The Sexual Division of Labor and the Split Paycheck

This essay takes up an apparently minor idea of Susan Moller Okin's Justice, Gender, and the Family—that employers should split the paycheck of wage‐earning husbands between employees and their stay‐at‐home spouses—and suggests that it actually threatens to undermine Okin's entire argument by perpetuating the most central cause of women's inequality by Okin's own account: the sexual division of labor. Recognizing the vital contributions that Okin's seminal work made and the impact that it had on the field of feminist philosophy and political theory, the essay explores the ethical, political, and philosophical problems with this solution to the dire problems of gender inequality and injustice that Okin correctly identifies. The essay suggests that her commitment to liberalism may have resulted in a commitment to an inadequate vision of how to solve the problems of gender inequality, and offers other possibilities that Okin could have pursued instead that sustain her strong commitment to liberalism.     

Lower class people suffered more (but perceived fewer risk disadvantages) during the COVID-19 pandemic

Does COVID-19 affect people of all classes equally? In the current research, we focus on the social issue of risk inequality during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a nationwide survey conducted in China (N = 1,137), we predicted and found that compared to higher-class individuals, lower-class participants reported a stronger decline in self-rated health as well as economic well-being due to the COVID-19 outbreak. At the same time, we examined participants' beliefs regarding the distribution of risks. The results demonstrated that although lower-class individuals were facing higher risks, they expressed lesser belief in such a risk inequality than their higher-class counterparts. This tendency was partly mediated by their stronger endorsement of system-justifying beliefs. The findings provide novel evidence of the misperception of risk inequality among the disadvantaged in the context of COVID-19. Implications for science and policy are discussed.     

不患不均？容忍和支持经济不平等的心理学解释

不断加剧的经济不平等问题对个体和社会有着巨大危害,然而人们对经济不平等却有着较高的容忍性。基于个体心理的研究证据,本文提出认知和动机双重路径模型来解释个体容忍和支持经济不平等问题。在认知路径上,个体倾向于低估当前社会的经济不平等程度和将经济不平等评价为公平的;在动机路径上,个体预期经济不平等将带来自我利益的增加。未来研究应进一步整合多重心理机制间的关系,并探索有效干预手段以增加人们对减少经济不平等的支持。     

Teaching Race: Pedagogical Challenges in Predominantly White Undergraduate Theology Classrooms

While a number of scholars in the field of Christian theology have argued for the importance of teaching diversity and social justice in theology and religious studies classrooms, little has been done to document and assess formally the implementation of such pedagogy. In this article, the authors discuss the findings of a yearlong Scholarship of Multicultural Teaching and Learning (SoMTL) study, which examined student learning and faculty teaching regarding race and white privilege in two theology classrooms. After a brief overview of the study's design and execution, we reflect upon our findings and draw out implications for pedagogical practices. In particular we discuss students' emotional responses to the material and the role of cognitive dissonance in student learning with respect to racial inequality via social structures. See a companion essay in this issue of the journal (Karen Teel, “Getting Out of the Left Lane: The Possibility of White Antiracist Pedagogy”) and responses by the authors of both essays, also published in this issue of the journal (“Responses: Toward an Antiracist Pedagogy”).     

Heterodox Economics,Social Ethics,and Inequalities

Research in the cognitive sciences indicates that metaphors significantly shape perceptions and approaches to problem solving. With this in mind, this essay argues that it is problematic for ethicists that mainstream economics and other social scientific literature relies on naturalistic metaphors to describe markets. These imply an inaccurate picture of economic phenomena and rhetorically frame many solutions to problems such as inequality as interventionist. This essay proposes that religious ethicists may find resources for avoiding this conceptual hazard in emerging fields of heterodox economics that are attentive to the role of culture and human agency in shaping markets. It introduces feminist, behavioral, institutional, and Austrian economics in particular and highlights some of the specific approaches to inequality adopted in these fields. It then suggests that engaging heterodox perspectives more generally may help ethicists keep in view the full complexity and social nature of the economic problems they analyze.     

