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I ordered the book, but can you share a thumbnail of what they propose as the causal relationship between inequality and poor performance on societal indicators
by replicatorblog 11y ago
I ordered the book, but can you share a thumbnail of what they propose as the causal relationship between inequality and poor performance on societal indicators?
On first blush it seems too neat a solution. Just look at Texas—massively unequal, there are oil barons and illegals within the same zip code, but Texas is doing well because it's possible to live the life style of an upper middle class person in NY on a pair of civil servant salaries down south.
- mattgibson 11y agoSure. Their hypothesis is that as social animals, we are wired to respond neurologically to status Higher/lower status individuals experience dramatically different levels of certain neurotransmitters, which is something that they cite animal studies to support. Experimentally manipulating the social environment e.g. by placing a monkey in cage where it was surrounded by either smaller or larger peers caused observable changes in brain chemistry as the monkey moved from alpha male status to subordinate and back again. There's a good argument for an evolutionary role here, as you can see that being on the bottom of a social hierarchy may be dangerous, so those who experienced it as stressful and were motivated to escape it somehow may have had higher chances of survival. Being trapped in such a position appears to cause a deeply stressful state of mind, where people are literally unable to function normally. This doesn't happen when people are more equal as the perceived status differences are small, so the effect is lessened.