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How to distribute resources between different individuals and groups is one of the basic dilemmas of social life. All known surplus-producing societies are organised as social hierarchies where some groups of people have more resources and better opportunities and life conditions than other groups. Some societies, such as the Indian caste-system, are strongly hierarchical, others like the Nordic welfare states less so. Yet, even in Scandinavia some groups - like ethnic Danes or Norwegians - hold higher status than other groups such as immigrants and refugees.
The question is how societal hierarchies stabilise and arise.
Researchers from Norway (University of Oslo), Denmark (Aarhus University), New Zealand (Victoria Wellington University) and the US (Harvard University) have conducted an investigation into the association between societal inequality and instability and psychological motives for group dominance with about 45,000 persons across 27 nations and 30 American states.
The result is clear: The greater the societal inequality and instability, the more the groups on top of society tend to support a hierarchy between groups, protecting their own privileged status.
"What we see is a self-fulfilling process where greater societal inequality motivates the group at the top to use even violent means to maintain such inequality. This, in turn, may lead to even more inequality and even extremist violence. This results in a vicious circle," says the senior author of the study, Lotte Thomsen, associate professor in psychology, University of Oslo, Norway and in political science at Aarhus BSS, Aarhus University, Denmark.
phys.org
The question is how societal hierarchies stabilise and arise.
Researchers from Norway (University of Oslo), Denmark (Aarhus University), New Zealand (Victoria Wellington University) and the US (Harvard University) have conducted an investigation into the association between societal inequality and instability and psychological motives for group dominance with about 45,000 persons across 27 nations and 30 American states.
The result is clear: The greater the societal inequality and instability, the more the groups on top of society tend to support a hierarchy between groups, protecting their own privileged status.
"What we see is a self-fulfilling process where greater societal inequality motivates the group at the top to use even violent means to maintain such inequality. This, in turn, may lead to even more inequality and even extremist violence. This results in a vicious circle," says the senior author of the study, Lotte Thomsen, associate professor in psychology, University of Oslo, Norway and in political science at Aarhus BSS, Aarhus University, Denmark.
The vicious circle of inequality
How to distribute resources between different individuals and groups is one of the basic dilemmas of social life. All known surplus-producing societies are organised as social hierarchies where some groups of people have more resources and better opportunities and life conditions than other...
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