The psychological imprint of inequality: Economic inequality shapes achievement and power values in human life.
Gini
economic inequality
perceived inequality
value theory
values
Journal
Journal of personality
ISSN: 1467-6494
Titre abrégé: J Pers
Pays: United States
ID NLM: 2985194R
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
22 Jul 2022
22 Jul 2022
Historique:
revised:
13
06
2022
received:
22
12
2021
accepted:
15
07
2022
pubmed:
23
7
2022
medline:
23
7
2022
entrez:
22
7
2022
Statut:
aheadofprint
Résumé
This research investigates how economic inequality shapes basic human values across three cross-national, cross-regional, and longitudinal studies (N Study 1 examined the relationship between objective economic inequality and values across 77 societies from all five continents (n = 170,525). Study 2 examined the relationship between objective economic inequality and values across 51 regions in the United States (n = 48,559). Study 3 used a two-year longitudinal design to examine the relationship between perceived economic inequality and values (n = 613). Results from multilevel modeling and longitudinal analysis suggested that people who lived in areas with higher economic inequality and who perceived higher economic inequality were more likely to endorse achievement and power values. Moreover, people who perceived higher economic inequality were less likely to endorse benevolence values. These effects were robust in within-country tests (Studies 2 and 3) but not in the cross-country tests (Study 1) when accounting for sociodemographic characteristics. Our findings suggest that economic inequality may act as an antecedent of self-enhancement values, particularly within countries. In a world of rising economic inequality, this may over time lead to an overemphasis on achievement and power which have been shown to erode social cohesion.
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Informations de copyright
© 2022 Wiley Periodicals LLC.
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