Group-based Inequality Research Articles

Intergroup contact, outgroup knowledge and advantaged group collective action: can who you know and what you know promote social change?

Some groups in society unjustly hold greater social, economic, and political power over others, placing some groups in more advantaged and others in more disadvantaged positions. One way to challenge group-based inequality and promote social change is through collective action (e.g., protests, petitions, advocating). Most often, disadvantaged group members engage in collective action. However, when advantaged group members engage in solidarity-based collective action, it can heighten a movement's momentum. Four motivators of collective action among advantaged (and disadvantaged) group members have been identified: identification with the cause, anger about injustice, morality, and group efficacy. We examined what precedes these motivations regarding White Canadians' collective action benefitting Indigenous communities and White Americans' collective action benefitting Black communities. We examined two potential antecedents of advantaged group collective action motivation, intergroup contact and knowledge about the outgroup. In both samples, intergroup contact and knowledge of the outgroup were consistently indirectly associated with collective action through identification with the cause as well as through identification with the cause and anger about injustice. Of the multiple forms of intergroup contact and knowledge examined, the strongest associations were observed for higher quality contact and knowledge of systemic racism. These results have implications for both theory and intervention.

Group-Based Injustice, but Not Group-Based Economic Inequality, Predicts Political Violence Across 18 African Countries

Political violence causes immense human suffering. Scholars pinpoint economic inequalities between ethnic groups as a major cause of such violence. However, the relationships between group-based inequality, group-based injustice, and political violence are not fully understood. Combining insights from social psychological research on collective action and political science research on civil conflict, we underscore that it is group-based injustice that motivates violence. A perception that one’s group has been treated unfairly tends to produce conflict-related emotions (e.g., anger). By contrast, a mere perception that one’s group is of lower economic status rarely produces such emotions. Furthermore, perceived economic disadvantage negatively relates to perceived political efficacy, which may dissuade engagement in political violence. To assess these arguments, we analyzed attitudes toward, intentions to engage in, and self-reported engagement in political violence, utilizing probability samples from 18 African countries (N > 37,000). We found that measures of group-based perceived injustice, whether controlling or not for group-based economic inequality, predicted all violent outcomes; whereas measures of perceived group-based inequality predicted (negatively) self-reported participation in violence but not the other outcomes. We advance both social psychological and political science literatures, suggesting that group-based injustice and inequality are distinct constructs, relating to political violence via different pathways.

Authoritarians and “revolutionaries in reverse”: Why collective narcissism threatens democracy

Collective narcissism is a belief that the ingroup deserves but is denied special treatment and recognition. It is a projection of the narcissistic need to be recognized as better than others on the social level of the self. It is an aspect of ingroup identification, one of the ways group members favour their ingroup. National narcissism is associated with collective narcissism of advantaged national subgroups (e.g., Whites, men). National collective narcissism and collective narcissism of advantaged groups similarly predict discrimination of disadvantaged national subgroups (e.g., racial minorities, women) and legitimization of group-based inequality. Members of disadvantaged groups who endorse national narcissism internalize beliefs legitimizing inequality. Ultraconservative populists propagate national narcissism to undermine the political system that does not sufficiently serve the interests of advantaged groups. National narcissism predicts patriotism and nationalism. Once the three forms of national favouritism are differentiated, it becomes clear that patriotism does not come at the expense of nationalism, discrimination, societal polarization, or erosion of democracy. Instead, it may be a remedy against them.

Do Children Expect Boys and Girls to Be Rewarded Differently for Doing the Same Work?

