Does Inequality Make Us Unhappy?
- By Jonah Lehrer
- November 3, 2011 |
Inequality is inevitable; life is a bell curve. Such are the brute
facts of biology, which can only evolve because some living things are
better at reproducing than others. But not all inequality is created
equal. In recent years, it’s become clear that many kinds of wealth
disparity are perfectly acceptable — capitalism could not exist
otherwise — while alternate forms make us unhappy and angry.
The bad news is that American society seems to be developing the
wrong kind of inequality. There is, for instance, this recent study
published in Psychological Science,
which found that, since the 1970s, the kind of inequality experienced
by most Americans has undermined perceptions of fairness and trust,
which in turn reduced self-reports of life satisfaction:
Using the General Social Survey data from 1972 to 2008, we found that Americans were on average happier in the years with less income inequality than in the years with more income inequality. We further demonstrated that the inverse relation between income inequality and happiness was explained by perceived fairness and general trust. That is, Americans trusted others less and perceived others to be less fair in the years with more income inequality than in the years with less income inequality. Americans are happier when national wealth is distributed more evenly than when it is distributed unevenly.
It’s now possible to glimpse the neural mechanisms underlying this
inequality aversion, which appears to be a deeply rooted social
instinct. Last year a team of scientists at Caltech published a
fascinating paper in Nature.
The study began with 40 subjects blindly picking ping-pong balls from a
hat. Half of the balls were labeled “rich,” while the other half were
labeled “poor.” The rich subjects were immediately given $50, while the
poor got nothing. Life isn’t fair.
The subjects were then put in a brain scanner and given various
monetary rewards, from $5 to $20. They were also told about a series of
rewards given to a stranger. The first thing the scientists discovered
is that the response of the subjects depended entirely on their starting
financial position. For instance, people in the “poor” group showed
much more activity in the reward areas of the brain (such as the ventral
striatum) when given $20 in cash than people who started out with $50.
This makes sense: If we have nothing, then every little something
becomes valuable.
But then the scientists found something strange. When people in the
“rich” group were told that a poor stranger was given $20, their brains
showed more reward activity than when they themselves were given an
equivalent amount. In other words, they got extra pleasure from the
gains of someone with less. “We economists have a widespread view that
most people are basically self-interested and won’t try to help other
people,” Colin Camerer, a neuroeconomist at Caltech and co-author of the
study, told me. “But if that were true, you wouldn’t see these sorts of
reactions to other people getting money.”
What’s driving this charitable brain response? The scientists
speculate that people have a natural dislike of inequality. In fact, our
desire for equal outcomes is often more powerful (at least in the
brain) than our desire for a little extra cash. It’s not that money
doesn’t make us feel good — it’s that sharing the wealth can make us
feel even better.
In reality, of course, we’re not nearly as egalitarian as this
experiment suggests. After all, the top 1 percent of earners aren’t
exactly lobbying for higher taxes or for large lump-sum payments to
those on welfare. (The exceptions, like Warren Buffett, prove the rule.)
What explains this discrepancy? It’s probably because the rich
believe they deserve their riches. Unlike the subjects in the Caltech
study, whose wealth was randomly determined, the top earners in America
tend to feel that their salaries are just compensation for talent and
hard work. (Previous research has demonstrated that making people
compete for the initial payout can dramatically diminish their desire
for equal outcomes.) The end result is that our basic aversion to
inequality — the guilt we might feel over having more — is explained
away, at least when we’re at the top.
A similar lesson emerges from a classic experiment
conducted by Franz de Waals and Sarah Brosnan. The primatologists
trained brown capuchin monkeys to give them pebbles in exchange for
cucumbers. Almost overnight, a capuchin economy developed, with hungry
monkeys harvesting small stones. But the marketplace was disrupted when
the scientists got mischievous: instead of giving every monkey a
cucumber in exchange for pebbles, they started giving some monkeys a
tasty grape instead. (Monkeys prefer grapes to cucumbers.)
After
witnessing this injustice, the monkeys earning cucumbers went on strike.
Some started throwing their cucumbers at the scientists; the vast
majority just stopped collecting pebbles. The capuchin economy ground to
a halt. The monkeys were willing to forfeit cheap food simply to
register their anger at the arbitrary pay scale.
This labor unrest among monkeys illuminates our innate sense of
fairness. It’s not that the primates demanded equality — some capuchins
collected many more pebbles than others, and that never created a
problem — it’s that they couldn’t stand when the inequality was a result
of injustice. Humans act the same way. When the rich do something to
deserve their riches, nobody complains; that’s just the meritocracy at
work. But when those at the bottom don’t understand the unequal
distribution of wealth — when it seems as if the winners are getting
rewarded for no reason — they get furious. They doubt the integrity of
the system and become more sensitive to perceived inequities. They start
camping out in parks. They reject the very premise of the game.
Image: Mark Riffee/Wired.com
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