The Tobin Project has identified the following research questions as particularly valuable for advancing

collective understanding of economic inequality’s effects on individual decision making. The questions
are divided into six relevant topic areas. Some of these questions emerged during discussion at our 2019
Conference on Inequality and Decision Making.

Inequality, Geography, and Perceptions

Broad Research Questions

 How do people become aware of high and rising economic inequality, and how do they become
aware of their own relative economic status?
 At what geographic scale(s) do individuals most acutely or relevantly experience economic
inequality?
 In which spaces do individuals encounter or perceive the presence of inequality, and how do
these spaces vary across populations?
 How can researchers study the interactions between information about inequality that
individuals receive digitally, such as via social media, and the information they gather through
interacting with their physical environments?

Specific Research Questions

 What kind of social comparisons do people make in different spaces, and which spaces
encountered in daily life—such as airplanes or sports stadia—might prompt particular
recognition of inequality? How might environments that elicit feelings of community or shared
purpose alter these comparisons?
 How does the physical layout and built environment of a given place affect perceptions of
inequality?
o Are there particular locales or situations where inequality is rendered highly obvious,
and where individuals’ attitudinal or behavioral responses to such environments could
be studied?
o To what degree, if at all, do individuals’ reactions to inequality in their surrounding
environments map onto their responses to more generalized economic inequality (e.g.,
at the national level)?
 What are the effects of relative economic heterogeneity (as distinct from the effects of average
income level)—in locales such as schools, religious communities, neighborhoods, or
commuting zones—on outcomes such as attitude formation or children’s economic success
later in life?
 Does geographic isolation of the very wealthy or very poor affect those populations’
perceptions of the and their place within the distribution?
o What other populations might be less exposed to the presence of inequality?
o Among populations with little exposure to economic inequality, what effects does this
exposure have when it does occur?
  Growing economic inequality over the long term may reshape demography, settlement patterns,
and the physical geography of neighborhoods. How, if at all, does inequality differently change
various groups of people’s movement patterns? What consequences might these changes have
for perceptions of inequality?
 Do certain personal characteristics—such as economic background, partisan affiliation, and
race—shape how individuals perceive and understand information about economic inequality,
and if so, how?

Inequality and Social Comparisons

Broad Research Questions

 When individuals make comparisons between their own economic statuses and those of others,
to whom do they compare themselves?
 What are the roles of geography, media diet, and other factors in shaping people’s reference
groups?
 What indicators tend to be particularly salient to individuals’ perceptions of economic
inequality, and are these indicators reliable measurements?

Specific Research Questions

 Do people compare themselves to all of those around them, or primarily to a smaller group of
“people like them?” Who is included in that group?
 Does rising economic inequality change the kinds of comparisons that people make?
 How should researchers make sense of the fact that the extent of economic inequality at the zip
code-, state-, and country-levels is correlated with different (and sometimes contradictory)
measures of relative happiness? At which levels are others’ incomes most salient in evaluating
one’s own position?
 How does social media trigger status comparisons, and how does information about status from
media sources interact with information provided by one’s physical environment?
 What role do social comparisons play in influencing different forms of subjective well-being?
 How can we disaggregate the effects of relative income inequality on well-being from the
effects of lack of material resources?
 What connection, if any, do social comparisons’ effects on happiness and subjective well-being
have to consumer decision making?
 What are the potential macro-level consequences of such inequality-driven comparisons, from
effects on population health to household savings rates and asset market bubbles?
Inequality, Politics, and Group Dynamics

Broad Research Questions

 How, if at all, does rising economic inequality change individuals’ biases toward those in their
own ‘in-group(s),’ or attitudes towards those in ‘out-groups’?
 How does high and rising inequality shape the political attitudes and actions of citizens across
the economic distribution?

Specific Research Questions

 Does increasing economic inequality (or decreasing economic mobility) exacerbate intergroup
bias, and if so, which kinds of groups are most susceptible to these effects?
o How might inequality’s effects on intergroup bias be mediated by geographic space or
by institutions such as media outlets or political parties?
o Are these effects universal across groups, or do they vary by population or by one’s
place in the economic distribution?
o How may the shape of economic distribution within or between groups mediate these
impacts?
o What are the best strategies for studying these effects, given the ways that economic
inequality is co-mingled in the U.S. with a wide variety of group identities?
 What role do individuals’ perceptions of the level of economic fairness in society play in
exacerbating bias across group lines?
o Might those at the lower end of the distribution express more intergroup bias when they
perceive the economic distribution as “unfair?”
o Does this relationship differ for those at the top end?
o How are in- and out-group attitudes differently impacted by objective levels of
economic inequality versus the relative ease of economic mobility?
 Do inequality’s effects on group dynamics mediate individuals’ political responses to inequality?
For example, do individuals associate particular group identities with certain political parties or
kinds of political action more strongly as inequality rises?
 Does rising economic inequality increase partisan polarization? Does inequality increase
“affective polarization,” wherein individuals become less willing to socialize with others who do
not share their political affiliation?
 Does inequality intensify group conflict in ways that further entrench the political conditions
that foster inequality? Conference participants hypothesized that economic inequality may
heighten the effectiveness of political agendas that combine racial or other group-based appeals
with opposition to redistribution, thus recursively contributing to inequality.
Inequality and the Top-End

Broad Research Questions

 Where and how do those at the top-end of the economic distribution become aware (either
consciously or not) of rising inequality?
 What kinds of psychological responses do people at or near the top-end exhibit as inequality
rises?
 How do such psychological responses alter the behaviors of those at the top-end, both over the
course of their daily lives (such as through reduced sociability or effectiveness as leaders) and in
larger societal contexts (such as through changed engagement in charitable giving or political
activities)? Could such behaviors have cumulative effects that would increase the degree of
economic inequality in the U.S.?