From a young age, children think resources ought to be distributed equally but expect resources to be shared preferentially with ingroup members. These desires for both impartiality and partiality take root in early childhood and likely become further entangled with age due to exposure to existing forms of group-based inequalities. Here, we ask whether children expect fairness or favoritism from an authority figure in the context of a real-world form of group-based inequality—the gender gap in pay. We tested 4- to 11-year-olds’ (N = 157) and adults’ (N = 101) expectations of how girls and boys would be rewarded by a teacher for performing a classroom task. Children were asked whether they expected a boy or girl to receive the larger reward (three versus two of five cookies) after completing a job. We found that 4- and 5-year-old children expected their own gender to be rewarded more favorably, an expectation that aligns with past work showing an own-gender bias in resource allocation. By contrast, and with the exception of 8- and 9-year-old boys, children in the 6- to 11-year-old range expected gender parity in pay, as did adults, a finding that contrasts with own-gender biases and with the real-world gender gap in pay. Our results shed new light on children’s evolving expectations of how rewards will be distributed in a context in which fairness and favoritism are in tension. Moreover, they provide a foray into children’s expectations about gender pay parity, an important and persistent issue in the society in which these children are developing.

Measuring convergence of energy and emission efficiencies and technology inequality across African countries

In the fight against global climate change, improving energy efficiency and reducing related emissions are critical to mitigating sustainability issues such as global warming. In this regard, technological progress is known to improve energy efficiency and reduce related emissions. However, previous sustainability studies on Africa have paid less attention to energy and emission efficiency convergence among countries, along with the contribution of technological progress to the continent's sustainability. Accordingly, this paper develops a novel framework that assesses energy and emission efficiency convergence, gauges technology inequality, identifies the barriers to technology diffusion, and explores the factors influencing energy and emission efficiency convergence in Africa. The proposed framework incorporates Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), several economic convergence concepts, a K-means clustering model, the concept of efficiency Gini coefficient, and a group-based inequality decomposition method. We empirically covered 39 African countries from 2006 to 2018. The results show that African countries are, on average, 71.1% energy efficient and 65.3% CO2 emission efficient, leaving more room for energy saving and emissions reduction. Second, there is strong evidence of convergence in energy and emission efficiencies in Africa. Third, despite the observed convergence process, there is significant heterogeneity between two research groups (i.e., low-and high-efficiency groups of countries) in terms of energy and emission efficiencies, with persistent technology inequality suggesting a lower contribution of environmental technological advancements to the continent's sustainability. Furthermore, cross-group inequality is the primary barrier to technology diffusion. Fourth, regional cooperation accelerates the convergence process in the two efficiency indicators. While economic development, industrial structure, and renewable energy consumption (REC) tend to favor energy and emission efficiency growth, rising foreign direct investment (FDI) and energy prices have a negative impact. Meanwhile, the effects of energy prices, FDI, and REC on emission efficiency are insignificant. Based on our findings, we discussed policy implications to promote energy and emission efficiency convergence and narrow environmental technology gaps.

Ageism toward older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic: Intergenerational conflict and support.

A cross‐national representative survey in Canada and the U.S. examined ageism toward older individuals during the first year of the COVID‐19 pandemic, including ageist consumption stereotypes and perceptions of older people's competence and warmth. We also investigated predictors of ageism, including economic and health threat, social dominance orientation, individualism and collectivism, social distancing beliefs, and demographics. In both countries, younger adults were more likely to hold ageist consumption stereotypes, demonstrating intergenerational conflict about the resources being used by older people. Similarly, young adults provided older people with the lowest competence and warmth scores, though adults of all ages rated older individuals as more warm than competent. Particularly among younger individuals, beliefs about group‐based dominance hierarchies, the importance of competition, and the costs of social distancing predicted greater endorsement, whereas beliefs about interdependence and the importance of sacrificing for the collective good predicted lower endorsement of ageist consumption stereotypes. Support for group‐based inequality predicted lower perceived competence and warmth of older individuals, whereas beliefs about interdependence and the importance of sacrificing for the collective good predicted higher perceived competence and warmth of older individuals. Implications for policies and practices to reduce intergenerational conflict and ageist perceptions of older individuals are discussed.

