UC Berkeley

Inequality persists even though it stifles the prosperity of disadvantaged and advantaged groups alike. In this dissertation, we integrate research from social identity theory, social comparison theory, and zero-sum thinking, to theorize that group status itself motivates individuals’ perception of equality-enhancing policies. Across five studies (N=4,191), we examine whether advantaged group members misperceive equality policies as necessarily harmful to advantaged groups’ resource access and necessarily beneficial to disadvantaged groups’ access to resources. We found that advantaged group members misperceived equality-enhancing policies as harmful to their group even when policies did not affect their groups’ access to resources (Pilot Study and Study 1a). Disadvantaged groups members, however, accurately perceived such policies as not harming the advantaged group. Conversely, we found no effect of group status when equality policies reduced resources to the advantaged group without changing resources to the disadvantaged group––all perceived equality as necessarily beneficial to disadvantaged groups (Study 1b). To test whether group status-based motivations contribute to misconstrued perceptions equality policies, we experimentally manipulate contexts wherein policies enhance equality between relevant or non-relevant groups (Study 2), and by incentivizing participants to either enhance equality or to maintain an unequal status quo (Study 3). Across each study, we investigate whether fairness judgments causally explain why disadvantaged group members perceive equality-enhancing policies more accurately than advantaged groups. We also examine whether the predicted effects persist even when controlling for perceptions of common fate and ideological beliefs around hierarchy, prejudice, and political conservatism across studies. Finally, we discuss how this misperception that equality is a zero-sum game can explain why inequality prevails even as it exacts a toll on everyone in society.