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WORK TITLE: The Broken Ladder
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://bkpayne.web.unc.edu/
CITY:
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NATIONALITY:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/307852/keith-payne * http://socialpsych.unc.edu/faculty/ * http://nimf.insightinnovation.org/speakers/keith-payne-ph-d-university-of-north-carolina/ * http://therumpus.net/2017/05/inequality-is-everyones-problem-the-broken-ladder-by-keith-payne/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Western Kentucky University, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1998; Washington University (St. Louis, MO), M.A., 2000, Ph.D., 2002.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and educator. Ohio State University, Columbus, assistant professor, 2003-05; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, assistant professor, 2005-09, associate professor, 2009-14, professor, 2014—. Has served on editorial board of publications, including Psychological Science, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Social Cognition, and Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
MEMBER:International Social Cognition Network, Society for Personality and Social Psychology (fellow), Society for Experimental Social Psychology (fellow), American Psychological Society.
AWARDS:Extramural Loan Repayment Award, National Institutes of Health, 2006, 2008, 2012; R.J. Reynolds Junior Faculty Development Award, 2007; SAGE Young Scholars Award, Foundation for Social and Personality Psychology/SAGE Publications, 2008; Early Career Award, International Social Cognition Network, 2008; Morton Deutsch Award for best article, International Society for Social Justice Research, 2010; Best Paper Award, International Social Cognition Network, 2011. Grants and fellowships from organizations, including Russell Sage Foundation, Spencer Foundation, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, National Science Foundation, National Institute on Drug Abuse, and National Institute on Mental Health.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to publications, including Scientific American, Journal of Experimental Psychology, Psychology, American Journal of Public Health, Psychological Science, and Psychology Today.
SIDELIGHTS
Keith Payne is a writer and educator, whose work is focused on social psychology. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Western Kentucky University and both a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. After earning his Ph.D., Payne joined the Ohio State University, where he served as assistant professor. He went on to teach at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he has held multiple professorial positions. Payne has served on editorial board of scholarly journals and has written articles that have appeared in publications, including Scientific American, Journal of Experimental Psychology, Psychology, American Journal of Public Health, Psychological Science, and Psychology Today.
In 2017, Payne released his first book, The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die. In this volume, he suggests that humans’ innate craving for status makes us constantly compare ourselves to others in an unfavorable light. Payne explains that inequality or the perception of inequality affects many aspects of life, including political leanings, planning, birth rates, and job satisfaction.
In an interview with Shannon L. Bowen, contributor to the Signature Reads website, Payne discussed how his own perception of status has changed throughout his life. He stated: “My personal experiences with poverty and wealth, with high status and low status, have been so incongruous and startling to me that it drove home how far apart people’s subjective experiences of poverty and their actual income can be. And when I looked at the new psychology research, I realized that it was often the subjective experiences that matter most.” Payne continued: “For example, in the fourth grade lunch line, when I first realized that my free lunches meant I was poorer than other kids, my world suddenly changed. My family’s income was the same, but now I felt poor, and started seeing the world and acting accordingly.” Payne added: “It was a huge demotion, psychologically. Later when I went to college and graduate school, the opposite happened. I had no money but felt upper class because I was on a trajectory that made me feel confident for the first time in my life that things would go my way. I felt that disconnection again when I began my first position as a professor. At twenty-seven years old I went from being a poor graduate student one day to being called ‘professor’ by everyone and treated with more respect than I had ever experienced.” Payne also stated: “These incongruous experiences made me aware of the profound disconnections between people’s objective incomes and their subjective experiences of it. And that disconnection is the linchpin that psychologically connects inequality (the size of the gap between rich and poor) to poverty. When inequality gets very high as it is today, everyone feels poorer. Even the middle class feels left behind.”