Group-Based Income Inequality in Hong Kong: An Analysis of Mainland Chinese Immigrants

Despite a notoriously high level of income inequality, public discussion about the issue in Hong Kong has been largely limited to overall trends. This is partially due to a lack of fine-grained data, especially on socially relevant inequality dimensions. This study introduces the group-based inequality data set, which provides indices on inequality within and between groups based on census surveys from 1991 to 2016. Compared with past immigrants, some recent immigrants are highly educated and/or of high socioeconomic status, which has exacerbated inequality within the immigrant groups. This study further examines whether this change in immigrant profile has contributed to the surge in property prices and finds that immigrants also suffer from increasingly unaffordable housing. Overall, the article highlights a seldom-discussed dimension of inequality with reference to social groups that is expected to be a potent source of socioeconomic tension in the future.

The irony of (romantic) harmony: Heterosexual romantic relationships can drive women’s justification of the gender hierarchy

Even though gender inequality is evident across life domains, women often justify the gender hierarchy. We examined whether the very closeness that heterosexual women share with their male romantic partners predicts their justification of gender inequality. We drew on intergroup-related research, showing that positive perceptions that minority groups develop within harmonious intergroup interactions, generalize to affect their views of group-based inequality. We expected that to the extent that women experience their romantic relationships positively, they will be more accepting of gender inequality within their homes, and these perceptions will generalize to predict justification of macro-level gender inequality. Five correlational and two experimental studies supported this prediction. The more women rated (or were primed with) their relationship as positive, the more they justified the gender social system. This was mediated by women’s perception of their housework division as fair, and was less pronounced among feminists. Implications regarding social change are discussed.

‘We will show our strength!’: the independentists’ support for group-based hierarchy to guarantee and legitimate ingroup status-enhancement (‘¡Mostraremos nuestra fuerza!’: el apoyo de los independentistas a la jerarquía basada en el grupo para garantizar y legitimar la mejora del estatus del endogrupo)

ABSTRACT We propose that support for group-based hierarchy among members of low-status or subordinate groups may be boosted by beliefs in future ingroup high status. Specifically, the more individuals believe their group may hold a higher status, the more they support hierarchical intergroup relations (i.e., high social dominance orientation; SDO), by boosting ingroup favouritism. In turn, SDO should be positively associated with collective action tendencies by increasing social competition intentions. Using samples from Catalonia (N = 152) and the Basque Country (N = 262), results showed that independence supporters’ beliefs in future ingroup status enhancement reinforced participants’ SDO, through nationalist sentiments (i.e., ingroup bias) but not through patriotism in the Catalan sample, and directly in the Basque sample. In turn, SDO increased collective actions towards independence by reinforcing individuals’ motivation to compete with the opponent dominant outgroup (Madrid region), especially in the Catalan sample. We discuss the implications of considering situational and contextual factors to better understand individuals’ support for group-based hierarchies and inequality.

Language, Discrimination and Employability: Employers’ Othering and Racist Representations of Domestic Migrant Workers on Social Media

Discursive othering deals with the many ways in which language is used to express prejudice against minorities, and it outlines the processes and conditions that promote group-based inequality and marginalization. This article focuses on online othering, and it analyzes a corpus of 615 comments posted by Hong Kong employers of domestic migrant workers (DMWs) on social media. First, a quantitative analysis of the corpus outlines the content categories found in the posts, and second, a discourse analysis of representative excerpts illustrates the claims made about DMWs. Employers engage in othering of their helpers, and the analysis shows how demeaning racist comments function to publicly shame them and warn others not to employ them. The article uses Language and Social Psychology frameworks to analyze the posts, and it discusses the functions of using racist derogatory language. The paper concludes by discussing how research may be used to address pressing social issues.

Children’s Concern for Equity and Ownership in Contexts of Individual-based and Group-based Inequality

ABSTRACT All societies have resource inequality, wherein some possess more resources than others. How should one respond to such inequality? We tested how children 4–13 years (N= 298) balance concerns about equity and ownership rights, when the two are at odds, in both individual (Study 1) and group (Study 2) contexts. Across these studies, children evaluated individuals who consumed their own or another’s resources, and who themselves had similar or differing amounts of resources, which provided a comprehensive examination of children’s competing concerns for ownership rights and equity. Overall, children evaluated the poor consuming resources of the rich as more acceptable than the rich consuming resources from the poor, suggesting that attention to redistributive justice is heightened in group-based contexts.

