%A BAI Jie, YANG Shenlong, XU Buxiao, GUO Yongyu %T How can successful people share their goodness with the world: The psychological mechanism underlying the upper social classes’ redistributive preferences and the role of humility %0 Journal Article %D 2021 %J Acta Psychologica Sinica %R 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2021.01161 %P 1161-1172 %V 53 %N 10 %U {https://journal.psych.ac.cn/acps/CN/abstract/article_4929.shtml} %8 2021-10-25 %X

A large number of studies conducted in Europe and America have explored the negative relationships between social class and redistributive preferences. However, few studies have addressed the cross-cultural consistency or explored the internal mechanism and intervention strategies of the effects of social class on redistributive preferences. The results showed that as in Western society, upper social-class Chinese individuals also tend to have lower redistributive preferences than those from lower social classes. In addition, the effects of social class on redistributive preferences could be partly mediated through the attributions for rich-poor gap. Compared with individuals from a subjectively lower class, upper-class individuals tended to attribute the gap between rich and poor to internal causes. That is to say, they tended to attribute the rich-gap to personal factors, such as abilities, efforts, and ambition. This attitude lowered upper-class individuals’ redistributive preferences even further. Finally, priming a humble state lowered upper-class individuals’ tendency to attribute the gap between rich and poor to internal causes, and further improved their redistributive preferences to a significant extent. These findings provide supporting data for the inequality maintenance model of social class and shed light upon social governance in promoting wealth redistribution and the sharing of developmental fruits.