Reviews of The Broken Ladder were mostly favorable. Nancy Isenberg, writer in the American Scholar, suggested: “This historical element is what is missing from Payne’s book. Status may be a part of our brain circuitry, but it has also been conditioned in us over time. Our present interest in inequality comes principally in response to the obsession with status that arose after World War II.” Isenberg added: “Despite this omission, Payne’s book will make its readers pause to consider the human condition in more depth. Some will no doubt conclude that the ladder-in-our-minds has become so dysfunctional that in 2016, voters elected a president whose life has long been consumed by a craving for status. The serious disability, which Payne underscores, of casting votes based on feelings over facts fits all too neatly, and that’s scary.” “Though the author doesn’t break much new ground, he provides valuable psychological insights into our daily behaviors,” asserted a Kirkus Reviews contributor. Bradley Babendir, reviewer on the Rumpus website, commented: “The Broken Ladder is a clear and useful book about the gap between the society we have and a society we want. It’s an important step toward understanding how these complicated issue affect our country—alongside books like Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, which takes a more narrative approach to the issue, and Per Molander’s The Anatomy of Inequality, which analyzes it from an economic point of view. Inequality can seem intractable, but these writers are steering us in the right direction.” A critic on the National Book Review website described The Broken Ladder as “an important and disturbing book.” A writer on the YW Boston website opined: “Research buffs will enjoy the data-driven narratives that form the backbone of this book, while those who prefer anecdotal perspectives will find several personal stories that tie the research together and mover the main ideas along smoothly and persuasively. Each chapter builds common ground by delving into aspects of our shared cultural experiences as Americans. The topics are often challenging but the language is straightforward and easy to digest.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
American Scholar, summer, 2017, Nancy Isenberg, “Waking from the Dream: Most Americans Assume Society Is More Egalitarian than It Is,” review of The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die, p. 112.
Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2017, review of The Broken Ladder.
ONLINE
Deseret News (UT), https://www.deseretnews.com/ (May 9, 2017), Brittany Binowski, review of The Broken Ladder.
Missourian Online, http://www.emissourian.com/ (September 11, 2017), Bill Schwab, review of The Broken Ladder.
National Book Review, http://www.thenationalbookreview.com/ (May 4, 2017), review of The Broken Ladder.
Penguin Random House Website, https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/ (April 11, 2018), author profile.
Rumpus, http://therumpus.net/ (May 4, 2017), Bradley Babendir, review of The Broken Ladder.
Signature Reads, http://www.signature-reads.com/ (July 14, 2017), Shannon L. Bowen, author interview.
University of North Carolina, Faculty Website, http://bkpayne.web.unc.edu/ (April 11, 2018), author curriculum vitae.
YW Boston, http://www.ywboston.org/ (January 30, 2018), review of The Broken Ladder.
Keith Payne
K P
Photo: © Sarah Coppola
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Keith Payne is a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an international leader in the psychology of inequality and discrimination. His research has been featured in The Atlantic and The New York Times, and on NPR, and he has written for Scientific American and Psychology Today.
B. KEITH PAYNE
CURRICULUM VITAE
PERSONAL DATA
Department of Psychology
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Campus Box # 3270
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3270
Phone: (919) 962-2055
Fax: (919) 962-2537
Web page: http://www.unc.edu/~bkpayne/
Email: payne@unc.edu
EDUCATION
2002 Ph.D. Social Psychology, Washington University, Saint Louis, Missouri.
2000 M.A. Psychology, Washington University, Saint Louis, Missouri.
1998 B.A. Psychology and Philosophy, summa cum laude, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Kentucky.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS
Professor, Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2014- present.
Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2009-2014.
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2005-2009.
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, 2003-2005.
HONORS AND AWARDS
D. O. Hebb Lecture, McGill Univesity, Montreal, CA. November, 2012.
International Social Cognition Network 2011 Best Paper Award. For Loersch, C., & Payne, B. K. (2011). The situated inference model: An integrative account of the effects of primes on perception, behavior, and motivation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 234-252.
Morton Deutsch Award for the best article, International Society for Social Justice Research, 2010. For Cameron, C. D., Payne, B. K., & Knobe, J. (2010).
International Social Cognition Network Early Career Award. 2008.
SAGE Young Scholars Award. 2008. Foundation for Social and Personality Psychology and SAGE Publications.
National Institutes of Health, Extramural Loan Repayment Award. 2006, 2008, 2012.
Elected Fellow, Society for Experimental Social Psychology.
Elected Fellow, Society for Personality and Social Psychology
Ranked in Top Ten most highly cited Social/Personality Psychologists in America (Assistant
Prof. rank), Society for Personality and Social Psychology Dialogue, Vol 22, no. 2, 2007.
Rising Stars in Psychological Science, APS Observer, Vol 20, no.10, 2007.
R.J. Reynolds Junior Faculty Development Award, 2007.
