Replication data for: The Status Quo and Perceptions of Fairness: How Income Inequality Influences Public Opinion

This dissertation argues that public opinion regarding the acceptability and desirability of income differences is affected by actual income inequality. Cross-national survey evidence is combined with laboratory and survey experiments to show that estimates regarding appropriate income differences depend on (perceptions of) real income differences. When income inequality changes, public opinion \"habituates\" by adjusting expectations for fair levels of inequality in the same direction as the factual change. The adjustment occurs because humans are subject to status quo bias and have a motivated tendency to believe in a just world. In the context of increasing inequality in developed democracies over the last 40 years, the implication is that normative expectations for appropriate levels of inequality have adjusted up. This habituation process helps explain why increases in inequality have not been accompanied by increased demands for redistribution and why cross-national variation in income inequality is not clearly linked to public opposition to such inequality. The dissertation starts by showing that in each of 32 countries, perceptions of occupational income inequality predict inequality ideals. The causal relationship is then established in a series of experiments. In a laboratory experiment, participants who take part in a game with unequal money prizes subsequently recommend a more unequal split of prize money than participants who play a more equal game. A survey experiment shows that the predicted adjustment also occurs with perceptions of real income inequality: survey respondents who receive information regarding true income inequality in the United States recommend larger occupational income differences as ideal than do individuals who do not receive this information. The final chapter shows that the habituation phenomenon is affected by the motivation to think of the social system as fai r: activating the system justification motive among Democrats reduces the otherwise robust partisan gap in ideal income inequalities to statistically insignificant levels. This last finding implies that the broader political context can affect the strength of the habituation process in public opinion.