Efectos psicosociales de la percepción de desigualdad económica en la vida cotidiana

Abstract

Economic inequality is one of the most pressing problems in modern societies (Stiglitz, 2012). Over the last three decades, the richest 1% of the global population increased their income twice as much as the 50% least advantaged (Alvaredo et al., 2017). In this context, this doctoral dissertation aims to know what are the psychosocial effects of perceived economic inequality in everyday life. To do so, we used different research designs and methods. The economic information people receive is scarce (Son Hing et al., 2019); thus, there is a large gap between objective and subjective inequality (Hauser & Norton, 2017; Kuhn, 2019). Subjective inequality has a greater impact on the attitudes and behaviors of individuals than objective inequality (Choi, 2019; Curhan et al., 2014; Evans & Kelley, 2018; Loveless, 2013; Rodríguez-Bailón et al., 2020). However, until now, the vast majority of studies that have dealt with perceived economic inequality, have used abstract measures that are far away from people's daily experiences. Hence, numerous studies point out the importance of considering perceived inequality in everyday life when examining the psychological consequences of inequality (Akyelken, 2020; Boudreau & MacKenzie, 2018; Brown-Iannuzzi et al., 2017; Cruces et al, 2013; Gimpelson & Treisman, 2018; Fatke, 2018; Gonthier, 2017; Grundler & Kollner, 2017; Mijs, 2019; Nair, 2018; Newman, 2020; Newman et al., 2018; Newman & Kane, 2017; Oshio & Urakawa, 2014; Page & Goldstein, 2016). Our main argument is that measuring perceived economic inequality in everyday life is a better way of approaching people‘s experiences of inequality than abstract measures of perceived inequality (e.g., measured at the country level). Therefore, we also believe that this variable will (causally) predict attitudes toward inequality and redistribution over and above more abstract measures of it. In this thesis we pursue the following objectives: 1. To develop an instrument to measure perceived economic inequality in everyday life. 2. To investigate the effects of perceived economic inequality in everyday life on a) tolerance of inequality and b) attitudes toward redistribution. 3. To examine the longitudinal effects of perceived economic inequality in everyday life on a) tolerance of inequality and b) attitudes toward redistribution. 4. To explore the dimensions of everyday life used to estimate the inequality in everyday life. The thesis has six chapters. In the first chapter, we review the literature to theoretically support the proposed objectives. We, therefore, present: a) the theoretical basis of the social psychology of economic inequality; b) what perceived economic inequality is and how it has been measured; c) a new approach to conceptualize perceived economic inequality in everyday life based on reference groups, social comparison, and daily context; d) the main correlates of perceived economic inequality: social class and ideology; and e) the psychosocial effects of perceived economic inequality, with special emphasis on tolerance to inequality and attitudes toward redistributive policies. In the second chapter, we address the first objective of this thesis and we develop a scale of perceived economic inequality in everyday life. Given that most studies tend to use abstract measures of perceived inequality (Helgason & Mérola, 2017; Pedersen & Mutz, 2019), we designed a scale that measured more concrete and closer everyday experiences. This chapter adds to the current literature by introducing a new instrument to measure perceived economic inequality that may be useful means of deepening our understanding of its psychosocial effects. In the third chapter, we present six studies (one correlational and five experimental) to achieve our second research objective into the effects of perceived economic inequality in everyday life on the tolerance of inequality and on attitudes toward redistribution. We developed a manipulation of perceived economic inequality in everyday life that showed construct validity (Chester & Lasko, 2019). This chapter examines whether there is a causal relationship between perceived economic inequality in everyday life and the tolerance to inequality and attitudes toward redistribution. In the fourth chapter, we attained our third objective of examining the longitudinal effect of perceived economic inequality in everyday life on tolerance of inequality and on attitudes toward redistribution over time. We carried out a longitudinal study with four waves of the Chilean population. We aimed to replicate the experimental results and provide greater ecological validity for this line of research. In the final chapter, we discuss the main results of this thesis. We reflect on whether the perceived economic inequality in everyday life‘s scale is a better instrument than the existing ones which also measure perceived inequality. We describe the reasons why we believe that our results of perceived economic inequality in everyday life differ from previous studies (García-Sánchez et al., 2019; Trump, 2018; Willis et al., 2015). We discuss why we found the effects on intolerance of inequality and attitudes toward redistribution. We note the limitations and practical implications of our investigation and include our proposals for future research. We also develop the main conclusions of the thesis. The empirical chapters are presented as scientific articles. By September 2020, two articles were already published and a further two were under review in scientific journals. Given this format, some themes or ideas may be presented repeatedly throughout the text. We have unified the bibliographic references at the end of this work. Following the guidelines of the International Graduate School of the University of Granada to obtain an international doctoral degree, the introduction, discussion, and abstract are written in Spanish; the overview, the empirical chapters, and the final conclusion are in English.