RESEARCH GRANTS
EXTERNAL GRANTS FUNDED
2016-2018 Russell Sage Foundation
Cast as a criminal: How moral typecasting leads to racial prejudice.
Co-PI (with PI Kurt Gray)
2014-2016 Spencer Foundation
The Role of Study Strategies in the SES-based Achievement Gap.
Principal Investigator
2013-2016 National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Children’s Implicit and Explicit Stereotypes about Academic Abilities
Co-Principle Investigator (with Beth Kurtz-Costes).
2013-2017 NIH National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering
Envisioning Health: Using Images to Enhance Relationships between Latino Adolescents and Health Care Providers
Co-investigator (PI: Mimi Chapman).
2012 – 2016 National Cancer Institute 1R01CA170128-01
Promoting Cancer-related Behavior Change
Co-Investigator (PI: Barbara Fredrickson).
2013-2015 Russell Sage Foundation
The Politics of Inequality in a “Classless” Society
Principal Investigator.
2012-2015 National Institutes of Health/ NCCAM. 1R01AT007884-01
Nonconscious Affective and Physiological Mediators of Behavioral Decision Making.
Co-investigator (PI: Barbara Fredrickson).
2009-2012 National Science Foundation. (NSF 0924252)
Optimizing Implicit Attitude Measurement.
Principal Investigator.
2006-2009 National Science Foundation (NSF 0615478)
Improving Implicit Attitude Measurement.
Principal Investigator.
2006-2009 National Institute on Drug Abuse (DA021623-01).
Neural bases of automatic and controlled affective responses to smoking cues.
Principal Investigator.
2004-2005 National Institute of Mental Health (1R03 MH070573-01).
Executive Control in Implicit Attitude Measurement.
Principal Investigator.
INTERNAL GRANTS FUNDED
2015 Kenan-Biddle Partnership grant. Awarded to Keith Payne and Kenan Jenkins (UNC) and Mark Leary and Beatrice Capestany (Duke) to fund the Carolina Researchers in Social Psychology conference.
2011-2012 Odum Institute/College of Arts & Sciences seed grant
Physician Decision-Making and the Quality of Health Care.
Co-investigator, with Jeffrey Sonis.
2009-2011 UNC University Research Council
Gender and Race Stereotypes in Black and White Youth.
Co-PI, with Beth Kurtz-Costes.
2006-2007 UNC Demographics and Economics of Aging Research (DEAR) program.
Age-related changes in emotion-based decision making.
UNC DEAR is funded through National Institute on Aging (P30 AG024376).
Principal Investigator on DEAR sub-project.
PUBLICATIONS
JOURNAL ARTICLES PUBLISHED / IN PRESS
Brown-Iannuzzi, J. L., Dotsch, R., Cooley, E., & Payne, B. K. (in press). The
Relationship between Racialized Mental Representations of Welfare Recipients and
Attitudes toward Welfare. Psychological Science.
Cameron, C. D., Payne, B. K., Sinnott-Armstrong, W., Scheffer, J., & Inzlicht, M. (in press).
Measuring moral intuitions: A multinomial modeling approach. Cognition.
Leander, N. P., Kay, A. C., Chartrand, T. L., & Payne, B. K. (In press). Testing an affect misattribution theory of intrinsic motivation. Social Cognition.
Payne, B. K., Brown-Iannuzzi, J. L., & Loersch, C. (in press). Replicable Effects of Primes on Human Behavior. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
Cooley, E. & Payne, B. K. (in press). Using Groups to Measure Intergroup Prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Payne, B. K., Lee, K. M., Giletta, M., & Prinstein, M. J. (In press). Implicit Attitudes Predict the Onset of Alcohol Use in Adolescents: Shaping by Social Norms. Health Psychology.
Loersch, C. & Payne, B. K. (In press). Demystifying Priming. Current Opinion in Psychology.
Shasteen, J. R., Pinkham, A. E., Kelsven, S., Ludwig, K., Payne, B. K., & Penn, D. L. (2016). Intact implicit processing of facial threat cues in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research, 170, 150-155.
Hall, W. J., Chapman, M. V., Lee, K. M., Merino, Y., Thomas, T., Payne, B. K., Coyne- Beasley, T., Day, S., & Eng, E. (2015). Implicit Racial/Ethnic Bias among Healthcare Professionals and its Influence on Healthcare Outcomes: A Systematic Review. American Journal of Public Health, 105, e60-e76.
