My sense from reading the article is that they're not "pretending" so much as "not addressing". I'm persuaded that in terms of access to resources, equality br

My sense from reading the article is that they're not "pretending" so much as "not addressing". I'm persuaded that in terms of access to resources, equality brings benefits — for example, integrating women into the US workforce unlocked massive economic potential, benefiting men as well as women. This article reinforces that conclusion. But as to why misperceptions exist that access to resources is always a zero-sum game, this article doesn't say (from what I've seen, haven't read the whole article yet). It just observes that such misperceptions exist and have policy consequences. From the abstract: > This misperception that equality is necessarily zero-sum may explain why inequality prevails even as it incurs societal costs that harm everyone. EDIT: ah, here's their theory: > Building upon this research, we propose a new explanation for this phenomenon — that people fundamentally misperceive losses of relative advantage as losses in absolute terms.