How success and political opinions shape redistribution
Short link: https://bit.ly/2ICiBSZ
Vincent Berthet, Camille Dorin, Jean-Christophe Vergnaud, Vincent de Gardelle*
Individual preferences in redistribution is a topic of great interest for economics and political science scholars. Two main factors determine these preferences: personal interest and equity. Fairly obviously, economic interests push wealthy individuals to tend to prefer less redistribution and poor ones to tend to prefer more redistribution. In addition, the degree of redistribution that a society chooses also reflects beliefs about the causes of wealth inequalities: if we think that these inequalities are linked to chance, or to forces that individuals do not control, then redistribution seems fairer than if they are seen as linked to efforts and choices that people make, for example. However, we also know that beliefs about the relative weights of chance and effort in the creation of inequality themselves depend on the position of individuals on the ladder of inequality. Thus, in 2016, a study in experimental economics showed that when participants are told that they have succeeded at a task, they attribute their success to their efforts, rather than to chance, and opt for less redistribution of the wealth gained through the completion of the task. But is this volatility of beliefs and redistribution choices in the face of success or failure the same for everyone?
In this study, Vincent Berthet, Camille Dorin, Jean-Christophe Vergnaud, Vincent de Gardelle repeated earlier work while measuring the political opinions of the participants. The experiment was conducted during the two rounds of the 2017 French presidential election, involving the collection of the votes and political opinions of participants. The sample consisted mainly of left-wing voters. Participants first carried out a computerised cognitive task whose degree of difficulty was established randomly. Then they learned how their performance compared with others (“over-performers” vs “under-performers”), which was, in fact, the result of a random manipulation of the difficulty. Finally, they were asked to redistribute the money gained in the task between fictive subjects, one rich and one poor. The results revealed that those who voted for Emmanuel Macron redistributed less than those who voted for Benoit Hamon, who in turn redistributed less than those who voted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, conforming to expectations based on the political alignment of the participants. More surprisingly, the data also show that the effect of their status on redistribution (that is, that “over-performers” redistribute less than “under-performers”) was only found among the Mélenchon voters. In other words, the Mélenchon voters appear to be more sensitive to the news of their success or failure at the task. This suggests that different political groupings within the left treat the information they receive differently and are more or less volatile in their beliefs and their choices about redistribution. In the current social and political context, it seems crucial to have a better understanding of these differences, especially if certain social groups are more susceptible to being influenced than others.
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References
Original title of the article : How does symbolic success affect redistribution in left-wing voters? A focus on the 2017 French presidential election
Published in : PLoS ONE, 2020
Available at : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229096
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