I have written about this before, using different data, but with renewed attention being paid to rising inequality, leading liberals to continue to push for rising taxes for the rich, I feel like it bears repeating, this time with different data.    While most Americans might prefer a more equal distribution of wealth, when positing such a distribution without considering who worked harder or contributed more, I doubt any study could show that any large group of people actually care about sharing some good equally more than adhering to the principle of deservingness.  People care more that people get what they deserve than if everything is shared equally.  Indeed if anybody knows of such a study, showing the oppositve, please share it with me.

Below is a graph of questions asking “how wrong” certain violations of fairness principles are.  For example, a violation of procedural justice concerns situations like a trial being decided with misleading information or a law being made without the input of affected parties (alpha = .77).  A violation of “lack of punishment” would concern a person going unpunished for a crime (alpha = .78).  A violation of equity/deservingness concerns a person contributing to society and not being rewarded or a bonus being awarded without considering the relative contributions of employees (alpha = .76).  A violation of equality concerns some employees being paid a lot while others are paid very little or a child inheriting a lot of money while another inherits nothing (alpha = .89).

To me, the interesting thing is not that liberals care more about equality than conservatives,or that liberals care less about punishing wrongdoers.  Both facts make sense but are almost self-evident if one pays attention to politics and current events.  Rather, the most interesting thing about this data (and any other data where I’ve pitted equality/deservingness against equality), is that everyone, including liberals, believes that equity/deservingness is a more important principle than equality.

There are certainly caveats to this data, in that it’s a limited sample and the conclusions are somewhat reliant on the questions I choose to ask.  However, this is but one of many datasets we have collected which tell the same story…that equity concerns trump equality concerns.  Moreover, I think this idea is quite “post-dictable” meaning that most people who really think about it, realize that they themselves, no matter how liberal they are, care more about equity/deservingness than they care about making things more equal.  This article from the Atlantic blog sums it up nicely:

I think very few (completely misguided) people resent “wealth” per se.  I don’t remember anyone ever begrudging Bill Gates’ wealth, either.  When people resent wealth, more often than not the resentment is directed at how the wealth is accrued rather than at who has accrued it.  In certain instances, the how and the who become one and the resentment oozes toward the individual.  I’m thinking of the Paris Hilton’s of the world in this instance.  Here’s somebody who has done nothing of substance whatsoever; her wealth was accrued by virtue of genetic lottery.  But those instances where people resent a particular person for their wealth are, I think, rather rare.

So how can liberals argue for progressive taxation as a matter of equity rather than equality?  One problem for liberals is that research on system justification suggests that conservatives are more likely to believe that wealthy investors are more like Bill Gates than Paris Hilton.  I don’t have data on this (though I hope to collect it), but one example that worked for me recently is to frame progressive taxation policies in terms of rewarding work, as opposed to investment.  Conservatives value hard work and I might even go as far as to say, anecdotally, that the conservatives I know work harder than the liberals I know (see this book which is tangentially related).  Yet, we live in a country where someone who works hard for a living pays taxes at a higher rate (the income tax rate) compared to someone who happens to buy the right stock or the right real estate property at the right time, and sells it later for a gain (taxed at the capital gains rate).  Or someone who inherits millions, and lives off their investments, a la Paris Hilton.  Hard work is penalized relative to profiting by owning things.  Is that fair?

- Ravi Iyer

This is basically common sense, but the interesting part is when we combine the model with research suggesting that conservatives are more likely than liberals to react to threats and avoid negative outcomes, suggesting that in the first decision box, even given the same facts, conservatives are more likely than liberals to believe that scarce resources(e.g. the budget deficit) are likely to lead to ruin and therefore cut public assistance.  For example, this  might explain why a recent Pew Research Poll found that Republicans feel that the deficit is a bigger economic priority than adding more jobs (37% vs 22%), while the numbers were reversed for Democrats (41% think jobs is the most important economic concern vs. 15% for the deficit).

Further, when you get to the second decision box (appraising deservingness), conservatives are more likely to attribute success and failure to internal-controllable causes vs. liberals.  For example, this is a graph of yourmorals.org data and you’ll notice that conservatives are more likely to attribute their success at work and in relationships to effort (an internal-controllable trait) versus ability (internal, but not necessarily controllable) or context/luck (external).  This attributional divide has been documented in other published research.

When you combine these two factors, it is no surprise that liberals and conservatives have very different ideas about a social safety net.  Each group may be psychologically predisposed to believing in more or less scarcity and more or less personal responsibility for outcomes, even given the same information about the world.

These dispositions may actually also cause people to be more liberal or conservative, or to support such policies, as research on mortality salience has succeeded in increasing support for conservative candidates.  There is a lack of research on causes of liberalism, but anecdotally, Michael Moore recently told a liberal audience that “America is not broke.” and in my anecdotal experience of religion, one of the main principles of many liberal churches is the idea that we need to think of the world as full of abundance, not scarcity.  The ironic thing is that just when people need help most (conditions of scarcity) and Keynesian economics would suggest we should spend more, the psychology of the situation predisposes us to be less generous.  Of course, that’s from my liberal point of view, where I’m predisposed to such beliefs.

