Economic inequality, both within and between nations, has increased steadily since the early 1980s, reaching unprecedented levels during the Covid-19 pandemic. In our lab we investigate how people perceive and explain economic inequality at the national and global scale, and what degrees of inequality they consider acceptable and desirable.
We also investigate the far-reaching social, behavioral, and cognitive consequences of economic inequality. Through both cross-sectional and experimental studies, we show that many socially relevant behaviors (such as cheating, corruption, and tax evasion) and cognitions (such as beliefs in conspiracy theories) are affected by economic inequality. Importantly, we are also investigating the non-obvious and culture-specific link between economic inequality and life satisfaction.
Representative publications
- Cervone, C., Suitner, C., Carraro, L., & Maass, A. (2023). An Impartial Measure of Collective Action: Development and Validation of the Belief-aligned Collective Action Scale. European Journal of Psychological Assessment. 10.31234/osf.io/vunh4
- Cian, E., Marini, D., & Maass, A. (2021). The sound of social class: Do music preferences signal social status? Psychology of Music, 49, https://doi.org/10.1177/03057356211030995
- Galdi, S., Durante, F., & Maass, A. (2023). Dishonesty When the Game is Unfair: Experimental Evidence for the Effect of Economic Inequality on Tax Evasion and Cheating. Social Psychology
- Gáspár, A., Cervone, C., Durante, F., Suitner, C., Valtorta, R. R., Vezzoli, M., & Maass, A. (2023). A twofold subjective measure of income inequality. Social Indicators Research, 10.1007/s11205-023-03121-w
- Jetten, J., Peters, K., & Salvador Casara, B. G. (2022). Economic inequality and conspiracy theories. Current Opinion in Psychology, 101358
- Jetten, J., Peters, K., Álvarez, B., Salvador Casara, B. G., Dare, M., Kirkland, K., Sánchez-Rodríguez, A., Preya Selvanathan, H., Sprong, S., Tanjitpiyanond, P., Wang, Z. (2021). Consequences of economic inequality for societies’ social and political vitality: A social identity analysis. Advances in Political Psychology
- Salvador Casara, B. G., Filippi, S., Suitner, C., Dollani, E., & Maass, A. (2023). Tax the élites! The role of economic inequality and conspiracy beliefs on attitudes towards taxes and redistribution intentions. British Journal of Social Psychology, 62(1), 104-118. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12555
- Salvador Casara, B. G., Suitner, C., & Jetten, J. (2022). The impact of economic inequality on conspiracy beliefs. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 98, Article 104245. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2021.104245