On Thursday 8 March, Stefan Trautmann, University of Heidelberg, will give a talk in the Social, Economic, and Decision Psychology Colloquium.

Inequality, Fairness and Social Capital

We study the effect of unjust inequality on social trust and trustworthiness, and its separate effects on the haves and have-nots, in a controlled economic experiment. We do find evidence for a negative effect of unfair economic inequality on social interactions. Probing the boundaries of this effect, we find that a direct responsibility of the well-off person for the outcome of the worse-off person is necessary for the erosion of social capital in our setting. Moreover, our data do not support the view that higher status or wealth leads to an erosion of pro-social attitudes: the haves are always more generous.