Psychological Determinants of Economics Students’ Attitudes towards Redistribution

Abstract

The aim of the economics students’ survey (N=286) in June 2015 was to answer the question about the causes of differences in attitudes towards the universal access to medical care, university education, and towards tax policy serving to equalize the living standards of various social groups. The issues seem important as far as political preferences of future voters and their support for certain systemic solutions are concerned, especially as from the studied group future opinion-leaders and decision-makers may emerge at some point in the future. Regression analysis showed that the attitude towards redistribution depends moderately on the Social Dominance Orientation (SDO, Sidanius &Pratto, 1999), i.e. the attitude towards intergroup inequality and on the existential guilt (EG, Hoffman, 1976) resulting from regarding one’s own position as unjustly privileged. Subjective socioeconomic status predicted attitude towards redistribution only to a small degree. Contrary to Wakslak’s et al. (2007) findings moral outrage – negative emotions in response to unfair treatment of the others by a third party (Montada et al., 1986) turned out to be insignificant. As for the particular fields of redistribution, in case of fiscal policy the relations between variables were similar, though EG played relatively most important role, in case of university education subjective status proved insignificant, and in case of health care SDO was the only significant predictor. Neither moral outrage, nor variables such as general life satisfaction or personal influence on their own life, predicted the attitude towards redistribution.