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Selected Publications

Past research has documented myriad pernicious psychological effects of high economic inequality, prompting interest into how people perceive, evaluate, and react to inequality. Here we propose, refine, and validate the Support for Economic Inequality Scale (SEIS)–a novel measure of attitudes towards economic inequality. In Study 1, we distill eighteen items down to five, providing evidence for unidimensionality and reliability. In Study 2, we replicate the scale’s unidimensionality and reliability and demonstrate its validity. In Study 3, we evaluate a United States version of the SEIS. Finally, in Studies 4–5, we demonstrate the SEIS’s convergent and predictive validity, as well as evidence for the SEIS being distinct from other conceptually similar measures. The SEIS is a valid and reliable instrument for assessing perceptions of and reactions to economic inequality and provides a useful tool for researchers investigating the psychological underpinnings of economic inequality.
PLoS ONE, 2019
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American politicians often justify income inequality by referencing the opportunities people have to move between economic stations. Though past research has shown associations between income mobility and resistance to wealth redistribution policies, no experimental work has tested whether perceptions of mobility influence tolerance for inequality. In this article, we present a cross-national comparison showing that income mobility is associated with tolerance for inequality and experimental work demonstrating that perceptions of higher mobility directly affect attitudes toward inequality. We find support for both the prospect of upward mobility and the view that peoples’ economic station is the product of their own efforts, as mediating mechanisms.
Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2016
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Recent Publications

More Publications

(2019). Support for Economic Inequality Scale: Development and Adjudication. PLoS ONE.

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(2018). Not all Gifts are Good: The Potential Practical Costs of Motivated Gifts. Journal of Applied Social Psychology.

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(2018). Buying Well-Being: Spending Behavior and Happiness. Social and Personality Psychology Compass.

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Recent & Upcoming Talks

The Luck of the Draw: How Attributions for Poverty Shape Support for Economic Inequality
Nov 15, 2019 11:30 AM
Brown Bag Talk, Psychology Department, Northwestern University
The Self-Made Poor? Deservingness and the Defense of Economic Inequality
Oct 5, 2018 10:45 AM
Society for Experimental Social Psychology
Support for Economic Inequality: Development and Validation of a New Scale
Feb 24, 2018 2:45 PM
Society for Personality and Social Psychology

Blog & Tutorials

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All Data Visualization Machine Learning Blog Post

TBT Our SPSP 2015 Symposium on Economic Mobility and Inequality

Videos of our three talks from SPSP 2015 on economic inequality and mobility

Maching Learning Tutorial: Predicting Car Prices with K-Nearest Neighbours (KNN) Regression

A basic introduction to KNN regression for machine learning

Does High Economic Inequality, and Low Economic Mobility Threaten, the Relationship Between Income and Happiness?

Multilevel modeling exploring how county level inequality/mobility impacts the relationship between money and happiness

Visualizing the Tour De France

What does some basic web scraping teach us?

File Drawer

Ah, the much ignored file drawer. Here you will find data, analyses, and short write-ups of all the projects I run that are ultimately “unsuccessful.” This section is a work in progress, so if it looks a little sparse right now it’s not because I’m a genius, it’s because not everything is here yet.

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