Does More Money Make You Happier? Why so much Debate?

Easterlin’s famous paradox questioned standard economic assumptions about a fundamental relationship in economics: that between happiness and income. In recent years there has been renewed debate about the paradox. In this essay, I highlight some of the methodological issues and challenges underlying that debate. I focus on the sensitivity of the results to the method selected, the choice of micro or macro data, and the way that happiness questions are defined and framed, all of which result in divergent conclusions. I also note the mediating role of the pace and nature of economic growth, institutional frameworks, and inequality. What is most notable is the remarkable consistency in the determinants of individual happiness – including income – within countries of diverse income levels and, at the same time, how happiness is affected by cross-country differences that are related to average per-capita income levels, such as political freedom and public goods. Income clearly plays a role in determining both individual and country level happiness. Still, assessing its role relative to other more difficult to measure factors as countries develop in new ways and at different rates will remain a challenge for the foreseeable future.     

How living in economically unequal societies shapes our minds and our social lives

In recent decades, the economies of many countries have produced increasingly unequal outcomes for the rich and poor. This economic trend has attracted interest from members of the media, public and political classes as well as researchers who are interested in its societal implications. While this research has traditionally been the purview of economists and sociologists, there has been a burgeoning growth in research that has sought to understand the psychology of economic inequality. In this review, we summarize this work, focusing on two major themes: (1) how people perceive the scale of economic inequality and appraise its significance, and (2) how living in an economically unequal environment shapes people's social lives. Together, this work affirms claims that economic inequality is ‘the defining issue of our time’ (Obama, 2013) with a great deal of destructive potential. We identify important questions that await further research attention.     

Economic Predictors of Differences in Interview Faking Between Countries: Economic Inequality Matters,Not the State of Economy

Many companies recruit employees from different parts of the globe, and faking behavior by potential employees is a ubiquitous phenomenon. It seems that applicants from some countries are more prone to faking compared to others, but the reasons for these differences are largely unexplored. This study relates country-level economic variables to faking behavior in hiring processes. In a cross-national study across 20 countries, participants (N = 3,839) reported their faking behavior in their last job interview. This study used the random response technique (RRT) to ensure participants’ anonymity and to foster honest answers regarding faking behavior. Results indicate that general economic indicators (gross domestic product per capita [GDP] and unemployment rate) show negligible correlations with faking across the countries, whereas economic inequality is positively related to the extent of applicant faking to a substantial extent. These findings imply that people are sensitive to inequality within countries and that inequality relates to faking, because inequality might actuate other psychological processes (e.g., envy) which in turn increase the probability for unethical behavior in many forms.     

Responses: Toward an Antiracist Pedagogy

The authors respond here to each other's essays published in this issue of the journal. In “Holding Us Accountable,” Anna Floerke Scheid and Elisabeth T. Vasko respond to Karen Teel's essay, “Getting Out of the Left Lane.” In “Challenges and Convergences,” Karen Teel responds to the essay “Teaching Race” by Anna Floerke Scheid and Elisabeth T. Vasko.     

The Politics of Masochism

This essay explores why people sometimes act against their economic interests, and, more particularly, why people sometimes knowingly and intentionally support economic inequality even though they are disadvantaged by it, a phenomenon I call masochistic inegalitarianism. The essay argues that such behavior is an inherent and widespread feature of human nature, and that this has important though previously overlooked practical and theoretical implications for any conception of distributive justice. On the practical side, masochistic inegalitarianism suggests that any theory of distributive justice with more than the most modest egalitarian aspirations is inherently self-defeating (or at least self-limiting) because it will naturally produce the background conditions necessary to trigger masochistic behavior among the very people it is designed to assist. On the theoretical side, masochistic inegalitarianism suggests that there are serious problems with any theory of distributive justice based on the idea of hypothetical consent. This is because people with masochistic tendencies would be unlikely to consent to the distributive arrangements these theories have presumed, and the arrangements to which they would be likely to consent would allow a far greater degree of economic inequality than we are prepared to acknowledge as intuitively just. Either we must rethink our intuitions, or, as I contend, there is something about masochistic inegalitarianism that robs hypothetical consent of its moral force.     

