Why Nobody Feels Rich: The Psychology Of Inequality

When Keith Payne was in the fourth grade, he realized he was poor. The epiphany came to him in the cafeteria.

“We had a new cashier in the line that day,” he said. “And when I got to the cashier’s desk she asked me for, I think it was $1.25. That was the first time that anybody had ever asked me to pay for my lunch because I’d always been on free lunch.”

Keith had been blissfully unaware that many of his classmates were paying for their meals every day. But now, he began comparing himself with his peers.

“It’s not like I was poorer the day after that than I was before. Nothing objective had changed. But because of that subjective awareness, now everything seemed different to me.”

Keith Payne is now a social psychologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He’s the author of The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die. He says it’s human nature to compare ourselves to others. But that instinct can cause psychological stress.

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Additional Resources:

“Physical and situational inequality on airplanes predicts air rage,” by Katherine A. DeCellesa and Michael I. Norton, 2016

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