Cognitive factors in inequality perception
Final Report Abstract
In this research project, cognitive mechanisms underlying the subjective perception of economic inequality were investigated. This is an important topic because economic inequality is associated with many negative societal and personal consequences. At the same time, scientific studies suggest that these negative consequences are significantly dependent on the subjectively perceived inequality. The experiments in this research project focus on a stable phenomenon called Linear Drift: People perceive distributions of attributes such as income in a distorted manner. In particular, the potential values of a distribution are perceived as being closer to equally frequent than factually warranted, even if the values actually occur with highly different frequencies. For example, very rare high incomes are considered more common, and very common, moderate incomes are considered less common than they actually are. In our research project, firstly, we investigated why Linear Drift occurs. The results strongly suggest that Linear Drift does not occur due to insufficient learning or because people are overwhelmed with too much data. Instead, Linear Drift may be based on a judgment strategy that is independent of learning intensity and amount of data. Therefore, according to the project findings, increasing the amount of data would not be helpful if one wanted to reduce Linear Drift (e.g., to help people achieve a more accurate assessment of income inequality). Secondly, in our research project, we examined the consequences of Linear Drift. In a series of experiments, we were able to demonstrate that people systematically misjudge their own position in the income hierarchy because they perceive the distribution as too uniform. These misjudgments were also associated with increased or decreased satisfaction with one's own position. Thirdly, the research project investigated how focusing on the extreme values of a distribution affects the perception of the entire distribution. As predicted by psychological theories, we were able to demonstrate in laboratory and field studies that individual extreme values distort the perception of an otherwise identical distribution overall. For example, a population is perceived as overall richer when people are reminded of individual very rich individuals. These findings can help understand how media representations of extremely poor or extremely rich individuals influence the perception of overall inequality.
Publications
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As expected? Context-dependent and Context-free Factors in Distribution Cognition [Conference Presentation]. ESCON Transfer of Knowledge Conference, Milano, Italy
Ebert, J. & Deutsch, R.
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How Expectation Influences Distribution Perception [Conference Presentation]. TEAP, Cologne, Germany
Ebert, J. & Deutsch, R.
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As Expected? How Prior Knowledge Influences the Perception of (Social) Distributions [Conference Presentation]. 19th General Meeting of the European Association of Social Psychology, Krakow, Poland
Ebert, J. & Deutsch, R.
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Biased perception of distributions: Anchoring, interpolation and smoothing as potential causes. Cognition, 237, 105448.
Deutsch, Roland; Ebert, Jonas; Barth, Markus & Roth, Jenny
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End Point Anchoring in Distribution Perception [Conference Presentation]. 19th General Meeting of the European Association of Social Psychology, Krakow, Poland
Deutsch, R. & Ebert, J.
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Frequency Regression & Anchoring in Distribution Perception [Conference Presentation]. TEAP, Trier, Germany
Ebert, J. & Deutsch, R.
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Key Factors in Distribution Perception [Conference Presentation]. 18. Tagung der Fachgruppe für Sozialpsychologie der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie, Graz, Austria
Ebert, J. & Deutsch, R.
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When the ends justify the mean – How endpoint anchoring and linear smoothing influence the perception of distributional information [Conference Presentation]. ESCON Transfer of Knowledge Conference, Nijmegen, Netherlands
Ebert, J. & Deutsch, R.
