Contra Pinker on Inequality

Inequality’s Psychological Toll

In an article for BigThink, psychologist and famed author Steven Pinker makes the following claim: "The starting point for understanding inequality in the context of human progress is to recognize that income inequality is not a fundamental component of well-being." He goes on to argue that not just income inequality, but all economic inequality “is not itself a dimension of human well-being”.

I emphatically disagree. In fact, I argue that equality is indeed a fundamental component of well-being, and that Pinker's view overlooks crucial psychological and social realities of human nature.

Pinker's assertion suggests that as long as absolute poverty is addressed, relative economic disparities between individuals in a society are irrelevant to their sense of well-being. This perspective, while perhaps appealing from a purely rational standpoint, fails to account for the deep-seated psychological impact that perceived inequality has on human happiness and social cohesion.

The Frankfurt Defense

Pinker leans heavily on American philosopher Henry Frankfurt's 2015 book "On Inequality." Pinker tells us:

Frankfurt argues that inequality itself is not morally objectionable; what is objectionable is poverty. If a person lives a long, healthy, pleasurable, and stimulating life, then how much money the Joneses earn, how big their house is, and how many cars they drive are morally irrelevant.

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The confusion of inequality with poverty comes straight out of the lump fallacy—the mindset in which wealth is a finite resource, like an antelope carcass, which has to be divvied up in zero-sum fashion, so that if some people end up with more, others must have less. As we just saw, wealth is not like that.

I agree that thinking of wealth as a lump sum is a fallacious way to view modern economies, but Pinker is mistaken in thinking this is why people believe that inequality is bad. People intuit their morals, rather than forming them through logical reasoning. 

For some reason, people feel a vague need to justify their morals. It can be worthwhile to reason about specific situations (what you might do in the trolley problem), but I don’t think people’s core morals (murder is wrong) come from reasoning. Pinker’s attempting to apply reason to their moral positions, when moral objections generally don’t come from reasoning. They come from an internal sense of what is right and wrong.

People often struggle to articulate why they hold certain moral positions, such as objecting to inequality. Rather than acknowledging that their objection is fundamentally intuitive or emotional, they feel compelled to provide logical justifications. However, these justifications are typically post-hoc rationalizations, not the true source of their beliefs. In essence, people construct seemingly rational arguments to support positions they already hold instinctively, rather than arriving at these positions through reasoned analysis.

This tendency to rationalize moral intuitions manifests in various ways. People often attribute their moral beliefs to external sources like religion or attempt to ground them in logical arguments. Yet these explanations rarely reflect the true origins of their convictions. For instance, many claim their morality stems from religious teachings. However, if we discovered a mistranslation in the Bible that changed the sixth commandment from "Thou shalt not kill" to "Thou shall kill," we wouldn't suddenly see a surge in Christian murderers.

The same is true with the lump fallacy—it isn’t the true cause of their opposition to inequality; it’s just a post hoc rationalization. These justifications are like heads of a hydra—cut off one head, and another appears.

But just because people don’t have a strong rationale for a position doesn’t mean they can be reasoned out of it. That overlooks the psychological underpinnings of why people oppose inequality. In fact, the very fact that they didn’t reason themselves into it suggests they can't be reasoned out of it either. 

The Heart Wants What It Wants (Even If It's Irrational)

Pinker, channeling Frankfurt, tells us that "what is objectionable is poverty." But we’re consequentialists here. We can’t dictate what should or shouldn’t be objectionable based on logic. What's objectionable is what people object to.

It’s a simple framework:

1. Humans eat strawberries, happiness results. Therefore eating strawberries is good.

2. Humans eat hemlock, unhappiness (and, you know, death) results. Therefore eating hemlock is bad.

Now, apply this to inequality:

1. Humans perceive inequality, unhappiness results. Therefore, inequality is bad. Its mere presence is morally objectionable because people morally object to it.

Pinker might wish for a world where inequality has no effect on happiness, but wishing doesn't make it so. As he argued in his book "The Blank Slate," humans aren't born as empty vessels waiting to be programmed by society. We come with certain predispositions and tendencies hard-wired into our brains, and one of those tendencies appears to be a sensitivity to relative social status. In "The Blank Slate," he wrote: "If people's sense of well-being comes from an assessment of their social status, and social status is relative, then extreme inequality can make people on the lower rungs feel defeated, even if they are better off than most of humanity."

