptions of what people believe to be fair and how much people need. Better understanding these psychological mechanisms may help to explain the associations between inequality and effects at the societal level, such as health outcomes and crime. When it comes to inequality, it may be intuitively appealing to emphasize fair processes over equitable outcomes, and having enough rather than some people having more. Yet, our research and others', suggest that inequality in the environment shapes what counts as “fair,” and what counts as “enough.”.