Abstract
Given that people evaluate their own income and that of their group by comparing it with that of others, economic inequality (i.e., the gap between the poor and the wealthy) may affect how people perceive their ingroup wealth. Additional analyses of data of six previously conducted studies (n = 747) provided initial evidence that individuals with average levels of affluence felt that their income group was less wealthy when inequality was high than when it was low. The seventh study consisted of a preregistered experiment to independently test our hypothesis (n = 222). As predicted, compared to participants in the low inequality condition, those in the high inequality condition perceived their own group as less wealthy. The discussion focuses on the importance of considering self-perceived wealth in research on economic inequality.
Highlights
Given that people evaluate their own income and that of their group by comparing it with that of others, economic inequality may affect how people perceive their ingroup wealth
The present research In the present research we explored whether the degree of current economic inequality—operationalized as the gap between the richest and poorest wealth groups in a society—influences the perceived wealth of the middle class
The means were in the expected directions, we did not find differences between how wealthy the wealthiest groups were perceived in the high economic inequality condition (M = 6.98, SD = 2.05) and in the low economic inequality condition (M = 6.55, SD = 1.39), F (1,218) = 3.39, p = .067, η2 =
Summary
Given that people evaluate their own income and that of their group by comparing it with that of others, economic inequality (i.e., the gap between the poor and the wealthy) may affect how people perceive their ingroup wealth. According to Wilkinson (1999), inequality should affect how we appraise our wealth because the degree of economic inequality—operationalized as the gap between the richest and the poorest in a society—provides a frame of reference that people use to assess their own level of income and their relative standing in society. It remains unclear what the effect of inequality is on perceived ingroup wealth: does inequality make us feel poorer (because inequality makes us aware of people who have so much more than us)? In particular it has been argued that economic inequality enhances the importance of socioeconomic status (SES; Jetten et al, 2017; Layte & Whelan, 2014; Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009) because, among others, inequality enhances the likelihood that people compare their own wealth to others
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