Lundberg, K. B., Payne, B. K., Pasek, J., & Krosnick, J. A. (2015). Racial Attitudes Predicted Changes in Ostensibly Race‐Neutral Political Attitudes under the Obama Administration. Political Psychology. DOI 10.1111/pops.12315.
Cameron, C. D., Harris, L. T., & Payne, B. K. (2015). The Emotional Cost of Humanity: Anticipated Exhaustion Motivates Dehumanization of Stigmatized Targets. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1948550615604453.
Fazio, L. K., Brashier, N. M., Payne, B. K., & Marsh, E. J. (2015). Knowledge does not protect against illusory truth. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144, 993-1002.
Payne, B. K., & Dal Cin, S. (2015). Implicit Attitudes in Media Psychology. Media Psychology, 18, 292-311.
Brown-Iannuzzi, J. L., Lundberg, K. B., Kay, A. C., & Payne, B. K. (2015). Subjective Status Shapes Political Preferences. Psychological Science, 26, 15-26.
Cooley, E., Payne, B. K., Loersch, C., & Lei, R. Who owns implicit attitudes? Testing a metacognitive perspective. (2014). Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41, 103–115.
Payne, K., & Lundberg, K. (2014). The Affect Misattribution Procedure: Ten Years of Evidence on Reliability, Validity, and Mechanisms. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 8, 672-686.
Loersch, C., & Payne, B. K. (2014). Situated inference and the what, who, and where of priming. Social Cognition, 32, 137-151.
Pasek, J., Stark, T. H., Krosnick, J. A., Tompson, T., & Payne, B. K. (2014). Attitudes Toward Blacks in the Obama Era: Changing Distributions and Impacts on Job Approval and Electoral Choice, 2008–2012. Public Opinion Quarterly, 78, 276-302.
Cooley, E., Payne, B. K., & Phillips, K. J. (2014). Implicit Bias and the Illusion of Conscious Ill Will. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 5, 500-507.
Brown‐Iannuzzi, J. L., Payne, B. K., Rini, C., DuHamel, K. N., & Redd, W. H. (2014). Objective and subjective socioeconomic status and health symptoms in patients following hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Psycho‐Oncology, 23, 740-748.
Lundberg, K.B., & Payne, B. K. (2014). Decisions among the Undecided: Implicit Attitudes Predict Future Voting Behavior of Undecided Voters. PLoS ONE, 9: doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0085680.
Brown-Iannuzzi, J. L., Adair, K. C., Payne, B. K., Richman, L. S., & Fredrickson, B. L. (2014). Discrimination hurts, but mindfulness may help: Trait mindfulness moderates the relationship between perceived discrimination and depressive symptoms. Personality and individual differences, 56, 201-205.
Brown-Iannuzzi, J. L., Payne, B. K., & Trawalter, S. (2013). Narrow Imaginations: How Imagining Ideal Employees Can Increase Racial Bias. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 16, 661 –670.
Cooley, E., Payne, B. K., Insko, C., & Rae, A. (2013). Perceived Relevance of Honesty and Agreeableness in Exchange and Coordination Situations: An Interdependence Perspective. European Journal of Social Psychology, 43, 593-599.
Cameron, C. D., Payne, B. K., & Doris, J. M. (2013). Morality in high definition: Emotion differentiation calibrates the influence of incidental disgust on moral judgments. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49, 719–725.
Brown-Iannuzzi, J. L., Hoffman, K. M., Payne, B. K., & Trawalter, S. (2013). The invisible man: Social goals moderate inattentional blindness to African Americans. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 33-37. DOI: 10.1037/a0031407.
Payne, B. K., Brown-Iannuzzi, J. L., Burkley, M., Arbuckle, N. L., Cooley, E., Cameron, C. D., & Lundberg, K. B. (2013). Intention Invention and the Affect Misattribution Procedure: Reply to Bar-Anan and Nosek (2012). Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39, 375-86.
DeMarree, K. G., Loersch, C., Briñol, P., Petty, R. E., Payne, B. K., & Rucker, D. D. (2012). From primed construct to motivated behavior: Validation processes in goal pursuit. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 1659-1670.
