High economic inequality is linked to greater moralization

Kelly Kirkland; Paul A M Van Lange; Drew Gorenz; Khandis Blake; Catherine E Amiot; Liisi Ausmees; Peter Baguma; Oumar Barry; Maja Becker; Michal Bilewicz; Watcharaporn Boonyasiriwat; Robert W Booth; Thomas Castelain; Giulio Costantini; Girts Dimdins; Agustín Espinosa; Gillian Finchilescu; Ronald Fischer; Malte Friese; Ángel Gómez; Roberto González; Nobuhiko Goto; Peter Halama; Camilo Hurtado-Parrado; Ruby D Ilustrisimo; Gabriela M Jiga-Boy; Peter Kuppens; Steve Loughnan; Khairul A Mastor; Neil McLatchie; Lindsay M Novak; Blessing N Onyekachi; Muhammad Rizwan; Mark Schaller; Eleonora Serafimovska; Eunkook M Suh; William B Swann Jr; Eddie M W Tong; Ana Torres; Rhiannon N Turner; Christin-Melanie Vauclair; Alexander Vinogradov; Zhechen Wang; Victoria Wai Lan Yeung; Brock Bastian

doi:10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae221

High economic inequality is linked to greater moralization

PNAS Nexus. 2024 Jun 5;3(7):pgae221. doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae221. eCollection 2024 Jul.

Authors

Kelly Kirkland^{1

2}, Paul A M Van Lange³, Drew Gorenz⁴, Khandis Blake¹, Catherine E Amiot⁵, Liisi Ausmees⁶, Peter Baguma⁷, Oumar Barry⁸, Maja Becker⁹, Michal Bilewicz¹⁰, Watcharaporn Boonyasiriwat¹¹, Robert W Booth¹², Thomas Castelain¹³, Giulio Costantini¹⁴, Girts Dimdins¹⁵, Agustín Espinosa¹⁶, Gillian Finchilescu¹⁷, Ronald Fischer¹⁸, Malte Friese¹⁹, Ángel Gómez²⁰, Roberto González²¹, Nobuhiko Goto²², Peter Halama²³, Camilo Hurtado-Parrado²⁴, Ruby D Ilustrisimo²⁵, Gabriela M Jiga-Boy²⁶, Peter Kuppens²⁷, Steve Loughnan²⁸, Khairul A Mastor²⁹, Neil McLatchie³⁰, Lindsay M Novak³¹, Blessing N Onyekachi³², Muhammad Rizwan³³, Mark Schaller³⁴, Eleonora Serafimovska³⁵, Eunkook M Suh³⁶, William B Swann Jr³⁷, Eddie M W Tong³⁸, Ana Torres³⁹, Rhiannon N Turner⁴⁰, Christin-Melanie Vauclair⁴¹, Alexander Vinogradov⁴², Zhechen Wang^{43

2}, Victoria Wai Lan Yeung^{44

45}, Brock Bastian¹

Affiliations

¹ Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, 3052, Australia.
² School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, 4072, Australia.
³ Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 1075 BT, The Netherlands.
⁴ Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA.
⁵ Department of Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, H2L 2C4, Canada.
⁶ Institute of Psychology, University of Tartu, Tartu, 50090, Estonia.
⁷ Department of Educational, Organizational and Social Psychology, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.
⁸ Department of Psychology, Cheikh Anta Diop University, Dakar, 10700, Senegal.
⁹ CLLE, CNRS, Université de Toulouse, Toulouse, 31058, France.
¹⁰ Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, 00-183, Poland.
¹¹ Faculty of Psychology, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 10330, Thailand.
¹² Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabanci University, Istanbul, 34956, Turkey.
¹³ Serra Húnter Fellow, Department of Psychology, University of Girona, Girona, 17004, Spain.
¹⁴ Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, 20126, Italy.
¹⁵ Department of Psychology, University of Latvia, Riga, LV-1586, Latvia.
¹⁶ Departamento Académico de Psicología, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima, 15088, Peru.
¹⁷ Psychology Department, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2017, South Africa.
¹⁸ School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, 6012, New Zealand.
¹⁹ Department of Psychology, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, 66123, Germany.
²⁰ Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, UNED, Madrid, 28040, Spain.
²¹ Escuela de Psicología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, 8331150, Chile.
²² Graduate School of Social Sciences, Hitotsubashi University, Kunitachi, 186-8601, Japan.
²³ Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences, The Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, 814 38, Slovakia.
²⁴ School of Psychological and Behavioral Sciences, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901, USA.
²⁵ Department of Psychology, University of San Carlos, Cebu City, 6000, Philippines.
²⁶ School of Psychology, Swansea University, Swansea, Wales, SA2 8PP, UK.
²⁷ Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, 3000, Belgium.
²⁸ School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.
²⁹ School of Liberal Studies, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, 43600, Malaysia.
³⁰ Faculty of Science and Technology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, England, LA1 4YW, UK.
³¹ Department of Psychology, University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, IL, 60607, USA.
³² Department of Psychology, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, 410105, Nigeria.
³³ Department of Clinical Psychology, National University of Medical Sciences, Rawalpindi, 46220, Pakistan.
³⁴ Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z4, Canada.
³⁵ Institute for Sociological Political and Juridical Research, Ss Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Skopje, 1000, Macedonia.
³⁶ Department of Psychology, Yonsei University, Seoul, 03722, South Korea.
³⁷ Psychology Department, The University of Texas, Austin, TX, 78712, USA.
³⁸ Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, 119077, Singapore.
³⁹ Departamento de Psicologia, Federal University of Paraíba, João Pessoa, 58051-900, Brazil.
⁴⁰ School of Psychology, Queens University Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, BT7 1NN, UK.
⁴¹ Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), CIS-IUL, Lisbon, 1649-026, Portugal.
⁴² Faculty of Psychology, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Kyiv, 01033, Ukraine.
⁴³ School of Social Development and Public Policy, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China.
⁴⁴ Department of Psychology, Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong, China.
⁴⁵ Wofoo Joseph Lee Consulting and Counselling Psychology Research Centre, Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong, China.

Abstract

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.

Keywords: Twitter; anomie; economic inequality; moral judgments; moralization.