Descriptive-to-prescriptive (D2P) reasoning: An early emerging bias to maintain the status quo

ABSTRACT Group norms are necessary for navigating the social world, but they also constrain how we think about individuals. This manuscript progresses in three parts, along the way integrating research from cognitive, developmental, and social psychology, as well as the broader social sciences, to present a theoretical perspective on how the tendency to interpret descriptive norms (i.e., what is) as prescriptive (i.e., what should be) is an early emerging bias to maintain the status quo. First, I define descriptive-to-prescriptive reasoning and review previous research on how it maintains the status quo. Second, I review a recent programme of research on the early development of descriptive-to-prescriptive reasoning. Third, I provide suggestions for future research, particularly in the domain of redirecting descriptive-to-prescriptive reasoning for good. Overall, I propose that descriptive-to-prescriptive reasoning biases children to keep groups in their place and prevent them from changing. Implications for stereotyping and group-based inequality are discussed.

Support for group-based inequality among members of low-status groups as an ingroup status-enhancement strategy

We discuss the idea that competition-based motives boost low-status group members’ support for group-based hierarchy and inequality. Specifically, the more low-status group members feel motivated to compete with a relevant high-status outgroup, based on the belief that existing status positions may be reversed, the more they will defend status differentials (i.e., high social dominance orientation; SDO). Using minimal groups (N = 113), we manipulated ingroup (low vs. high) status, and primed unstable status positions to all participants. As expected, we found that SDO positively mediates the relation between ingroup identification and collective action, when ingroup’s status is perceived to be low and status positions are perceived as highly unstable. We discuss the implications of considering situational and contextual factors to better understand individuals’ support for group-based hierarchies and inequality, and the advantages of considering ideological processes in predicting collective action.

Whither Humanity? Emotional Mind Begs Rational Assessment

Rami Gabriel and Stephen Asma’s book The Emotional Mind: The Affective Roots of Culture and Cognition sketches an ambitious research agenda that centers the explanation and understanding of human experience in our embodied, emotional makeup. It argues for a new evolutionary paradigm that naturalizes the understanding of mind, knowledge, and culture, and emphasizes the affective over the cognitive. I argue that they mischaracterize the role that rationality and philosophical theories of rationality play in understanding and shaping our experience. Furthermore, I argue that the book is insufficiently critical about the emotional origins of the theories it explores, which leads to its uncritical acceptance of androcentric ideas and it all but ignores the great and growing problems of group-based inequality whose roots are in the overriding effect of affect.

Educational attainment, political sophistication and anti-immigrant attitudes

Among a national sample of Dutch respondents (N = 1,155), this study examined whether the belief configuration of personal political orientation differs for individual level of education, and how it is related to negative attitudes toward immigrant-origin groups and refugee policies. In agreement with the ideological sophistication perspective, the endorsement of social conformity and the acceptance of group-based inequality were found to be more strongly part of the political orientation of higher compared to the lower educated participants. Furthermore, the endorsement of social conformity and acceptance of group-based inequality were associated with more negative feelings toward immigrants and more negative attitudes toward policies in relation to refugees. These findings add to the existing literature that has predominantly examined education and political orientation as two independent correlates of anti-immigrant and refugee attitudes.

Toward a Social-Democratic Peace?

AbstractThe decline in organized violence in the period after World War II provides the promise of a more peaceful future. How can we move further in this direction? Democratic peace—the absence of armed violence between democracies and the domestic peace of mature democracies—may provide part of the answer. This phenomenon is a well-established empirical regularity, but its mechanisms and its limits remain a subject of continuing research. The key role of democracy in reducing violence has been challenged by alternative explanations, such as the liberal peace, the capitalist peace, the developed peace, the organized peace, the quality of government peace, the feminist peace, and the civil society peace—but also by realism. In this essay, part of the roundtable “World Peace (And How We Can Achieve It),” I argue that it is a social-democratic peace that provides the best basis for a lasting world peace. This formula includes democracy but incorporates additional elements, such as a market economy, an active and competent state, close international cooperation, and the reduction of discrimination and group-based inequality. Combining these elements would provide a solid basis for eliminating violence between, as well as within, states. The main limitation of such a program is its demanding nature. Few states and interstate relations as yet fulfill all these conditions, but the long-term trends are moving in the right direction.