Santos, A. S., Garcia-Marques, L., Mackie, D. M., Ferreira, M. B., Payne, B. K., & Moreira, S. (2012). Implicit Open-Mindedness: Evidence for and Limits on Stereotype Malleability. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 1257–1266.
Sava, F. A., Maricuțoiu, L. P., Rusu, S., Macsinga, I., Vîrgă, D., Cheng, C. M., & Payne, B. K. (2012). An inkblot for the implicit assessment of personality: The Semantic Misattribution Procedure. European Journal of Personality, 26, 613–628.
Cameron, C. D., Brown-Iannuzzi, J. L., & Payne, B. K. (2012). Sequential priming measures of implicit social cognition: A meta-analysis of associations with behavior and explicit attitudes. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 4, 330-350.
Cameron, C. D., & Payne, B. K. (2012). The cost of callousness: How compassion regulation influences the moral self-concept. Psychological Science, 23, 225-229.
Loersch, C., & Payne, B. K. (2012). On mental contamination: The role of (mis)attribution in behavior priming. Social Cognition, 30, 241-252.
Cameron, C.D., & Payne, B.K. (2011). Escaping affect: How motivated emotion regulation creates insensitivity to mass suffering. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 1-15.
Kincaid, C. Y., Jones, D. J., Gonzalez, M., Payne, B. K., & DeVellis, R. (2012). The Role of Implicit Measurement in the Assessment of Risky Behavior: A Pilot Study with African American Girls. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 21, 799-806.
Loersch, C., & Payne, B. K. (2011). The situated inference model: An integrative account of the effects of primes on perception, behavior, and motivation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 234-252.
Cameron, C. D., Payne, B. K., & Knobe, J. (2010). Do theories of implicit race bias change moral judgments? Social Justice Research, 23, 272–289.
Payne, B. K., Hall, D., Cameron, C. D., & Bishara, A. J. (2010). A process model of
affect misattribution. Personality and Social Psychological Bulletin, 36, 1397-1408.
Payne, B. K., Krosnick, J. A., Pasek, J. Lelkes, Y., Akhtar, O., & Tompson, T. (2010).
Implicit and explicit prejudice in the 2008 American presidential election. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 367-374.
Pasek, J., Tahk, A., Lelkes, Y., Krosnick, J. A., Payne, B. K., Akhtar, O., & Tompson, T. (2009). Determinants of Turnout and Candidate Choice in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election: Illuminating the Impact of Racial Prejudice and Other Considerations. Public Opinion Quarterly, 73, 943-994.
Payne, B. K., & Bishara, A. J. (2009). An Integrative Review of Process Dissociation and Related Models in Social Cognition. European Review of Social Psychology, 20, 272- 314.
Bishara, A. J., & Payne, B. K. (2009). Multinomial process tree models of control and automaticity in weapon misidentification. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 524-534.
Payne, B. K., Burkley, M., & Stokes, M. B. (2008). Why do implicit and explicit attitude
tests diverge? The role of structural fit. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 16-31.
Loersch, C., Aarts, H., Payne, B. K., & Jefferis, V. E. (2008). The influence of social groups on goal contagion. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1555- 1558.
Stewart, B. D., & Payne, B. K. (2008). Bringing automatic stereotyping under control: Implementation intentions as an efficient means of thought control. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34, 1332-1345.
Payne, B. K., Govorun, O., & Arbuckle, N. L. (2008). Automatic attitudes and alcohol: Does implicit liking predict drinking? Cognition and Emotion, 22, 238-271.
Payne, B. K. (2008). What mistakes disclose: A process dissociation approach to automatic and controlled processes in social psychology. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2, 1073-1092.
Payne, B. K., Govorun, O., & Arbuckle, N. L. (2008). Automatic attitudes and alcohol: Does implicit liking predict drinking? Cognition and Emotion, 22, 238-271.
Payne, B. K., McClernon, J. F., & Dobbins, I. G. (2007). Automatic affective responses to
smoking cues. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, 15, 400-409.
Payne, B. K., & Corrigan, E. (2007). Emotional constraints on intentional forgetting. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 780-786.
Govorun, O., & Payne, B. K. (2006). Ego depletion and prejudice: Separating automatic and controlled components. Social Cognition, 24, 111-136.
Payne, B. K., & Jacoby, L. L. (2006). What should a process model deliver? Psychological Inquiry, 17, 194-198.
