The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die

When people see deities in snack foods, they are engaging in pareidolia, the tendency to see patterns in randomness. We all do this every day, because randomness and chaos feel threatening while orderly patterns are reassuring. While we assume our perceptions and beliefs reflect reality, they are also driven by our needs and desires. In other words, inequalities in power, wealth, and status change our perception of reality, our religious experiences, and our beliefs.

The human brain is fundamentally a pattern-detector, and it is very good at filling in gaps and making inferences and leaps of logic. Our brains assume “that the world is not random; that even if it has only partial knowledge, it can safely guess what is missing because the world is an orderly and predictable place” (138). This assumption that the world is predictable forms the bedrock of all our thinking, so much so that we regularly see patterns where none actually exist. This tendency to find patterns in randomness is universal but happens in some situations more than others, particularly when we feel powerless, left out, left behind, or socially disconnected.

The most typical method used to find meaning in our lives is telling stories about the world around us. The most effective stories are those that make everything seem to fit together in a way we easily understand, but the most satisfying of these are unlikely to be true. For instance, about half of Americans believe in conspiracy theories, and this figure has been consistent across the decades. Conspiracy theories are about two things: power and distrust. People who feel powerless tend to believe in conspiracies carried out by those in power, and those who think the powerful are likely to deceive the public are more likely to accept conspiracy theories, even when they are logically inconsistent. Believing in conspiracy requires trading in “a bit of your belief that the world is good, fair, and just in exchange for the conviction that at least someone—anyone—has everything under control” (142).

Another way people maintain the sense that the world is orderly and just is insisting that it is so and working backward from there. For example, if something bad happens to us, we believe we have gotten what we deserved, even though this outcome was driven by a complex blend of factors. But most people do not just stop with the assumption that the world is just; they go further by believing that the world is in the hands of a divine being. This belief depends on environment, as studies have shown that when individuals feel helpless, or when the world is portrayed as chaotic and unpredictable, they believe more strongly in an omnipotent and powerful god.

There is a widely held assumption that as a society becomes wealthier, religious belief will decline. For the most part, this has held true, but there are two important outliers: China and the United States. China is not particularly surprising because of the government’s suppression of religion, but the US stands out as a crucial example because, despite its high average income, America has religious belief on par with Mexico, Lebanon, and South Africa. The reason for this is inequality, which is as important as actual income in determining the prevalence of religion in a country. Once inequality is taken into account, the United States is no longer an outlier because it is both highly unequal and highly religious.

Although the research has not yet been conducted, it is predicted that a key factor linking inequality to religious belief is inner feelings of status and security. When inequality rises, people feel less secure and religion becomes more appealing. This has nothing to do with any specific religion because “people tend to turn to whatever belief system they were raised with when they feel insecure in the world” (152). Furthermore, the poor are not just more religious than the rich, they are religious in different ways. They are more likely to believe that the bible is the literal word of god and to believe in miracles, faith healing, and demonic possession.

When people feel that they have been left behind, that life is chaotic, and that their life is precarious, their brain fills in the blanks and makes the world orderly. And this actually works: Those who are more religious tend to be happier and less anxious than those who are not. In other words, “the harder life is, the more miraculous it becomes” (154).

Racial inequality is distinct from income inequality. Rich and poor exist in all racial groups, and racial discrimination affects minorities even when they are rich. But although they are different, these two types of inequality have been intersecting more and more as racial inequality declines and income inequality rises. Rising income inequality inflames racial prejudices, and in turn racial stereotypes are used to justify income inequality. Slavery in the United States lasted for 250 years and built the country. After slavery was abolished in 1865, Jim Crow laws legally oppressed African Americans for another century. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ended overt racial discrimination, but society did not change overnight.

The proportion of Americans supporting overt racial discrimination has fallen to the single digits, but this has led us into a false sense of enthusiasm about racial equality. White Americans believe that anti-black discrimination has decreased far more than African Americans do. Similarly, a large proportion of white Americans believe that anti-white bias has risen steadily and is now a bigger problem than discrimination against African Americans. In short, “[w]hites seemed to view discrimination as a zero-sum game: the less discrimination they perceived against blacks, the more they saw it turned against whites” (157). The data tells a different story: the income gap between white and black families has stayed about the same since the 1960s, even though the education gap has slightly shrunk and racial gaps in wealth have actually increased.

Police killings of unarmed African Americans have become a focal point for Americans’ conversations about race. At the root of these incidents are subjective perceptions, because such situations are often ambiguous and require judgment calls to be made quickly under stressful circumstances. Psychological research shows that in these conditions, people make decisions by relying on their expectations. These are known as our implicit biases—the often-discomforting gaps between our good intentions and our biased behavior. Most people believe they are well meaning and not racist, but they still show signs of implicit racial bias when tested. This creates a paradox because when actions are uncoupled from intentions, we do not know where to aim our moral outrage.

Studies show that implicit bias is much more prevalent today than old-fashioned bigotry. Similarly, we display bias in some situations more than others, and these differences are linked to money, power, and inequality. Feeling disadvantaged magnifies people’s perception of racial differences, and occupying a superior position increases implicit bias. In other words, being either disadvantaged or advantaged can both increase our racial bias. This is not contradictory; it is the presence of hierarchy itself that sets up the conditions for bias and conflict. Countries with higher income inequality place a higher emphasis on status and hierarchy, and they also display higher levels of racial bias.

Income inequality doesn’t just heighten racial bias; prejudice can also worsen income inequality. Many studies have found a correlation between a dislike of African Americans and opposition to social welfare policies. Specifically, people who believe African Americans are lazy and undeserving are more likely to oppose welfare spending. Even though the average person views welfare in racialized terms, welfare recipients are about evenly split between whites, blacks, and Hispanics. The reason for this link is cultural messaging that has, especially since the 1980s, depicted white welfare recipients as the deserving poor and black welfare recipients as lazy and dishonest.

Economic inequality creates a status-based us versus them mentality that in turn heightens racial bias. Furthermore, the close connection between race, poverty, and perceived deservingness presents a major obstacle to addressing inequality. This has created a sense of hopelessness around addressing racial bias, but there is some ground for optimism. A recent study showed states with lower inequality had less implicit bias, accounting for other factors. Payne writes, “Although it may be difficult to change people’s hearts and minds, economic policies can certainly reduce income inequality” (175).