- Ravi Iyer

ps If anyone knows of studies where an abundance mentality leads to liberal beliefs, I’d love to hear from you.

From a political psychology perspective, one fact about Warren Buffett is particularly interesting.  He has a liberal position, obviously contrary to his self-interest, on the estate tax.  From p.596 of my edition of his book:

He liked to compare his tax rate to his secretary’s, pointing out how
unjust it was that she paid a higher tax rate on her income than he
did, just because most of his income came from investing.  Having
already angered all the plutocrats and would-be plutocrats, but with
his credibility at a peak in other quarters, Buffett vowed to carry on
the fight against repeal of the estate tax, and would spin on this
subject for years.

Not only is this position contrary to his self-interest, but from the book, one might infer that he is low on openness to experience and high on conscientiousness, two traits which have been found to be central to ideological preferences, with Buffett’s pattern being opposite to most liberals.  As an example, Buffet is described as unable to eat foreign foods, preferring plain hamburgers, consistent with low openness to experience scores (e.g. liberals are more adventurous eaters).  He is famously conscientious in terms of his business dealings.  Below is yourmorals data relating these personality traits to ideology, replicating the study linked above.

From reading the book, my answer to the above question would be that Buffett is also very high on empathic concern, which might logically be related to agreeableness in the above graph, where you might notice that liberals score a bit higher.  Answers to questions like “I would describe myself as a pretty soft hearted person” correlate highly (r=.5) with agreeableness scores and with liberal identification (r=-.2, 1-7 lib-con).  Buffett is not a social person in the book, but he does care about the people around him a great deal, a realization that appears to ever more salient as he gets older and mortality is a more salient concern.  Perhaps it is this empathic concern that leads him to be more liberal on tax policy, while other wealthy individuals actively fight the estate tax.  Some research indicates that the primacy of ensuring economic growth versus caring for others, both noble goals that sometimes conflict, is central to notions of distributive justice.  Buffett may have fewer productivity goals compared to other CEOs, as his investing has the feel of a game that he loves, rather than a job.

Finally, I’d like to share one last tangientially related quote from the final pages of the book, which I found especially wise, more wise than his investment advice actually.  I do recommend the whole book.

People ask me where they should go to work, and I always tell them to
go to work for whom they admire the most,  It’s crazy to take little
in-between jobs just because they look good on your resume.  That’s
like saving sex for your old age.  Do what you love and work for whom
you admire the most, and you’ve given yourself the best chance in life
you can.

- Ravi Iyer

Here at yourmorals.org, we have begun to address this question.  Over the past few months, we asked over 1400 visitors to indicate the strength of their support for the Tea Party movement.  Of the 9% who scored near the top of our scale, approximately two-thirds had previously identified as conservatives and about one-third had identified as libertarians.

So how do the moral values of these Tea Party supporters compare to conservatives and libertarians?  We found that they indeed showed a mix of both conservative and libertarian moral values.  On the foundations of Harm and Fairness, TP supporters recreated the libertarian pattern that is described in detail by Iyer et al. – that is, they scored even lower than conservatives on both of these foundations.  However, TP supporters showed a heightened sensitivity to the foundations of Ingroup, Authority, and Purity, forming a pattern that is nearly identical to that of conservatives.  The finding that TP supporters are low on Harm and Fairness, and high on Ingroup, Authority, and Purity, clearly distinguishes them from traditional libertarians in the moral domain.  Instead, they appear to endorse a slightly inflated form of traditional conservative moral beliefs.

We also examined how Tea Party supporters scored on several other moral dimensions, which were measured with newer versions of our Moral Foundations Questionnaire.  Again, they looked very similar to conservatives.  That is, they scored low on equality and high on equity (conservative “karma”); they had high scores on retribution and national sovereignty, with low scores on universalism; and they scored high on economic—but not lifestyle—liberty.

We have collected data about our users’ attitudes toward a number of current political issues and events.  So do Tea Party supporters’ scores on the moral dimensions predict specific attitudes about social and political issues?  In short, yes.

• Their high scores in economic liberty—and their conception of fairness as equity rather than equality—are likely related to their disapproval of bank regulation, their support for offshore drilling, and the perceived unimportance of healthcare reform.

• Tea Party supporters’ moral sensitivity to national sovereignty and Ingroup is consistent with their negative attitudes toward immigration, even specifically in their support for police verification of immigration status in Arizona, as well as their opposition to the mosque being built near Ground Zero.
• Their conservative stances on several social issues (e.g., same sex marriage, marijuana legalization, abortion) reflect their low moral valuations of lifestyle liberty, unlike traditional libertarians.

As can be seen in the chart above, TP supporters score nearly identically to conservatives on all of these social issues, and are clearly distinct from true libertarians, who score similarly to liberals.

As might be expected, Tea Party supporters also showed consistently unfavorable views about President Obama.  They were also most likely to believe he was born in another country, and they were the most likely to believe he was a Muslim.  Their scores on these measures were consistently lower than both libertarians and conservatives.

