Does Inequality Beget Inequality? Experimental Tests of the Prediction that Inequality Increases System Justification Motivation
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Description
Accepted version
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773.93 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
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Author(s)
Trump, Kris-Stella
White, Ariel R.
Date Issued
2018
Journal
Journal of Experimental Political Science
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Citation
Trump, Kris-Stella and Ariel White. "Does Inequality Beget Inequality? Experimental Tests of the Prediction that Inequality Increases System Justification Motivation." Journal of Experimental Political Science 5, 3 (May 2018): 206-216 © 2018 The Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Past research shows that growing inequality often does not result in citizen demands for redistribution. We examine one mechanism that could explain why people do not protest growing inequality: a particular sub-prediction of system justification theory (SJT). SJT argues that humans have a psychological need to justify their social system. The specific sub-prediction of SJT tested here is the idea that inequality itself increases system justification. This could yield a negative feedback loop in which political responses to inequality grows ever less likely as inequality grows more extreme. Previous research on this hypothesis relied on cross-sectional survey data and provided mixed results. We take an experimental approach and ask whether exposure to economic inequality makes people more likely to defend the system. In one main study and two replications with varying samples, experimental treatments, and outcome measures, we find no evidence that information about economic inequality increases system justification motivation.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1017/xps.2018.2