Govorun, O., Fuegen, K., & Payne, B. K. (2006). Stereotypes focus defensive projection. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 781-798.
* Winner of the SPSP 2005 student publication award.
Payne, B. K. (2006). Weapon bias: Split second decisions and unintended stereotyping. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15, 287-291.
Lambert, A. J., Payne, B. K., Ramsey, S., & Shaffer, L. M. (2005). On the predictive validity of implicit attitude measures: The moderating effect of perceived group variability. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41, 114-128.
Payne, B. K. (2005). Conceptualizing control in social cognition: How executive control modulates the expression of automatic stereotyping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 488-503.
Payne, B. K., Cheng, C. M., Govorun, O., & Stewart, B. (2005). An inkblot for attitudes: Affect misattribution as implicit measurement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 277-293.
Payne, B. K., Shimizu, Y., & Jacoby, L. L. (2005). Mental control and visual illusions: Toward explaining race-biased weapon identifications. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41, 36-47.
Payne, B. K., Jacoby, L. L., & Lambert, A. J. (2004). Memory monitoring and the control of stereotype distortion. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 52- 64.
Lambert, A. J., Chasteen, A., Payne, B. K., & Shaffer, L. M. (2004). Typicality and group variability as dual moderators of category-based inferences. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 708-722.
Lambert, A. J., Payne, B. K., & Jacoby, L. L. (2004). Accuracy and error: Constraints on process models in social psychology. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27, 350-351.
Lambert, A. J., Payne, B. K., Shaffer, L. M, Jacoby, L. L., Chasteen, A., & Khan, S. (2003). Stereotypes as dominant responses: On the “social facilitation” of prejudice in anticipated public contexts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 277-295.
Payne, B. K., Lambert, A. J., & Jacoby, L. L. (2002). Best laid plans: Effects of goals on accessibility bias and cognitive control in race-based misperceptions of weapons. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 384-396.
Payne, B. K. (2001). Prejudice and perception: The role of automatic and controlled
processes in misperceiving a weapon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 181-192.
BOOKS
Payne, B. K. The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Changes the Way We Think,
Live, and Die. Under Contract (anticipated 2017). New York: Viking Press.
Gawronski, B., & Payne, B. K. (Eds.). (2010). Handbook of implicit social cognition: Measurement, theory, and applications. New York: Guilford Press.
BOOK CHAPTERS
Payne, B. K., & Loersch, C. Behavior priming as memory misattribution. (2014). In D. S. Lindsay, C. M. Kelley, A. P. Yonelinas, and H. L. Roediger, III (Eds.). Remembering: Attributions, Processes, and Control in Human Memory. New York, NY: Psychology Press.
Payne, B. K., & Cameron, C. D. (2014). Dual Process Theory from a Process Dissociation Perspective. In J. W. Sherman, B. Gawronski, & Y. Trope (Eds.) Dual Process Theories of the Social Mind. New York: Guilford Press.
Payne, B. K., & Cameron, C. D. (2014). Free will worth having and the intentional control of behavior. In W. Sinnott-Armstrong (Ed.) Moral Psychology: Volume 4: Free Will and Moral Responsibility. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Payne, B. K., & Cameron, D. C. (2013). Implicit social cognition and mental representation. In D. Carlston (Ed.) Oxford Handbook of Social Cognition. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Payne, B. K. (2012). Control, Awareness, and Other Things We Might Learn to Live Without. In S. T. Fiske and C. N. Macrae (Eds.) Sage Handbook of Social Cognition. London: Sage Press, pp. 12-30.
Payne, B. K., & Brown-Iannuzzi, J. L. (2011). Automatic and Controlled Decision Making: A Process Dissociation Perspective. In J. Krueger (Ed.) Social Judgment and Decision making. New York: Psychology Press.
