Despite ideals, people don't really like reducing inequality, study finds

Policies aimed at increasing equality for disadvantaged groups in higher education, corporations, government, and elsewhere continue to generate backlash even though most Americans say they want a more equal society.

The backlash has been blamed on a number of causes, including the fear of losing their status, political partisanship, and overt prejudice.

A new study published in the journal Science Advances shows that people in advantaged positions tend to think that inequality benefits them.

According to the study co-author, people think of the world in zero-sum terms, so that a gain for one group must necessarily be a loss for another.

The paper, co-authored by Drew Jacoby-Senghor and a Columbia University student, explains why people with strong egalitarian beliefs may still block policies that reduce disparity. People in advantaged groups are more likely to vote for policies that cause economic harm and increase inequality than for policies that benefit them and reduce inequality, according to a study.

In our experiment, it was more important to people how well off they were relative to other groups than how they were doing in absolute terms.

Beyond race and ethnicity.

Non-Latino white and Asian people who make up the majority in higher education are less likely to be admitted because of policies that increase minority representation in graduate programs.

In the new paper, Brown and colleagues go beyond race and ethnicity to other types of real-world inequalities, such as the gender wage gap and the hiring gap for those with disability status or a criminal record. They studied voters perception of a 2020 California ballot initiative to overturn the state's ban on affirmative action, as well as fake scenarios involving teams with random names. Study participants in advantaged groups rejected policies to reduce inequality because they thought they would end up with less access to resources.

A zero-sum game.

It's hard to make sense of the perception of impact when you focus on policies that are zero-sum, such as hiring fewer white people in order to hire more members of minority groups. Brown and Jacoby-Senghor asked people to only look at non-zero-sum policies that help disadvantaged groups. They controlled for five forms of ideological opposition to equality: political conservatism, preference for hierarchical social structures, belief that society is zero-sum, system-justifying beliefs, and explicit prejudice. Variations in ideology did not explain the negative view of greater equality found in some of them.

In one scenario, non-Latino white study participants were told that white homebuyers received $386.4 billion in mortgage loans from banks, while Latino homebuyers only received around $12.6 billion in mortgage loans overall. Participants thought the proposal to increase the amount for Latino buyers would lower their own chances of getting a loan, and thought decreasing the amount available to Latinos would improve their chances.

The researchers tested win-win policies that benefited both majority and minority groups. White participants in one study thought a policy that would reduce inequality by offering more loans for Latinos and benefit society by stimulating mortgage investment for all groups would reduce their ability to get a loan.

When white participants were told that anyone who wanted a loan could get one and there was no limit on the amount available, they continued to believe that boosting loans to Latinos would reduce their chances of getting a loan.

The causes and solutions to inequality are complex, but even when we simplified it and bent over backwards to make sure everyone is better off in these scenarios, people still found a way to believe they will be harmed.

The only thing that erased majority participants' misperceptions was the proposal that enhanced equality between members of their own group, such as when a group of male participants considered reducing pay disparity between men and women.

Predicting voting.

The researchers looked at this dynamic in a real-world field study, surveying California voters on the issue of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in public employment, education, and contracting.

Brown wanted to see if the misperception about equality predicted how people would vote.

It did. The majority of whites and Asians thought the measure would reduce their access to education and job opportunities. They supported Prop.16 if they held that belief. The belief that the measure would hurt their chances was a stronger predictor of how people would vote than any other ideological variable. People who switched to a no vote reported that the measure would hurt them.

The Rattlers are playing the Eagles.

In their final experiments, the researchers tested if majority members of completely fictional groups would reject more equitable outcomes based on a misperception of harm. Prior experiments only involved majority group members, the researchers recruited a racially and ethnically diverse subject pool. They told them they were assigned to a team called the Rattlers, which would compete against the Eagles in a problem-solving challenge, but in reality, this personality test did not determine group assignment and the Eagles did not exist. Participants were told that the Rattlers had received more bonuses than the Eagles in the past couple of weeks, and so they were asked to consider more equal ways to dispute bonuses.

Even with made up groups, the same dynamic held: Members of the Rattlers rejected a win-win proposal that would give monetary bonuses to 5 more Rattlers and 50 more Eagles, still leaving the Rattlers ahead.

In a final twist, the researchers presented study participants with side-by-side scenarios that would either reduce or increase inequality without affecting their bonuses, so they could easily compare. They still thought the policy hurt their chances.

There are implications.

One of the theories of social psychology, social identity theory, states that people prefer more resources to be allocated to their in-group than to an out-group. According to the researchers, this preference is predicted by the misconception that reductions of relative advantage harm advantaged groups in absolute terms.

Brown says the findings are troubling because of the social and economic costs of inequality. The gender pay gap is estimated to reduce the global economy by about 160 trillion dollars. The researchers suggest that people misunderstand how much disparity affects society as a whole.

Brown says that the zero-sum view of equality is a roadblock that policy makers will need to grapple with.

He says that the research shows that you can't expect everyone to be on board and that there will be a backlash.

More information: N. Derek Brown, If you rise, I fall: Equality is prevented by the misperception that it harms advantaged groups, Science Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abm2385. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm2385 Journal information: Science Advances Citation: Despite ideals, people don't really like reducing inequality, study finds (2022, May 6) retrieved 6 May 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-05-ideals-people-dont-inequality.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.