New research published in PLOS One suggests that people may expect to engage in more unethical behavior when they perceive higher levels of economic inequality in society. This finding could have implications for societal trust and cooperation.
Economic inequality has been a growing concern globally, with uneven distribution of wealth and income within society affecting various aspects of life.
Previous studies have linked higher inequality to increased unethical behaviors such as corruption and crime.
However, it was unclear whether individuals are aware of this link and whether it influences their expectations of how they would behave on an everyday basis.
Led by Anita Schmalor, researchers at the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto conducted a series of studies to explore whether perceptions of economic inequality could influence people’s expectations of engaging in unethical behavior.
The studies involved over 3,000 American participants in total, and used a combination of 4 studies, each with different experimental manipulations.
In study 1, participants were asked to imagine living in societies with different levels of inequality. In study 2a and 2b, participants assessed their perceptions of inequality in their actual lives. In study 3, participants were informed via a short video that either described that inequality has been increasing over the last few decades, or that inequality has dropped due to increases in social spending.
For each of the studies, the participants then reported how likely they would be to engage in various unethical behaviors, such as eating food without paying at a restaurant where they worked, or keeping a pair of pants that was delivered to the wrong address.
The results showed that in studies 1 and 2, participants who perceived higher inequality were marginally more likely to expect they would behave unethically. However, the findings were not consistent across all studies. Participants in study 3 who were presented with the video centered on high inequality did not report they would be more likely to act unethically, compared with participants in the low inequality condition.
Because of the discrepant findings, an internal meta-analysis was conducted. It revealed a small but significant overall effect, suggesting a potential link between inequality perceptions and expectations of unethical behavior.
The authors proposed, “the results of this research provide a plausible mechanism for the common finding of past research that higher economic inequality is associated with lower levels of trust. As suggested by the present research, people are expecting that they will act more unethically. In turn, this belief may then decrease levels of trust. If people expect that they will act more unethically, societal functioning and cooperation may become undermined. Further, this belief may also increase the actual occurrence of unethical behavior.”
The studies have several limitations, including the lack of measuring actual unethical behavior, which could differ from people’s expectations and self-reported beliefs of their behaviors. Additionally, the studies were conducted only within the USA, where there are higher levels of inequality compared to other industrialized countries, which limits generalizability of findings.
The study, “When are people more open to cheating? Economic inequality makes people expect more everyday unethical behavior”, was authored by Anita Schmalor, Adrian K. Schroeder, and Steven J. Heine.