Abstract
Societal inequality has been found to harm the mental and physical health of its members and undermine overall social cohesion. Here, we tested the hypothesis that economic inequality is associated with a wish for a strong leader in a study involving 28 countries from five continents (Study 1, N = 6,112), a study involving an Australian community sample (Study 2, N = 515), and two experiments (Study 3a, N = 96; Study 3b, N = 296). We found correlational (Studies 1 and 2) and experimental (Studies 3a and 3b) evidence for our prediction that higher inequality enhances the wish for a strong leader. We also found that this relationship is mediated by perceptions of anomie, except in the case of objective inequality in Study 1. This suggests that societal inequality enhances the perception that society is breaking down (anomie) and that a strong leader is needed to restore order (even when that leader is willing to challenge democratic values).
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1625-1637 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Psychological Science |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue number | 11 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Nov 2019 |
Funding
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7261-3207 Sprong Stefanie 1 Jetten Jolanda 2 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9071-2348 Wang Zhechen 2 3 Peters Kim 4 Mols Frank 5 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0137-1527 Verkuyten Maykel 6 Bastian Brock 7 Ariyanto Amarina 8 Autin Frédérique 9 Ayub Nadia 10 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7459-4698 Badea Constantina 11 Besta Tomasz 12 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8856-4374 Butera Fabrizio 13 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1509-6397 Costa-Lopes Rui 14 Cui Lijuan 15 Fantini Carole 16 Finchilescu Gillian 17 Gaertner Lowell 18 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4310-4793 Gollwitzer Mario 19 Gómez Ángel 20 González Roberto 21 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3172-9243 Hong Ying-Yi 22 Jensen Dorthe Høj 23 Jasinskaja-Lahti Inga 24 Karasawa Minoru 25 Kessler Thomas 26 Klein Olivier 27 Lima Marcus 28 Mégevand Laura 29 Morton Thomas 30 Paladino Paola 31 Polya Tibor 32 Renvik Tuuli Anna 33 34 Ruza Aleksejs 35 Shahrazad Wan 36 Shama Sushama 37 Smith Heather J. 38 Torres Ana Raquel 39 van der Bles Anne Marthe 40 Wohl Michael J. A. 41 1 Department of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin 2 School of Psychology, University of Queensland 3 School of Basic Medical Sciences & Forensic Medicine, Hangzhou Medical College 4 Department of Psychology, University of Exeter 5 School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland 6 Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science, Utrecht University 7 School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne 8 Faculty of Psychology, University of Indonesia 9 Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition et l’Apprentissage, Université de Poitiers, Université de Tours, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique 10 Business Psychology Department, Institute of Business Management, Karachi, Pakistan 11 Psychology Department, Université Paris Nanterre 12 Institute of Psychology, University of Gdańsk 13 Institute of Psychology, University of Lausanne 14 Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon 15 School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University 16 Department of Psychology, Université Libre de Bruxelles 17 Psychology Department, University of the Witwatersrand 18 Department of Psychology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville 19 Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München 20 Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia 21 School of Psychology, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile 22 Department of Marketing, Business School, Chinese University of Hong Kong 23 Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences, Aarhus University 24 Department of Social Research, University of Helsinki 25 Department of Cognitive & Psychological Sciences, Nagoya University 26 Department of Psychology, University of Jena 27 Faculty of Psychological Sciences and Education, Université Libre de Bruxelles 28 Psychology Department, Federal University of Sergipe 29 School of Social Sciences, ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon 30 Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen 31 Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento 32 Institute for Psychology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences 33 Department of Social Psychology, University of Helsinki 34 Open University, University of Helsinki 35 Social Psychology Department, Daugavpils University 36 School of Psychology and Human Development, National University of Malaysia 37 Department of Education, Kurukshetra University 38 Department of Psychology, Sonoma State University 39 Department of Psychology, Federal University of Paraíba 40 Department of Social Psychology, University of Groningen 41 Department of Psychology, Carleton University Jolanda Jetten, University of Queensland, School of Psychology, St. Lucia, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia E-mail: [email protected] 9 2019 0956797619875472 27 6 2018 16 8 2019 © The Author(s) 2019 2019 Association for Psychological Science Societal inequality has been found to harm the mental and physical health of its members and undermine overall social cohesion. Here, we tested the hypothesis that economic inequality is associated with a wish for a strong leader in a study involving 28 countries from five continents (Study 1, N = 6,112), a study involving an Australian community sample (Study 2, N = 515), and two experiments (Study 3a, N = 96; Study 3b, N = 296). We found correlational (Studies 1 and 2) and experimental (Studies 3a and 3b) evidence for our prediction that higher inequality enhances the wish for a strong leader. We also found that this relationship is mediated by perceptions of anomie, except in the case of objective inequality in Study 1. This suggests that societal inequality enhances the perception that society is breaking down (anomie) and that a strong leader is needed to restore order (even when that leader is willing to challenge democratic values). economic inequality subjective and objective inequality anomie leadership authoritarianism populism preregistered the Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Research CIIR 15110006 australian research council https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000923 DP170101008 the Center for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies 15130009 special-property preregistration edited-state corrected-proof Action Editor Ayse K. Uskul served as action editor for this article. Author Contributions S. Sprong and J. Jetten conceived and designed the studies. Data were analyzed by the first three authors. The first seven authors drafted the manuscript. All the authors were involved in data collection, provided input and feedback on the manuscript, and approved the final manuscript for submission. ORCID iDs Stefanie Sprong https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7261-3207 Zhechen Wang https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9071-2348 Maykel Verkuyten https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0137-1527 Constantina Badea https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7459-4698 Fabrizio Butera https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8856-4374 Rui Costa-Lopes https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1509-6397 Mario Gollwitzer https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4310-4793 Ying-Yi Hong https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3172-9243 Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author(s) declared that there were no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship or the publication of this article. Funding This work was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery grant (DP170101008), the Center for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (15130009), and the Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Research (15110006). Supplemental Material Additional supporting information can be found at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0956797619875472 Open Practices Data and materials for this study have not been made publicly available but can be obtained by e-mailing the corresponding author. The design and analysis plans for Study 3b, which was conducted in response to a reviewer’s comment, were preregistered on the Open Science Framework ( https://osf.io/wjad2 ). The complete Open Practices Disclosure for this article can be found at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0956797619875472 . This article has received the badge for Preregistration. More information about the Open Practices badges can be found at http://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/badges .
Keywords
- anomie
- authoritarianism
- economic inequality
- leadership
- populism
- preregistered
- subjective and objective inequality