Specific Research Questions

 Does high inequality alter the kinds of interpersonal comparisons made by those at the top-
end? Does it result in increased status anxiety?
 Some evidence suggests that if one primes high income individuals with information about the
high level of economic inequality in their home state—and their own position within the
skew—they are more selfish in experimental “social games.” Are these findings reflective of
individual behavior in the real world?
 Have the particular locations and networks that people at the top-end inhabit (such as wealthy
neighborhoods and elite universities, firms, or parts of the government) changed with growing
inequality? If so, how (if at all) might these changes affect perceptions of inequality’s extent?
 Does rising economic inequality cause individuals at the top-end in particular to find high
inequality more justified?
 Some studies suggest that attending universities with particularly affluent student bodies causes
students to adopt more conservative or efficiency-minded political preferences. Why might
some students’ preferences change, at what point in time, and does this process differ by factors
such as students’ personal characteristics or educational experiences?
 Might increasing inequality shift economic elites’ political preferences (including with respect to
redistribution), perhaps as a result of increased feelings that economic disparities are justified?
 Do the origins and type of one’s income—labor vs. capital, earned vs. inherited—impact the
political attitudes and social behaviors of wealthy individuals?
 Wealthy individuals are unlikely to respond to surveys or sign up for MTurk-type experiments;
how can researchers procure data on their attitudes and actions?
Inequality and the Workplace

Broad Research Questions

 How do the degree and visibility of inequality within the workplace affect employees’ job
satisfaction and performance, especially with respect to risk-taking?
 Can research on how pay inequality shapes attitudes and behaviors in the workplace reveal
economic inequality’s effects in other social contexts?

Specific Research Questions

 Preliminary research suggests that individuals are often willing to tolerate large vertical pay
inequalities (i.e., between workers and their supervisors) but less willing to tolerate large
horizontal inequalities (i.e., between coworker peers).
o How might heterogeneity of employees, workplace biases, or levels of trust within the
workplace affect these results?
o How do feelings of autonomy and power within the workplace affect an individual’s
willingness to tolerate economic inequality?
o How might these effects vary by industry, office size or structure, workplace hierarchy,
or other aspects of a firm’s organization?
 How, if at all, do inequalities of compensation within the workplace interact with workers’ pre-
existing identities and socioeconomic backgrounds?
 Do certain types of individuals tend to self-select into high inequality workplaces? How does
this affect their willingness to tolerate pay gaps?
o Is there a relationship between the level of inequality within a particular firm and the
kinds of individuals who end up in positions of leadership within them? If so, is it
causal? Does the presence of those leaders increase stratification, or vice versa?
 How do individuals conceive of their reference groups for salary comparisons? Does workplace
fissuring, such as through subcontracting, affect perceptions of who one’s peers are?
 How would introducing pay transparency into a firm affect workers’ collective bargaining
power, individual pay negotiations, and the firm’s overall pay distribution? What effects would it
have on competitor firms?
 Does instituting pay transparency in a workplace change individuals’ willingness or comfort in
talking about their finances outside of that workplace?
 What kinds of research strategies can scholars further employ to gather data on inequality and
employee behavior within real-world firms? Are there untapped natural experiments that
scholars can capitalize on?
Inequality and Health

Broad Research Questions

 What do we know about how changes in levels of economic inequality shape health behaviors
and outcomes?
 What research strategies could scholars employ to separate out the effects of exposure to
relative economic inequality from the health consequences of lack of resources or low
socioeconomic status itself?

Specific Research Questions

 What are the specific physiological pathways between inequality and adverse health outcomes?
Which mechanisms or hypotheses linking inequality and health outcomes should be prioritized
in future research?
o For example, should researchers look to inequality’s possible effects on individuals’
propensities to take risks or to invest in their long-term health?
o Does inequality affect neural development? Should researchers look to neurological
pathways linking repeated exposure to stress and physiological outcomes?
o Does inequality affect stress pathways that increase vulnerability to certain diseases?
o What laboratory experiments could help to establish external validity of these effects?
 What is the etiological (or gestation) period between exposure to inequality and observed health
effects?
o How might experiencing economic inequality at different stages of life result in differing
health outcomes?
o Might beliefs about economic mobility and one’s future economic prospects affect
one’s likelihood to engage in risky health behaviors?
o Might such outcomes vary in duration and acuteness?
 At what geographic scale are inequality’s impacts on health most salient?
o If perceptions of status and well-being—and perhaps by extension, health behaviors—
are a product of one’s day-to-day exposure to economic inequality, how should
researchers understand the relationship between general and local inequality with
respect to health outcomes?
o Taking into account the disparities in availability and quality of healthcare, does
economic segregation mediate some of the adverse health effects of inequality?
 Is inequality more notable for its effects (if any) on average population health, or its effects on
the differentials between individuals’ health?
 Is there a causal relationship between high inequality and the decline in U.S. life expectancy
relative to other G7 countries since the late 1980s?
 Might high inequality at the top end of the income distribution change doctors’ practices (such
as encouraging specialization in rare and highly expensive treatments) in ways that affect
healthcare outcomes?