UC Berkeley

The current investigation documented how individuals of different socioeconomic backgrounds differ in their judgments of the severity of economic inequality. Seven empirical studies provide robust support for the central hypothesis that those of higher (vs. lower) socioeconomic backgrounds will judge wealth distributions as less severely unequal. Further analyses suggested that these differences (in economic inequality judgments) can, in part, be explained by differences in economic system justification (i.e., stronger among those of higher socioeconomic backgrounds). Toward the end, I demonstrated how such differences can lead to, and explain, diverging reactions (in emotions and attributions) toward other societal issues – in current data, the unhousedness problem.