Fighting inequalities in times of pandemic: The role of politicized identities and interdependent self-construal in coping with economic threat

During the COVID-19 pandemic, institutions encouraged social isolation and non-interaction with other people to prevent contagion. Still, the response to an impending economic crisis must be through the collective organization. In this set of pre-registered studies, we analyse two possible mechanisms of coping with collective economic threats: shared social identity and interdependent self-construction. We conducted three correlational studies during the pandemic in May–October 2020 (Study 1, N = 363; Study 2, N = 250; Study 3, N = 416). Results show that shared identity at two levels of politicization (i.e., working-class and 99% identities) and interdependent self-construal mediated the relationship between collective economic threat, intolerance towards economic inequality and collective actions to reduce it. The results highlight that the collective economic threat can reinforce the sense of community—either through the activation of a politicized collective identity, such as the working class or the 99% or through the activation of an interdependent self—which in turn can trigger greater involvement in the fight against economic inequality. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement .     

Moral uncertainty and permissibility: Evaluating Option Sets

In this essay, we explore an issue of moral uncertainty: what we are permitted to do when we are unsure about which moral principles are correct. We develop a novel approach to this issue that incorporates important insights from previous work on moral uncertainty, while avoiding some of the difficulties that beset existing alternative approaches. Our approach is based on evaluating and choosing between option sets rather than particular conduct options. We show how our approach is particularly well-suited to address this issue of moral uncertainty with respect to agents that have credence in moral theories that are not fully consequentialist.     

Bayes factors for testing inequality constrained hypotheses: Issues with prior specification

Several issues are discussed when testing inequality constrained hypotheses using a Bayesian approach. First, the complexity (or size) of the inequality constrained parameter spaces can be ignored. This is the case when using the posterior probability that the inequality constraints of a hypothesis hold, Bayes factors based on non‐informative improper priors, and partial Bayes factors based on posterior priors. Second, the Bayes factor may not be invariant for linear one‐to‐one transformations of the data. This can be observed when using balanced priors which are centred on the boundary of the constrained parameter space with a diagonal covariance structure. Third, the information paradox can be observed. When testing inequality constrained hypotheses, the information paradox occurs when the Bayes factor of an inequality constrained hypothesis against its complement converges to a constant as the evidence for the first hypothesis accumulates while keeping the sample size fixed. This paradox occurs when using Zellner's g prior as a result of too much prior shrinkage. Therefore, two new methods are proposed that avoid these issues. First, partial Bayes factors are proposed based on transformed minimal training samples. These training samples result in posterior priors that are centred on the boundary of the constrained parameter space with the same covariance structure as in the sample. Second, a g prior approach is proposed by letting g go to infinity. This is possible because the Jeffreys–Lindley paradox is not an issue when testing inequality constrained hypotheses. A simulation study indicated that the Bayes factor based on this g prior approach converges fastest to the true inequality constrained hypothesis.     

Catholic Social Teaching,Economic Inequality,and American Society

The essay begins with an explanation of the underlying theological vision that supports Catholic social teaching's commitment to the centrality of the common good and the role of solidarity as both a virtue and a norm. The vision of humanity as one family and the church as a sacrament of unity is the foundation for a communitarian ethic that prizes inclusion, participation, and relative equality in the quest for a truly just society. An array of social science studies is then employed to show that economic inequality “bleeds” into other realms of public life to undermine fundamental commitments of American society, namely, equal opportunity and political democracy. The essay concludes that an understanding of Catholic social teaching promotes a critical perspective that is deeply at odds with ongoing trends in the U.S. economy.     