Our investigation into the psychology of support for the Tea Party, like the Tea Party movement itself, is still in its early stages. We are still collecting data on these topics, and these charts are only a sneak peek of our developing findings.  We are currently investigating the potential role of several additional factors in predicting Tea Party support, including attitudes about economic fairness, racial identity, and behavioral participation in the movement.

However, the current data paints a relatively clear picture of how Tea Party supporters compare to other conservatives and libertarians: their values are closely aligned to those of traditional social conservatives, but with an inflated investment in economic freedoms that occasionally resembles libertarianism.  Although the Tea Party movement is anything but a monolithic group with a single identity, the clear moral and psychological underpinnings that predict support for the movement will be a continued topic of investigation here at yourmorals.

Sean Wojcik

Want proof of this reality?  In June, the United Farm Workers union attempted an interesting experiment whereby it offered to train American citizens to replace migrant labor.  Colbert testifies that 16 people took them up on the offer (him included) and press reports indicate that only 7 people took the offer.  Whichever number it is, it seems fairly low.  Still, immigration reform seems unlikely to pass anytime soon as it seems to stimulate conflicting ideas of what is ‘fair’.  Migrant workers are virtually powerless and easily taken advantage of….but they are also breaking the law by coming to this country, and these conflicting considerations are differentially appealing to liberals and conservatives.

The below graph illustrates this differential appeal with data from yourmorals.org.  I asked individuals how ‘wrong’ different situations felt to them.  Some concerned equity (“A person who contributes more to society is not rewarded.), equality (“A bonus is given to a work team for good performance and the money is not divided equally.”), need(“‘A free meal is given to the rich, rather than to the hungry.”), retribution (“A person commits a crime and goes unpunished.”), and procedures (“A negotiation occurs without everyone completely understanding the process.”).  These situations may all be of varying severity, so it is difficult to interpret differences between dimensions, but one can make inferences about liberals and conservatives within dimensions.  Specifically, liberals (in blue below) felt that violations of equality and need (which formed one factor) were more wrong than did conservatives.  Similarly, conservatives (in red below) felt that violations of retributive justice principles were more wrong than did liberals.

Fair policies toward migrant workers depend on what you want to focus on….their lack of equal status, equal opportunity and need (which liberals seem to care about more).  Or their illegal entry into the United States (which conservatives care more about).  Colbert says as much in a rare break of character when responding to questions during the congressional hearing.

- Ravi Iyer

I believe that people should be able to get what they deserve too. I don’t begrudge small businesses who succeed through hard work. I appreciate hard work as much as anyone. Does that mean that I should switch parties?

None of my posts would be complete without a graph, so I decided to look at some of our data on justice and fairness from yourmorals.org. Below is a graph of how various ideologies would view changing a hypothetical allocation of a reward from ambiguous toward the use of some specific type of justice or fairness.

Equity concerns giving more to those who contribute more.  Equality concerns making the distribution more equal.  Need concerns giving more to those who need it more. Open information concerns making sure everyone understands the process. Equal voice concerns allowing everyone an equal say in how to make the allocation. Retribution concerns giving less reward to those who violate some relevant group norm. Higher bars indicate that making a change toward that principle is more desirable.

What did I learn from this graph? Liberals do care more about equality and need than conservatives and conservatives do care more about equity and retribution.  However, both liberals and conservatives (and libertarians) find an equity based distribution (e.g. “Suppose the company instituted a way of quantifying each employee’s contributions, and it then adjusted the bonuses up or down accordingly”) to be more desirable to an equal distribution (e.g. “Suppose the company divided the money such that each employee received an equal share.“)  This somewhat captures how I feel about things.  I care about people getting what they deserve, but perhaps I am willing to consider equality and need in some situations as well.

Below is another graph using different participants, which concerns endorsement of abstract principles rather than hypothetical allocations and again, we see that the proportionality principle (e.g. “Whether or not those who contribute more are rewarded more”) is deemed most important.

The take home message for Democrats? Stop letting Republicans define policy as choices between equity and equality/need. Nobody will support trying to stop small businesses from succeeding…few people want a completely equal society.

Rather, let’s see if people are really getting what they deserve in life.  Do investment bankers really deserve million dollar bonuses?  I don’t think they necessarily produce much more than many, and obviously in the past few years, their collective output has been negative. So I see taxing banks to recoup losses as a matter of equity/proportionality, not equality.

How about the working poor who work hard and then are bankrupted by a single medical expense? What percentage of Americans actually make enough money to pay for a chronic illness? We all need health care that doesn’t go away when we get really sick and need to use it. Maybe health care isn’t a right in the minds of most Americans, but one could make an equity based argument for making sure the working poor have health care. Does Glenn Beck’s father, who owned a bakery and therefore would have immense trouble buying health care without a large risk pool, deserve health care less than those investment bankers who drove the economy into the ground with high risk derivatives?  If not, maybe there is an equity based argument to be made about that.

Democrats should welcome a debate about how to really give people what they deserve in life, rather than feeding the perception that they want to create a perfectly equal society. Republicans, on the other hand, are doing well to define themselves as the party of equity.

- Ravi Iyer