A social identity perspective on the social-class achievement gap: Academic and social adjustment in the transition to university

First-generation students show lower academic performance at university compared to continuing-generation students. Previous research established the value in taking a social identity perspective on this social-class achievement gap, and showed that the gap can partly be explained by lower compatibility between social background and university identities that first- compared to continuing-generation students experience. The present paper aimed to increase insight into the processes through which this low identity compatibility leads to lower academic achievement by examining first-year university students’ adjustment to university in two key domains: the academic and the social domain. These were examined as two routes through which the social-class achievement gap may arise, and hence perpetuate this group-based inequality. Adjustment was examined both through students’ actual integration in the academic and social domains, and their internally experienced concerns about these domains at university. A longitudinal study among 674 first-year university students (13.6% first-generation) showed that first-generation students experienced lower identity compatibility in their first semester, which was in turn related to lower social, but not academic, integration. Lower identity compatibility was also related to more concerns about the social and academic domains at university. Low identity compatibility was directly related to lower academic achievement 1 year later, and this relationship was mediated only by lower social integration at university. These findings show that to understand, and hence reduce, the social-class achievement gap, it is important to examine how low identity compatibility can create difficulties in academic and particularly social adjustment at university with consequences for achievement.

Legal Empowerment and Group-Based Inequality

Legal empowerment has become widely accepted in development policy circles as an approach to addressing poverty and exclusion. At the same time, it has received relatively little attention from political scientists and sociologists working on overlapping and closely related topics – the rule of law, the functioning of judicial systems, property rights, labour politics, and business and governance, among others. Research on legal empowerment has been largely applied, with clearest grounding in the fields of law and economics. This special issue speaks to this gap with contributions on six core areas of legal empowerment. This article frames the collection. It provides a brief introduction to legal empowerment and advances two broad arguments. First, an ethnic group-focused approach is a useful starting point in considering the impact of legal empowerment and other development interventions. Second, the state via the law contributes to ethnic inequalities in four broad ways – via its written laws, their implementation and actual practice, historical legacies of law and practice, and ethnic hegemony embedded in the system. Thinking about legal empowerment initiatives within this framework provides understanding both of their potential and their limitations.

Can Business Rights Alleviate Group-Based Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa? Understanding the Limits to Reform

Africa’s indigenous minorities face unique constraints, particularly in terms of engaging in even the most basic business activities. They typically lack business rights, but, even where such rights have been extended, they have had scant impact on group poverty. This paper argues that the failure of business rights to meaningfully transform the livelihoods of marginalised minority groups stems from elite capture of resources, dependency on external validation, and a contradiction between a collective problem (group poverty) and an individualist solution (business rights). African states could alter conditions through active pursuit of affirmative action policies, but lack socio-economic and political incentives.

Iran\u2019s Multi-ethnic Mosaic: A 23-Year Perspective

In this study, we embark on measuring inequality in Iran. We compute three measures of group-based inequality (Group-weighted Coefficient of Variation, Group-weighted Gini, and Group-weighted Theil) for the following outcomes: education, assets, income, and expenditure per capita. The groups are defined based on gender, ethnicity/language (Persian, Azeri, and other ethnic minorities), and region (urban versus rural and capital city versus other places) using 23 years of annual Household Expenditure and Income Surveys from 1990 through 2012. Inequality between groups based on religion (Muslim, non-Muslim), citizenship (Iranian, non-Iranian) are also studied using the 2006 census. Our analysis of the trend of horizontal inequality reveals substantial reduction in between-group inequalities over the 1990–2012 period. Yet, gender based income inequality remains high. The implications and underlying reasons for these results are discussed.