García-Sánchez Efraín, Willis Guillermo B, Rodríguez-Bailón Rosa, García-Castro Juan Diego, Palacio-Sañudo Jorge, Polo Jean, Rentería-Pérez Erico
Department of Social Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain.
Sede de Occidente, University of Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica.
Front Psychol. 2018 Sep 6;9:1660. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01660. eCollection 2018.
Research on perceptions of economic inequality focuses on estimations of the distribution of financial resources, such as perceived income gaps or wealth distribution. However, we argue that perceiving inequality is not limited to an economic idea but also includes other dimensions related to people's daily life. We explored this idea by conducting an online survey ( = 601) in Colombia, where participants responded to an open-ended question regarding how they perceived economic inequality. We performed a content analysis of 1,624 responses to identify relevant topics and used network analysis tools to explore how such topics were interrelated. We found that perceived economic inequality is mainly represented by identifying social classes (e.g., the elites vs. the poor), intergroup relations based on discrimination and social exclusion, public spaces (e.g., beggars on streets, spatial segregation), and some dynamics about the distribution of economic resources and the quality of work (e.g., income inequality, precarious jobs). We discuss how different perceptions of economic inequality may frame how people understand and respond to inequality.
对经济不平等认知的研究主要集中在对金融资源分配的估计上，比如感知到的收入差距或财富分配。然而，我们认为，对不平等的认知并不局限于一种经济概念，还包括与人们日常生活相关的其他维度。我们通过在哥伦比亚开展一项在线调查（n = 601）来探究这一观点，参与者需回答一个关于他们如何看待经济不平等的开放性问题。我们对1624份回答进行了内容分析，以确定相关主题，并使用网络分析工具来探究这些主题是如何相互关联的。我们发现，感知到的经济不平等主要体现在对社会阶层的划分（例如，精英阶层与贫困阶层）、基于歧视和社会排斥的群体间关系、公共空间（例如，街头乞丐、空间隔离），以及一些关于经济资源分配和工作质量的动态情况（例如，收入不平等、不稳定工作）。我们讨论了对经济不平等的不同认知可能如何塑造人们对不平等的理解和应对方式。
