“Economic Inequality Fosters the Belief That Success Is Zero-Sum”, Shai Davidai2023-11-15 (economics, politics, cognitive bias)⁠:

[data/pre-registration] 10 studies (n = 3,628; including 5 pre-registered), using correlational and experimental methods and employing various measures and manipulations, reveal that perceived economic inequality fosters zero-sum beliefs about economic success—the belief that one person’s gains are inevitably offset by others’ losses. As the gap between the rich and the poor expands, American participants increasingly believed that one can only get richer at others’ expense.

Moreover, perceptions of economic inequality fostered zero-sum beliefs even when the distribution of resources was not strictly zero-sum and did so beyond the effect of various demographics variables (household income, education, subjective socioeconomic status), and individual differences (political ideology, social dominance orientation, interpersonal trust).

Finally, I find that zero-sum beliefs account for the effect of inequality on people’s view of the world as unjust.

The article concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of zero-sum beliefs about economic success.

[Keywords: economic inequality, zero-sum beliefs, income inequality, just world beliefs]

See Also:

• Personal relative deprivation and the belief that economic success is zero-sum

• The psychology of asymmetric zero-sum beliefs

• Win-win denial: The psychological underpinnings of zero-sum thinking

• ‘Do not teach them how to fish’: The effect of zero-sum beliefs on help giving

• The politics of zero-sum thinking: The relationship between political ideology and the belief that life is a zero-sum game

• The delusive economy: how information and affect color perceptions of national economic performance

• No evidence that economic inequality moderates the effect of income on generosity

• Growing up in a Recession

• If I Could Do It, So Can They: Among the Rich, Those With Humbler Origins are Less Sensitive to the Difficulties of the Poor

• Who Is High Income, Anyway? Social Comparison, Subjective Group Identification, and Preferences over Progressive Taxation

• Superiority-Seeking and the Preference for Exclusion

• Poor Prospects—Not Inequality—Motivate Political Violence

• Despite popular intuition, positive world beliefs poorly reflect several objective indicators of privilege, including wealth, health, sex, and neighborhood safety