Imaginary society gives window into support for wealth redistribution

How we better redistribute wealth might be one of the most pressing questions of our time. When the world's richest 1% owns 43% of global assets, it's clear that inequality is one of the defining features of society as it currently stands.

In a new study, published recently in the Journal of Social Psychology, one proposal for encouraging change emerges: shifting people's beliefs about what causes poverty. Across two studies, the team found that when poverty and wealth are attributed to external factors, support for redistribution increases — creating a potential lever for change.

Participants in the first study were 523 Mexican adults, recruited online. Firstly, they answered questions on how much inequality they experience in their daily life, indicating how much they agreed with statements such as "I know people with very different economic statuses" on a scale from 1 to 7. They then rated how much they attributed poverty and wealth to internal (e.g. poverty being caused by laziness, and wealth by ambition) and external causes (e.g. poverty being caused by discrimination, or wealth being handed to the rich through inheritance). Finally, they indicated their support for redistributive policies like taxing the rich.

Those who perceived more inequality in their daily lives were more likely to support redistributive policies, perhaps because proximity to such differences highlighted their impact. What people believed led to poverty and wealth also made a difference to this support. When participants believed that inequality was caused by internal factors, like laziness or ambition, they were less supportive of redistributive policies; those who blamed external factors like discrimination were more likely to support them. This was the case regardless of the participants' own socioeconomic status.

The second study looked to understand whether people's perceptions of the causes of poverty and wealth impact their support for different kinds of policies. This time, the 226 participants were asked to imagine they were settling in a new society, Mazimba, in which they would be part of the middle class.

Half of participants read that there was only a small difference in Mazimban society between the poor, middle class, and wealthy, and the other half read that the income gap was large. Those in the low-inequality condition were also told that cars, houses, and other assets were affordable to all, while in the high-inequality condition these were considered luxury items that only the rich could afford.

Participants were then asked to explain why people in this society might be rich or poor, again focusing on internal and external causes. Finally, they rated how much they agreed with different redistributive policies to reduce inequality, including welfare policies, income redistribution, and increased taxes for the rich.

Those in the high-inequality condition supported redistributive policies more than those in the low-inequality condition — but only when it came to explicitly income redistribution. There was no significant difference in how much participants supported either welfare policies or progressive taxation, regardless of the scenario they read. As suggested by the previous study, external factors played a key role here, mediating the relationship between perceived inequality and support for income redistribution. In short, when people perceived poverty and wealth to be caused by external factors, they felt more motivated to change that through support for wealth redistribution.

Read the paper in full:
Álamo Hernández, A., & Sainz, M. (2024). The mediating role of attributions of poverty and wealth in the relationship between perceptions of economic inequality and redistribution preferences. The Journal of Social Psychology, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2024.2396345

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