Inequality in People’s Minds: An Integrative Psychological Framework of Perceptions of Economic Inequality

Abstract

Academic Abstract

People’s perceptions of economic inequality are important predictors of their political attitudes and behaviors. Scholars across the social sciences have worked to understand people’s (mis)perceptions of inequality. Yet, scholars currently lack a common framework for integrating emerging findings and conceptualizing how these perceptions are formed. Here, we propose an integrative framework to help researchers highlight the psychological processes underlying how inequality is perceived. We draw on theories of perception, cognition, developmental, and social psychology to identify five interlinked, iterative components of the inequality perception process: (a) access to inequality cues, (b) attention to these cues, (c) comprehension of these cues, (d) motivated processing of these cues, and (e) meaningful summary representation of inequality. Our framework provides a roadmap for integrating research across disparate fields, making sense of current findings, and identifying novel challenges to advance future research.

Public Abstract

How much inequality people perceive better predicts their political action than do official measures of inequality (e.g., economic indicators like the Gini coefficient). While scholars across the social sciences are working to understand these (mis)perceptions of inequality, the literature lacks agreement on measurements of inequality perceptions and, as a result, on whether people under or overestimate inequality. By providing an integrative psychological framework for inequality perceptions that focuses on the processes underlying how people form these perceptions and what they mean to them we shed light on when and why people perceive more or less inequality. Our framework outlines the psychological processes underlying perceptions of inequality and helps scholars value the information and insight people’s own perceptions provide for addressing inequality in communities.