Inequality is growing, not least due to the inherently unequal consequences of the Covid pandemic.   While we may believe this to be an unalienable fact, new research from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University actually suggests that our political beliefs underpin whether we believe inequality exists or not.

The researchers gave all participants the same information and monitored how their perceptions differed.  They were particularly interested in how likely we are to notice inequality.

Two clear groups materialized.  Egalitarians tended to believe that society should be broadly equal, whereas anti-egalitarians are far more tolerant of inequality between groups.  These differences then feed into whether people are able to detect disparities in the first place.

Seeing inequality

Volunteers were shown a number of images of every day life and asked to say what they saw.  Some of the images contained clear cues that inequality existed, such as a street containing both a luxury home and a homeless person.

Egalitarians were far more likely to spot the inequality than their anti-egalitarian peers, who tended to remark more on other aspects of the image.

The researchers then wanted to test whether egalitarians were more attuned to societal unfairness when it was disadvantaged groups that bore the brunt of the inequality and whether they would be similarly attuned to spotting inequality that affected those at the top of society.  They manipulated the images so that inequality directly harmed groups at both the top and the bottom of society.

“We found that when there was bias against racial minorities, social egalitarians were more likely to notice it than anti-egalitarians. In contrast, when there was bias against white students, social egalitarians were no more or less likely to notice it than anti-egalitarians,” the researchers say.

“Our results suggest that egalitarians are not more likely than anti-egalitarians to notice all forms of inequality, but rather that egalitarians’ heightened attention to inequality applies selectively to instances where inequality harms typically disadvantaged groups.”

Shaping our beliefs

Whereas previously we have tended to think that people process information that is consistent with their pre-existing beliefs, this new research suggests instead that our pre-existing beliefs influence how and what we see in the world around us.

“While some individuals assert that there is widespread inequality, others exposed to the same contexts believe that their peers see certain inequalities where none exist and selectively overlook inconvenient others,” the researchers conclude. “Our findings help to shed light on where these different perceptions of the same reality come from.”

“Addressing inequality requires a common, accurate understanding of the scope of the problem,” they continue. “Social egalitarians and the wider political left might be frustrated when others fail to notice the mistreatment that traditionally disadvantaged groups so often experience. As a function of their own perceptual tendencies, on the other hand, individuals more tolerant of inequality between groups, typically on the political right, might come to feel that egalitarians see inequality where none exists or that they selectively pay attention to some types of inequality but not others.”