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Justifying Inequality: A Cross-Temporal Investigation of U.S. Income Disparities and Just-World Beliefs from 1973 to 2006

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Abstract

This cross-temporal meta-analysis examined 6,120 American college students’ scores on the Belief in a Just World Scale (BJW; Rubin and Peplau, J Soc Issues 31(3):65–90, 1975) across the last three and a half decades. Drawing on models of belief threat, we examined whether the causal relationship between perceived injustice and increases in BJW could extend from the laboratory to society by using macro-economic injustice trends to predict changes in BJW across these decades. Specifically, we hypothesized that perceptions of inequality, operationalized as rising income disparities, would result in a greater need to justify this inequality and that this would be evidenced by increased commitment to just world beliefs over time. Consistent with this prediction, BJW scores increased significantly over time and this increase was positively related to increasing income disparities in society. Income inequality remained a significant predictor of BJW scores even after controlling for additional factors of general income and political ideology. Implications of increasing just world beliefs are discussed in terms of psychological and policy outcomes.

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Notes

  1. All studies using 6-point Likert scales were adjusted to use the same scale endpoints (1–6).

  2. Americans awareness of this disparity should be high given the large amount of reporting done on the subject. For example, a LexisNexis search of “income inequality” in US newspapers and wires over the past ten years turns up over 3,000 results. Public opinion polls also demonstrate the nation’s awareness of economic inequality. In the AFL-CIO Communication Survey of 1997 (Community Survey, 1997), respondents were asked to respond to the statement “The growing inequality between the incomes of the well-to-do and working people. …On a scale from 1 to 10, how serious a problem is this for the country?” (1 Not a Serious Problem to 10 It’s an Extremely Serious Problem). Forty-nine percent of respondents selected 8 to 10, indicating that they saw income inequality as a serious problem. An additional 38% of respondents fell into the 5 to 7 response range, agreeing that economic inequality was a problem in the United States.

  3. This survey was not collected in 1973, 1992, nor odd years after 1995. Thus, the political ideology data correspond to 11 out of the 17 years of BJW data. Because the missing data points occur throughout the time period of interest at regular 1-year intervals rather than in larger time chunks, the data present a reasonable estimate of the political ideological trends across this time-span.

  4. We also ran this analysis excluding studies that reported using the BJW scale after an experimental manipulation. This analysis revealed a similar relationship (r(25) = .52, p < .01).

  5. We analyzed this relationship regressing all reported study BJW scores, weighting by study sample size, on their corresponding P90/10 for that year. We also computed this analysis using one BJW score per year (averaging across reported BJW scores for a given year). This analysis revealed a similar relationship (r(15) = .45, p = .06).

  6. We ran similar correlational analyses using other measures of income inequality including: the Gini coefficient, Atkinson indices, and the ratio of the 95th percentile of household incomes to the 50th percentile of household incomes. These measures produced comparable correlations with BJW means (.33 < r < .45). Additionally, these additional measures of income inequality continued to significantly predict BJW scores after controlling for general income level (.69 < β’sincome inequality < .78; .006 < p’s < .04), and income inequality maintained a similar relationship with BJW when controlling for political ideology (.42 < β’sincome inequality < .66; .05 < p’s < .20).

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Acknowledgments

We thank Chris Crandall for sharing his insightful thoughts on this research topic, particularly as they relate to income disparities, and Jean Twenge for her statistical advice. We also thank Monica Biernat, Sapna Cheryan, Ben Drury, Kevin Ford, Tony Greenwald, Heather Rieck, Clara Wilkins, and the members of the Social Identity Lab for their feedback on this manuscript and project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Box 351525, Seattle, WA, 98195-1525, USA

    Lori W. Malahy & Cheryl R. Kaiser

  2. Department of Psychology, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, USA

    Michelle A. Rubinlicht

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  1. Lori W. Malahy
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  2. Michelle A. Rubinlicht
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  3. Cheryl R. Kaiser
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Correspondence to Cheryl R. Kaiser.

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Portions of these data were submitted to the Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the second author’s honors thesis, which was supervised by the third author.

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Malahy, L.W., Rubinlicht, M.A. & Kaiser, C.R. Justifying Inequality: A Cross-Temporal Investigation of U.S. Income Disparities and Just-World Beliefs from 1973 to 2006. Soc Just Res 22, 369–383 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-009-0103-6

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