Published June 5, 2024 | Version v1
Journal article Open

High economic inequality is linked to greater moralization

Description

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.

Files

Kirkland(2024)_High economic_published version.pdf

Files (1.5 MB)

Additional details

Related works

Is previous version of
Preprint: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/5dnt8 (URL)
Is published in
Journal article: https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/3/7/pgae221/7687932 (URL)

Funding

European Commission
MULTIPREV - A Multi-Theory Multi-Method Approach for Preventing and Reducing Radicalization leading to Violence 101018172