Support for redistribution is shaped by compassion, envy, and self-interest, but not a taste for fairness.

ABSTRACT: Why do people support economic redistribution? Hypotheses include inequity aversion, a moral sense that inequality is intrinsically unfair, and cultural explanations such as exposure to and assimilation of culturally transmitted ideologies. However, humans have been interacting with worse-off and better-off individuals over evolutionary time, and our motivational systems may have been naturally selected to navigate the opportunities and challenges posed by such recurrent interactions. We hypothesize that modern redistribution is perceived as an ancestral scene involving three notional players: the needy other, the better-off other, and the actor herself. We explore how three motivational systems-compassion, self-interest, and envy-guide responses to the needy other and the better-off other

SUBMITTER: Sznycer D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5547621 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature