The report (pdf) from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on public attitudes to inequality has attracted intelligent comment. But it poses the question I asked in another context: why should we care about public opinion? The question: what is just? is not the same as: what is popular?
I have three general concerns here.
1. Perceptions of fairness can be coloured by a “people like us” effect. We naturally think that folk like us are more deserving. This new paper (pdf) discovers a sinister manifestation of this:
I have three general concerns here.
1. Perceptions of fairness can be coloured by a “people like us” effect. We naturally think that folk like us are more deserving. This new paper (pdf) discovers a sinister manifestation of this:
We find significant racial bias in perceptions of worthiness: respondents rate recipients of their own racial group as more worthy.
Although that paper found that actual behaviour - charitable giving - wasn’t influenced by racism, other research has found that it is.
There seems to be a “people like us” effect in these findings. People are both resentful of those richer than them and hard upon those poorer.
2. There’s a lack of local experts. For example, 75% of people disagree with the statement “rich people at the top have a really tough time overall because they work hard, with more stress and responsibility than other groups.” But unless you’ve worked at high incomes, or known well those who have, how would you know this?
My own experience suggests the 7% who agree with it might be nearer the mark. When I downshifted ages ago from a job in (around) the top 2% of earners, I felt better for it, and many former colleagues were envious of me; “If only I didn’t have kids…” was a common phrase. Of course, my experience might be wrong. But it is experience, not a view pulled out of my jacksy.
It’s not just in attitudes to the rich that such ignorance manifests itself. 69% agree that “there is enough opportunity for virtually everyone to get on in life if they really want to.” But, again, how would you know this, unless you’d grown up at the bottom of the pack - say in a children’s home going to a bad school?
3. Cognitive biases matter. One of these is the “just world” belief; as Tim Horton, who led the research says, people invent reasons for believing things are fair. Another is the fundamental attribution error; as the report says: “participants in our discussion groups tended to attribute success or failure overwhelmingly to individual rather than structural factors.” Funnily enough, though, this is more marked in theor attitudes to the poor than to the rich.
Now, I don’t mean to disrepect the JRF’s research here. All I’m saying is that there’s no reason to suppose that public opinion about justice should coincide with what is actually just. After all, if it did we could ditch 2500 years of political philosophy and use opinion polls instead.
There seems to be a “people like us” effect in these findings. People are both resentful of those richer than them and hard upon those poorer.
2. There’s a lack of local experts. For example, 75% of people disagree with the statement “rich people at the top have a really tough time overall because they work hard, with more stress and responsibility than other groups.” But unless you’ve worked at high incomes, or known well those who have, how would you know this?
My own experience suggests the 7% who agree with it might be nearer the mark. When I downshifted ages ago from a job in (around) the top 2% of earners, I felt better for it, and many former colleagues were envious of me; “If only I didn’t have kids…” was a common phrase. Of course, my experience might be wrong. But it is experience, not a view pulled out of my jacksy.
It’s not just in attitudes to the rich that such ignorance manifests itself. 69% agree that “there is enough opportunity for virtually everyone to get on in life if they really want to.” But, again, how would you know this, unless you’d grown up at the bottom of the pack - say in a children’s home going to a bad school?
3. Cognitive biases matter. One of these is the “just world” belief; as Tim Horton, who led the research says, people invent reasons for believing things are fair. Another is the fundamental attribution error; as the report says: “participants in our discussion groups tended to attribute success or failure overwhelmingly to individual rather than structural factors.” Funnily enough, though, this is more marked in theor attitudes to the poor than to the rich.
Now, I don’t mean to disrepect the JRF’s research here. All I’m saying is that there’s no reason to suppose that public opinion about justice should coincide with what is actually just. After all, if it did we could ditch 2500 years of political philosophy and use opinion polls instead.
"But unless you’ve worked at high incomes, or known well those who have, how would you know this?"
Maybe they deduced it from the absolute lack of consequences for the fantastically remunerated incompetents in the financial sector.
If one can utterly fail at one's job on every conceivable level without suffering any practical loss or hardship at all it seems unlikely that that job would either require ceaseless Stakhanovite effort or be a particular source of stress.
Posted by: Scratch | June 25, 2009 at 06:34 PM
Your personal experience on point two is interesting, Chris. You "felt better" for downshifting, but put another way, didn't you feel better for moving to a less stressful situation? For you, that was downshifting, but for others that could as well be promotion.
And incidentally, I would suspect that the top 2% of earners could downshift significantly and still afford kids, else how am I managing it?
All of which is utterly tangential to the point of another of your insightful posts, but still.
Posted by: Quinn | June 26, 2009 at 09:32 AM
@Quinn,
It isn't the children themselves (although from experience those range from the expensive to the perilously ruinous) but the public school fees.
As Chris says here, these are pricey - £20000 per year in fees plus £lots in additional costs is going to lead to needing, per child, well above the median national wage in pre-tax income. Have a couple of sloany sprogs, a London mortgage and you are looking at £100k being "relatively poor". Certainly, school fees planning (at a posh but day school) for their brood was a major preoccupation for a previous boss and his wife and definitely drove their career decisions.
On the more general side, I have always felt that one of the main messages you need to get across as a parent is that the world is not fair and that you just need to cope with it. And has anybody thought just how unattractive a 100% 'fair' world would be?
Posted by: Surreptitious Evil | July 02, 2009 at 08:51 AM
Education costs for those of us who live outside the catchment area of good schools are truly crippling. This is why some of us are so obsessed about the failure of state schools.
The main argument in the post, however, is compelling. Thanks for producing such consistently thought-provoking, insightful posts.
Posted by: Steve Hemingway | July 04, 2009 at 09:19 PM