Facets of economic inequality and redistributive preferences: Assessing the role of emotions

Abstract

Speakers: Franco Bastias, Universite Grenoble Alpes Sonja Zmerli, Science Po Grenoble - UGA Our presented research findings on the impact of emotions elicited in the face of economic inequalities on redistributive preferences report on an integral part of our comparative research project POLINEQUAL, which examines the politicisation of economic inequality in political and media discourse and its individual behavioural correlates in three different welfare regimes (France, Great Britain, and Sweden). In this vein, we aim to contribute to a better understanding of the hitherto overlooked affective foundations of citizens' inequality perceptions and redistributive preferences, which are only partially—as past research has amply demonstrated—determined by material self-interest. We posit that economic inequality in its different dimensions and aspects, i.e., income, wealth, the poor, the rich, social beneficiaries and taxpayers, triggers different sets of emotional responses, which, in turn, are differently and meaningfully associated with individuals' redistributive preferences while concomitantly interacting with individuals' subjective social status and ideological orientations, as well as reflecting the predominant national institutional context of welfare. Our empirical insights are based on two representative online surveys (N=6,000) collected shortly before the general elections in France and Great Britain in the summer of 2024. The selection of eight types of emotions, administered in these surveys, derives from several pre-tests, including quantitative and qualitative measurement instruments. We will present new insights into the breadth of emotions at play when perceptions of inequality are at stake. We also might offer new clues as to why demands for more redistribution are less vocal than societal levels of economic inequality would suggest.