“That is just what they want you to believe”: A modest defence of Marxist paranoia

This essay defends a rational reconstruction of a genealogical debunking argument that begins with the premise “that's just what the economic elite want you to believe” and ends in the conclusion “you should lower your confidence in your belief.” The argument is genealogical because it includes a causal explanation of your beliefs; it is debunking because it claims that the contingencies uncovered by the genealogy undermine your beliefs. The essay begins by defending a plausible causal explanation of your belief in terms of the wants of the elite. Then a number of recent objections to genealogical debunking arguments are considered. It is argued that the genealogy offered in the first part constitutes evidence that a testimony‐based belief is not safe and therefore does not constitute knowledge if the economic elite wants you to believe it.     

Introduction: W. E. B. Du Bois: Religion and Social Inequality

W.E.B. Du Bois understood the critical role religion plays in power inequities in the, world. He was very acquainted with how it is used as a tool to exclude and subordinate human beings and yet, at the same time, serve as a source of refuge. This special issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion is a collection of articles that examines religion and social inequality from a variety of different angles with a Du Boisian lens. When we focus our lens on religion and social inequality, we are highlighting the ways in which religion plays a part in the unequal distribution of power across social groups in society. This special issue focuses on how religion impacts social life and the way individuals and groups embody or struggle to reclaim their agency within a context of silent oppression at times and not-so-silent oppression at others times at the personal-, group-, and global levels.     

Debating Forgiveness: A Reply to My Critics

In this essay I offer a detailed reply to three critics (whose commentaries are included in this issue of Philosophia) of my Forgiveness: a Philosophical Exploration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). The topics explored include the nature and limits of forgiveness; its unconditional or conditional character; the problem of distinguishing between central and marginal cases; the analysis of political apology; and questions of philosophical methodology.     

Gendered Characteristics of Political Engagement in College Students

This study was designed to examine gender differences in the political engagement of college students, in relation to perception of gender inequality, partisanship, issue involvement, and media use during the 2000 presidential and congressional campaign. A survey-based study of political engagement was conducted among 236 undergraduate students at a large northeastern university in Pennsylvania—a swing state—during the campaign. Findings support the theory that women with higher perception of gender inequality tend to be more politically engaged than women with lower perception gender inequality. Foreign policy as an issue of interest is important in this study because it is the only policy issue for which there was both a significant gender difference and a significant association with political engagement.     

Laudato Si’: Care for Creation at the Center of a New Social Issue

This essay reviews the documents of the pontifical magisterium of the Church from the encyclical Mater et magistra ( 1961 ) to the exhortation Evangelii gaudium (2013), in order to show the Church’s historical commitment to the defense of the environment. It then argues that Laudato si’ elevates the theological status of the environmental crisis to that of a new social issue, much as Leo XIII did for the industrial crisis with his encyclical letter Rerum novarum ( 1891 ).     

When to Preach About Poverty: How Location,Race, and Ideology Shape White Evangelical Sermons

Social scientists have long been interested in how intergroup contact or elite messaging can reduce or eliminate racial biases. To better understand the role of religious elites in these political questions, we show how a church location's income and racial characteristics interact with racial and economic ideologies to shape the political content of sermons. Testing our theories through both quantitative and qualitative analysis of an original data set of more than 102,000 sermons from more than 5200 pastors, we show that contact is only effective as a means of decreasing prejudice to the extent that actors—in our case, pastors—are ideologically capable of reconciling their potential role in economic inequality. White Evangelical pastors rarely preach about issues of poverty or racial justice overall, but the context of the preaching matters. We find that the greater the share of Black population there is in a church community, the less likely White Evangelical pastors are to mention issues of poverty or racial justice, and when they do mention it, they hold to ideological commitments that avoid blaming systems for racialized economic inequality.