Why Spread the Wealth?

• Author: Estrada, Andre
• Position: ECONOMIC OBSERVER - Economic redistribution

"To understand the logic behind support for--or opposition to--economic redistribution, the research team focused on three motives: compassion, self-interest and envy."

ECONOMIC REDISTRIBUTION has been a core political dispute around the world for centuries and, while fairness intuitively seems a natural explanation for why people support it, researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, find that fairness really does not explain who supports redistribution or why. Support for redistribution, they have shown, is rooted in compassion, self-interest, and envy--but not fairness.

"Understanding the economic and political nitty-gritty of redistribution does not come naturally to us, but humans have been interacting with worse-off and better-off individuals over evolutionary time," says lead author Daniel Sznycer, research scientist at the Center for Evolutionary Psychology.

"This process built neural systems that motivate us to act effectively in situations of giving, taking, and sharing. The evolved human mind would overlook the public policy complexities of modern redistribution and instead perceive it in terms of a much simpler mental model featuring a small number of prototypical characters--the self, the worse-off other, and the better-off other--and different motives directed at each character."

To understand the logic behind support for--or opposition to--economic redistribution, the research team focused on three motives: compassion, self-interest, and envy.

"Our ancestors lived in a world without social or medical insurance, and so they benefited from covering each other's shortfalls through mutual help," says John Tooby, professor of anthropology and codirector of the Center for Evolutionary Psychology. "If your neighbor is starving and you have food, you can save his life by sharing with him. Later, when the situation is reversed and he shares his food with you, your life is saved." This evolutionary dynamic selected for a spontaneous motivation to help those in need. "Compassion is the emotion that orchestrates this need-based help--help toward those less well off."

However, people also value their own welfare and that of their families. Thus, a competing motive is self-interest. "People who acted without any regard to their own and their family's welfare were selected out over the course of evolution," Tooby maintains. "Self-interest may limit the reach of one's compassion, and enhance one's appetite for what others...