Differences in Causal Attributions and Emotional Responses Across Income and Wealth Inequality

How individuals explain poverty has long been linked to different emotional responses. Causal attributions that refer to characteristics such as laziness or lack of effort on the part of disadvantaged individuals tend to elicit negative emotions towards them, whereas those that point to factors beyond the individual's control are associated with positive affect. However, far less is known about how individuals explain economic inequality, which, unlike poverty, inherently captures the system of relationships between advantaged and disadvantaged groups. To address this gap, this study pursues two related aims. First, it investigates attributions of income and wealth inequality and their emotional correlates. Second, it examines whether distinct emotional responses emerge when economic differences are represented as income or wealth inequality, rich or poor people, and taxpayers or social beneficiaries. Drawing on original representative online survey data collected in Great Britain ( N  = 3,002), France ( N  = 3,012), and Sweden ( N  = 3,000), the authors show that the government is identified as the principal cause of both income and wealth inequality across all three countries. At the same time, affluent individuals are more often held responsible for wealth inequality, whereas private companies are more frequently blamed for income inequality. Moreover, different causal attributions are associated with distinct emotional responses: attributing economic inequality to disadvantaged individuals is linked to lower levels of sadness, moral outrage, anger, and frustration. Finally, emotional responses to economic differences prove to be multi-targeted and multivalent, revealing distinctions between income and wealth inequality, as well as sharp contrasts with emotional responses towards economically advantaged and disadvantaged groups. Together, these findings provide a more nuanced understanding of how people explain and emotionally respond to different manifestations of economic inequality.