Fair inequality and personal responsibility: The nature of inequality acceptance

The project addresses the following fundamental research question: What explains inequality acceptance? This question is being studied from different perspectives and by the use of a number of empirical approaches, including novel incentivized economic experiments on nationally representative populations, lab experiments and survey experiments. It is a truly multidisciplinary project that aims at groundbreaking research. It combines insights from economics, psychology, political theory, and philosophy, and combine empirical analysis and theory development. The first part of the project provides a unique international study of the nature of inequality acceptance. It will greatly improve our understanding of what causes inequality acceptance, how it varies across contexts, and how it interacts with political and socio-economic institutions. The study was implemented in 60 countries with 65 000 participants and has produced several important insights. The study shows how the source of inequality determines how people view inequality and how this varies between different countries. Strikingly we find a much more meritocratic approach to inequality in rich countries than in poor countries. The study also produced data on what people think creates inequality, including if the cause partly may be that the rich are richer than the poor. Our findings were launched during a workshop together with Gallup in Washington D.C. and has since then been presented many places. The study was among other things featured in the New York Times. A part of the study is now published in one of the leading research journals in the world Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, and the research group is now working on finalizing more scientific articles for international journals. The second part of the project focuses on how the influential idea of personal responsibility shapes inequality acceptance, and addresses a novel and important set of issues that have not yet been studied in the social sciences. It considers how personal responsibility is and should be understood when there is an unlevel playing field and when the consequences of one's choices also depend on the choices of other individuals, such as in competition and cooperation The project has implemented a series of different smaller experiments addressing these topics, which have been published in leading international journals, and there is ongoing work on preparing further papers for scientific publication. Taken together, the project constitutes a novel and comprehensive study on what explains inequality acceptance and will provide new important insights that can greatly improve our understanding of human behavior, guide policy-making, and inform more broadly the inequality debate.

Prosjektet har gjennom publiseringer i ledende internasjonal tidsskrift påvirket den internasjonale debatten om ulikhet. Prosjektleder med medforfattere blant annet blitt invitert til å skrive et kapittel om hvordan ulikhet skal forstås og bekjempes for Deaton-review, som vil sette agendaen for ulikhetsdebatten internasjonalt de kommende årene. Prosjektet har ført til at man i dag i større grad skiller mellom rettferdig og urettferdig ulikhet, og på å forstå hva som er kilden til ulikheten vi ser i samfunnet. Prosjektet har også forskning på dette feltet internasjonalt, og flere av publikasjonene har blitt referansestudier for pågående internasjonal forskning. Videre har prosjektet bidratt til å etablere forskergruppen The Choice Lab/ Norges Handelshøyskole som en av de ledende forskergruppen innenfor adferdsøkonomi i Europa. Prosjektet var også viktig for å bygge opp FAIR som et senter for fremragende forskning, og bidro sterkt til at prosjektleder fikk tildelt ERC Advanced Grant.

The project will address the following fundamental research question: What explains inequality acceptance? This question will be studied from different perspectives and by the use of a number of empirical approaches, including novel incentivized experiments on nationally representative populations, lab experiments, survey experiments, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). It is a truly multidisciplinary project that aims at groundbreaking research. It will combine insights from economics, psychology, political theory, and philosophy, and combine structural and non-parametric empirical analysis with theory development. The first part of the project provides a unique international study of the nature of inequality acceptance. It will greatly improve our understanding of what causes inequality acceptance, how it varies across contexts, and how it interacts with political and socio-economic institutions. The second part of the project focuses on how the influential idea of personal responsibility shapes inequality acceptance, and addresses a novel and important set of issues that have not yet been studied in the social sciences. It considers how personal responsibility is and should be understood when there is an unlevel playing field and when the consequences of one's choices also depend on the choices of other individuals, such as in competition and cooperation; it provides the first study of how nudging policies, which have become increasingly prominent across the world, shape our understanding of personal responsibility; and, finally, it provides a novel study of the neurological basis for inequality acceptance. Taken together, the project constitutes a novel and comprehensive study that will push the research frontier on what explains inequality acceptance and will provide new important insights that can greatly improve our understanding of human behavior, guide policymaking, and inform more broadly the inequality debate.