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有害影响。但是，越来越多的证据表明，这些影响的很大一部分不是由客观不平等直接引起的，而是由对不平等的主观看法所驱动的。如果对不平等的主观看法如此重要，那么了解如何形成这种看法至关重要。有证据表明，对经济不平等的主观看法通常与现实显着不同。至关重要的是，在早期的研究中都观察到了过度和低估。这种偏见可能会导致有问题的心理反应。例如，高估不平等可能会导致不满意，而社会的客观状态则不保证。低估不平等可能会导致社会条件接受，如果正确地认为它们将引起抗议。截至今天，引起这些偏见的心理机制和情境主持人的理解很少。为了克服这一短缺，本项目将研究对经济不平等的看法以及感知偏见的动机后果的基础的心理过程。该项目将重点介绍人们对收入分布的看法通常低估了这种分布的偏见的现象。在大多数社会中，收入分配是正确的（即，收入低的人比收入较高）。低估偏斜会导致不平等感知的特征偏见。例如，证据表明，这导致高估了属于高收入四分位数的人的收入。人们为什么误解偏斜？基于初步证据和实验实验室范式的第一组实验测试了与学习，记忆和启发式思维有关的三种不同潜在的潜在心理机制的运行。结果将有助于更好地理解，预测或改变对经济不平等的误解。实验的第二行着重于对经济不平等的有偏见的动机后果。我们将检验有关误解收入分配的偏见将确定（a）对自己在收入分配中的立场的满意度以及改变自己情况的意图，（b）对自己绩效的（不）公平性的看法以及（c）在经济上的收入吸引力的情况下，对自己的立场感到满意。我们还测试了社会政治态度如何影响收入不平等的看法。我们最终将通过两项研究中的一般人群样本来测试某些实验室发现的一般性。该项目通过扩展有关客观不平等如何转化为不平等的主观表示的知识，有助于进一步发展RU 2847的不平等周期框架，这是所有进一步处理步骤的基础。