Abstract

Throughout the 21st century, economic inequality is predicted to increase as we face new challenges, from changes in the technological landscape to the growing climate crisis. It is crucial we understand how these changes in inequality may affect how people think and behave. We propose that economic inequality threatens the social fabric of society, in turn increasing moralization—that is, the greater tendency to employ or emphasize morality in everyday life—as an attempt to restore order and control. Using longitudinal data from X, formerly known as Twitter, our first study demonstrates that high economic inequality is associated with greater use of moral language online (e.g. the use of words such as “disgust”, “hurt”, and “respect’). Study 2 then examined data from 41 regions around the world, generally showing that higher inequality has a small association with harsher moral judgments of people's everyday actions. Together these findings demonstrate that economic inequality is linked to the tendency to see the world through a moral lens.

Details

Title
High economic inequality is linked to greater moralization
Author
Kirkland, Kelly 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Paul A M Van Lange 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Gorenz, Drew 3   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Blake, Khandis 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Amiot, Catherine E 4   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Ausmees, Liisi 5   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Baguma, Peter 6 ; Barry, Oumar 7   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Becker, Maja 8   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Bilewicz, Michal 9 ; Boonyasiriwat, Watcharaporn 10 ; Booth, Robert W 11   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Castelain, Thomas 12   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Costantini, Giulio 13   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Dimdins, Girts 14   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Espinosa, Agustín 15   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Finchilescu, Gillian 16   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Fischer, Ronald 17   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Friese, Malte 18   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Gómez, Ángel 19   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; González, Roberto 20   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Goto, Nobuhiko 21   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Halama, Peter 22   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Hurtado-Parrado, Camilo 23   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Ilustrisimo, Ruby D 24 ; Jiga-Boy, Gabriela M 25   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Kuppens, Peter 26   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Loughnan, Steve 27   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Mastor, Khairul A 28   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; McLatchie, Neil 29 ; Novak, Lindsay M 30 ; Onyekachi, Blessing N 31   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Rizwan, Muhammad 32 ; Schaller, Mark 33   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Serafimovska, Eleonora 34   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Suh, Eunkook M 35 ; Swann, William B, Jr 36   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Tong, Eddie M W 37   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Torres, Ana 38   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Turner, Rhiannon N 39   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Christin-Melanie Vauclair 40   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Vinogradov, Alexander 41   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Wang, Zhechen 42 ; Lan Yeung, Victoria Wai 43   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Brock, Bastian 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne , Melbourne, Victoria, 3052 , Australia 
 Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam , Amsterdam, 1075 BT , The Netherlands 
 Department of Psychology, University of Southern California , Los Angeles, CA 90089 , USA 
 Department of Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal , Montreal, Quebec, H2L 2C4 , Canada 
 Institute of Psychology, University of Tartu , Tartu, 50090 , Estonia 
 Department of Educational, Organizational and Social Psychology, Makerere University , Kampala , Uganda 
 Department of Psychology, Cheikh Anta Diop University , Dakar, 10700 , Senegal 
 CLLE, CNRS, Université de Toulouse , Toulouse, 31058 , France 
 Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw , Warsaw, 00-183 , Poland 
10  Faculty of Psychology, Chulalongkorn University , Bangkok, 10330 , Thailand 
11  Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabanci University , Istanbul, 34956 , Turkey 
12  Serra Húnter Fellow, Department of Psychology, University of Girona , Girona, 17004 , Spain 
13  Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca , Milan, 20126 , Italy 
14  Department of Psychology, University of Latvia , Riga, LV-1586 , Latvia 
15  Departamento Académico de Psicología, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú , Lima, 15088 , Peru 
16  Psychology Department, University of the Witwatersrand , Johannesburg, 2017 , South Africa 
17  School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington , Wellington, 6012 , New Zealand 
18  Department of Psychology, Saarland University , Saarbrücken, 66123 , Germany 
19  Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, UNED , Madrid, 28040 , Spain 
20  Escuela de Psicología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile , Santiago, 8331150 , Chile 
21  Graduate School of Social Sciences, Hitotsubashi University , Kunitachi, 186-8601 , Japan 
22  Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences, The Slovak Academy of Sciences , Bratislava, 814 38 , Slovakia 
23  School of Psychological and Behavioral Sciences, Southern Illinois University , Carbondale, IL 62901 , USA 
24  Department of Psychology, University of San Carlos , Cebu City, 6000 , Philippines 
25  School of Psychology, Swansea University , Swansea, Wales, SA2 8PP , UK 
26  Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven , Leuven, 3000 , Belgium 
27  School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, The University of Edinburgh , Edinburgh, Scotland , UK 
28  School of Liberal Studies, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia , Bangi, 43600 , Malaysia 
29  Faculty of Science and Technology, Lancaster University , Lancaster, England, LA1 4YW , UK 
30  Department of Psychology, University of Illinois Chicago , Chicago, IL, 60607 , USA 
31  Department of Psychology, University of Nigeria , Nsukka, 410105 , Nigeria 
32  Department of Clinical Psychology, National University of Medical Sciences , Rawalpindi, 46220 , Pakistan 
33  Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia , Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z4 , Canada 
34  Institute for Sociological Political and Juridical Research, Ss Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje , Skopje, 1000 , Macedonia 
35  Department of Psychology, Yonsei University , Seoul, 03722 , South Korea 
36  Psychology Department, The University of Texas , Austin, TX, 78712 , USA 
37  Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore , 119077 , Singapore 
38  Departamento de Psicologia, Federal University of Paraíba , João Pessoa, 58051-900 , Brazil 
39  School of Psychology, Queens University Belfast , Belfast, Northern Ireland, BT7 1NN , UK 
40  Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), CIS-IUL , Lisbon, 1649-026 , Portugal 
41  Faculty of Psychology, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv , Kyiv, 01033 , Ukraine 
42  School of Social Development and Public Policy, Fudan University , Shanghai, 200433 , China 
43  Department of Psychology, Lingnan University , Tuen Mun, Hong Kong , China 
Publication year
2024
Publication date
Jul 2024
Publisher
Oxford University Press
e-ISSN
27526542
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
3191898385
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of National Academy of Sciences. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.