“Life’s unfairness is not irrevocable; we can help balance the scales for others, if not always for ourselves.”
– Hubert H. Humphrey
A study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found that those who believe that the world is just and people get what they deserve are more likely to deem economic inequality as acceptable.
This study was carried out by a team of researchers led by Efraín García-Sánchez in the Department of Social Psychology at the University of Granada.
Despite the numerous consequences to economic inequality (which have been rising in recent decades), world leaders have struggled to close the wealth gap within their countries. This issue exists, in part, due to the legitimation of ideologies that make inequality seem fair by blaming the poor for their situation.
The current research aims to explore how belief in a just world (BJW) can affect whether people attach legitimacy to inequality and therefore view it as valid and acceptable.
The researchers collected data from the European Social Survey released in June 2020. This survey was given to people across 27 European countries regarding different social, economic and political issues.
Legitimation of economic inequality: Participants were asked to report how “fair” they thought the differences in wealth within their country were in general, and in regard to the bottom 10% and top 10%.
Belief in a just world: Participants’ BJW was assessed by asking them to respond to statements such as, “I think that, by and large, people get what they deserve” and “I am convinced that, in the long run, people will be compensated for injustices.”
Support for redistribution: Participants' attitude about redistributive policies was measured by asking them to respond to the following statement, “The government should take measures to reduce differences in income levels.”
Belief in equality of opportunities: Participants belief that everyone has a fair chance to get access to education and job opportunities was measured using statements such as, “Overall, everyone in [country] has a fair chance of getting the jobs they seek.”
Political ideology: Participants' political ideology was measured by asking participants to place themselves on a scale ranging from 0 “Left” to 10 “Right”.
Religiosity: People were asked to rank themselves, regardless of their particular religion, by saying how religious they were, using a scale ranging from 0 “Not at all religious” to 10 “very religious”.
Socioeconomic Status (SES): SES was accounted for based on income (i.e., the sum of the net incomes received by all sources in their household) and education (i.e., the number of years of education completed by participants).
Results: The researchers found that BJW positively predicted the legitimation of wealth inequality. In other words, the more people believed that others get what they deserve in this world, the more they viewed inequality as legitimate and acceptable. Unsurprisingly, these individuals were also less likely to support policies aimed at reducing inequality via the redistribution of wealth.
In addition, people were more likely to perceive economic inequality as acceptable when placing themselves on the right side of the political spectrum and when they believed everyone had equal access to opportunities.
The results also revealed that, amongst those who strongly believe that the world is just, the earnings of the bottom 10% were perceived as fairer than the earnings of the top 10%.
Lastly, they found that when economic inequality at the country-level was higher, people in general (even those with a strong BJW) were less likely to view inequality as acceptable.