Inequality in the Lab

He cites the 2017 article “Why People Prefer Unequal Societies” by Starmans et al., which starts as follows :

We live in an age of inequality—or at least in an age of worrying about inequality. Pope Francis remarked that “inequality is the root of social evil”, while President Obama called economic inequality “the defining challenge of our time”. A recent Pew report found that Europeans and Americans judged inequality as posing the greatest threat to the world, beating religious and ethnic hatred, pollution, nuclear weapons, and diseases like AIDS.

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The concern that people express about inequality is also found in controlled laboratory studies, which find that a desire for equal distributions of goods emerges early in human development and is apparent in many different cultures. As such, Frans de Waal nicely summarizes a broad consensus across many fields when he writes: “Robin Hood had it right. Humanity’s deepest wish is to spread the wealth.”

But, they say, a puzzle arises when we consider research in political psychology and behavioral economics, which shows that people prefer unequal societies.

The studies they mention generally follow the same format: a participant is to dole out some trivial reward—erasers in one, dog treats in another, $10 in the last—and is presented with people (or puppies) all starting in the same state: no erasers, no dog treats, and no Hamiltons. Then, the participant observes or is told that one entity does something more/better/nicer than the others. Does the participant award them equally or unequally?

Unsurprisingly, participants in these studies often distribute rewards unequally, a result that the researchers interpret as evidence that people are troubled by unfairness rather than inequality itself. However, this conclusion represents a problematic leap from controlled experiments to real-world implications. These simplistic scenarios, with their transparent actions and immediate consequences, bear little resemblance to the complex, historically-rooted, and often opaque inequalities that permeate our society. The researchers' attempt to extrapolate their findings to broader attitudes towards inequality exemplifies a common pitfall in social science research: the overextension of laboratory results to real-world phenomena.

Imagine we have Alice, the daughter of billionaires. And we have Bob, who was born in a sewer in a town with no running water. Charlie is on the Harvard admissions committee and sees that Alice has a 4.0 GPA while Bob only has a 3.9. Pray tell, what exactly does a child handing out erasers teach us about this situation?

Pinker cites these studies to argue that people often conflate inequality with unfairness. While these concepts are indeed distinct in principle, their relationship in practice is far more complex. In highly controlled laboratory settings, where initial conditions are equal and all actions are transparent, people may accept minor inequalities resulting from observable differences in effort or achievement. However, this acceptance of small-scale, clearly justified inequalities doesn't necessarily extend to the large-scale, historically rooted economic disparities we see in society. The is a substantial gap between accepting that one participant receives two stickers while another receives one, and accepting vast differences in wealth and opportunity.

Yet somehow, the authors of "Why People Prefer Unequal Societies" manage to convince themselves and Pinker that "there is no evidence that people are bothered by economic inequality itself."

Yet somehow, Starmans et al. manage to convince themselves and Pinker that “there is no evidence that people are bothered by economic inequality itself.”

This is, perhaps, the greatest example I have ever seen of what I call “laboratory tunnel vision”. “No evidence” they say? How about walking outside your building and talking to people? Or stay inside your building and go on Twitter. Or stay inside yourself and ask yourself how you feel in your core about inequality. But no—if it didn’t happen in a lab, it might as well not exist.

The old man got better, but it wasn’t part of an RCT, so they had to put him down.

Or, GO BACK AND READ YOUR INTRODUCTION! Lots of people saying “X is true” is evidence that X is true. It might not be conclusive evidence, but it is evidence. People throughout history decrying inequality is evidence that inequality is bad. This historical ubiquity suggests there's something deeply human about our aversion to inequality.

Inequality Outside the Lab

To move beyond “laboratory tunnel vision,” let’s examine a real-world example, such as the education system. Many education policies focus not on fairness but rather on reducing inequality.

It is broadly accepted that the more attention a student gets from an educator, the better off they are. Psychologist Benjamin Bloom suggests that students who are given one-on-one tutoring perform two standard deviations better than students in a traditional classroom. 

