Inequality in People’s Minds: An integrative psychological framework of perceptions of economic inequality

People’s perceptions of economic inequality are important predictors of their political attitudes and behaviors. Scholars across the social sciences have worked to understand people’s (mis)perceptions of inequality. Yet, scholars currently lack a common framework for integrating emerging findings and conceptualizing how these perceptions are formed. Here, we propose an integrative framework to help researchers highlight the psychological processes underlying how inequality is perceived. We draw on theories of perception, cognition, developmental, and social psychology to identify five interlinked, iterative components of the inequality perception process: (1) access to inequality cues, (2) attention to these cues, (3) comprehension of these cues, (4) motivated processing of these cues, and (5) meaningful summary representation of inequality. Our framework provides a roadmap for integrating research across disparate fields, making sense of current findings, and identifying novel challenges to advance future research.