Yet the students with the most potential—those who would benefit the most from this intensive attention—aren’t the ones receiving it. By the school’s standards, they don’t “need” help, so resources are directed elsewhere. It’s the students with intellectual disabilities who get Individualized Education Plans and the most attention.

I imagine most people know this from their own experiences (it was certainly mine), but you also see it in the guidance from the California Teachers Association. The students with intellectual disabilities have the fewest pupils per teacher and thus get the most attention. And the more severe the disability, the more attention.

Why? Because society values equality. Our aversion to inequality drives us to allocate more resources to underperforming students.

This focus on equality, however, runs counter to strategies aimed at maximizing the overall benefit. Instead of using resources to boost students with the greatest potential, we allocate them disproportionately to those who, by definition, can benefit the least. Giving tutelage to high performing students might inspire them to fall in love with the sciences, possibly working on the next vaccine. The same attention to an intellectually disabled child might improve their abilities somewhat, but they’re always going to be surpassed academically by the others.

Rather than striving for complete fairness (equal resources for all) or maximizing societal benefits (those with the most potential get the most support), we prioritize equality by sinking the most resources into those who can benefit the least. This stems from a fundamental human discomfort with inequality—a discomfort so deeply rooted that it shapes how we distribute educational resources, even when it may not lead to the greatest societal outcomes.

Implications for Society

Pinker warns against passing bad policies that reduce inequality:

Indeed, a narrow focus on economic inequality can be destructive if it distracts us into [bringing those doing well down to the same level].

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When the rich get richer, the poor can get richer, too.

I Agree! Inequality is an unavoidable part of society. But he conflates a positive statement with a normative statement. Saying that people innately don’t like inequality is a positive statement, a statement about what is true about the world. It makes no normative statements about how we should organize our societies.

Policies that increase inequality can be positive for everyone. This doesn't mean all inequality is good, but it suggests that inequality can be morally justified in certain situations. Philosopher John Rawls, for example, argued that inequality is acceptable if it advantages those who are worse off. Indeed, all the following can be true:

1. Policies that lead to more inequality can be good, and make people happier overall.

2. Attempts to create more equality can make everyone worse off.

3. I would rather live in an unequal society than one where equality is the primary goal of government.

-and-

4. Equality IS a fundamental component of well-being.

The study “Why People Prefer Unequal Societies” also showed that people don’t choose a perfectly equal society as optimal. This doesn't mean people are comfortable with extreme inequality. Rather, it suggests that people recognize the drawbacks of extreme equality. A perfectly equal society, like the one depicted in Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Bergeron," would likely be a dystopian nightmare devoid of liberty. People understand this, preferring some level of inequality to a rigid, enforced equality that would stifle personal liberty and diversity.

There is no law of the universe that says that human preferences align with rules that create the best society for them. Indeed, I believe that many good policies are counterintuitive to people.

Conclusion

Perhaps it’s a small yet important disagreement with Pinker. Yes, absolute poverty is more directly harmful than relative poverty. Yes, some inequality is probably inevitable and even beneficial in a dynamic society. And yes, obsessing over inequality to the exclusion of other factors can lead us astray.

But none of that changes the fundamental reality that humans seem to be wired to care about relative status and to experience inequality as distressing. Ignoring this fact doesn't make it go away; it just leaves us ill-equipped to deal with its consequences. Perhaps in a laboratory setting, we can show that most of this is about fairness, but in real life, the distinction is too blurred to separate.

Pinker is right that we shouldn't let a fixation on inequality blind us to overall human progress. The world is, in many ways, better than it's ever been. But he's wrong to dismiss inequality as irrelevant to well-being. It's deeply relevant, not because it “should” be, but because we're human, and that's how it is.

In his own field of linguistics, Pinker has argued eloquently against prescriptivism—the idea that we can dictate how language "should" work, rather than describing how it actually does. Perhaps we need a similar shift in our thinking about inequality: less prescribing how humans should feel about it, and more describing and working with how they actually do.

To return to our earlier formulation: Inequality goes in, unhappiness comes out. That's not a policy prescription or a moral judgment. It's just a description of the human machine we're working with. Our job—as thinkers, as policymakers, as members of society—is to figure out how to work with that machine to create the best outcomes for everyone.