Payne, B. K. & Gawronski, B. (2010). A History of Implicit Social Cognition:
Where Is It Coming From? Where Is It Now? Where Is It Going? In B. Gawronski & B. K. Payne (Eds.) Handbook of Implicit Social Cognition: Measurement, Theory, and Applications. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Payne, B. K., & Cameron, C. D. (2010). Divided Minds, Divided Morals: How Implicit Social Cognition Underpins and Undermines our Sense of Social Justice. In B. Gawronski & B. K. Payne (Eds.) Handbook of Implicit Social Cognition: Measurement, Theory, and Applications. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Hall, D., & Payne, B. K., (2010). Unconscious attitudes, unconscious influence, and
challenges to self-control. In Y. Trope, K. Ochsner, & R. Hassin (Eds.), Self Control in Society, Mind, and Brain. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Stokes, M. B., & Payne, B. K. (2010). Mental control and visual illusions: Errors of action and construal in race-based weapon misidentification. In R. B. Adams, Jr., N. Ambady, K. Nakayama, & S. Shimojo (Eds.), The Science of Social Vision. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Payne, B. K. (2009). Attitude misattribution: Implications for attitude measurement and the implicit-explicit relationship. In R. E. Petty, R. H. Fazio, & P. Briñol (Eds.), Attitudes: Insights from the new wave of implicit measures. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Payne, B. K., & Stewart, B. D. (2007). Automatic and controlled components of social cognition: A process dissociation approach. In J. A. Bargh (Ed.) Social Psychology and the Unconscious: The Automaticity of Higher Mental Processes. New York, NY: Psychology Press.
Payne, B. K., Jacoby, L. L., & Lambert, A. J. (2005). Attitudes as accessibility bias:
Dissociating automatic and controlled components. In R. Hassin, J. Bargh, & J. Uleman (Eds.), The New Unconscious. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Lambert, A. J., Chasteen, A., & Payne, B. K. (2003). Finding prejudice in all the wrong places: On the “social facilitation” of stereotypes in anticipated public settings. In G. V. Bodenhausen & A. J. Lambert (Eds.), Foundations of Social Cognition: A Festschrift in Honour of Robert S. Wyer, Jr. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
INVITED TALKS AND COLLOQUIA (selected)
University of Chicago, Booth School of Business, May 2016.
Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, March, 2015.
Keynote, Carolina Researchers in Social Psychology meeting, Duke University, April, 2015.
University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa. April, 2014.
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN. March, 2014.
Duke University, Durham, NC. September, 2013.
University of West Timisoara, Timisoara, Romania, September, 2012.
University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK, April, 2012.
Duke University, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Durham, NC, January 26, 2012.
Science Online Conference, NC State University, Raleigh, NC, January 2012.
Harvard University Mind/Brain/Behavior Symposium, Cambridge, MA, September, 2011
University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada, 2011.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 2010.
Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, 2010.
University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, workshop, 2010.
University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, colloquium, 2010.
Cornell Perception Conference, Ithaca, NY, September, 2010.
Chicago Booth School of Business, April, 2009.
Duck Conference on Social Cognition, June, 2009.
University of North Carolina, Greensboro, March, 2009.
Social Sciences Research Institute, Duke University, February, 2009.
NIH Methodological and Conceptual Issues in Conducting Research on Racial/Ethnic Discrimination in Health Care Delivery, 2008.
New York University, January 2008.
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, June, 2007.
Union College, Schenectady, NY, May, 2007.
Banff Annual Seminar in Cognitive Science, March 2007.
New York University, March 2007.
Duck Conference on Social Cognition, June, 2006.
University of Virginia, November 2005.
University of Western Ontario, October 2005.
Duck Conference on Social Cognition, June, 2005.
Ohio University, April, 2005.
Purdue University, March, 2005.
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, March, 2005.
Midwestern Psychological Association invited address, Chicago, IL, 2004.
Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY, 2002.
TEACHING ACTIVITIES
GRADUATE COURSES
Advanced Social Cognition (Psyc 869)
Directed Research Seminar in Social Psychology (Psyc 860)
Prejudice and Stereotyping (Psyc 873)
UNDERGRADUATE COURSES
Social Psychology (Psyc 260)
Social Cognition (Psyc 561)
Stereotyping and Prejudice (Psyc 565)
Experimental Social Psychology
DISSERTATION COMMITTEES
Keenan Jenkins
Sophia Choukas-Bradley
Jazmin Brown-Iannuzzi
Kristjen Lundberg
Erin Cooley
Lahnna Catalino
Jordan Carpenter
Daryl Cameron
Jordan Carpenter
Joseph Simons
Joseph Franklin
Megan Freeman
Paul Miceli
Brittain Mahaffey
Emily Parks
Jolynn Pek
Lindsay Kennedy
Temple Northup
Kristi Copping
Carrie Adair
Laura Kurtz
Megan Harney
Lin Yang, Duke University
Bethany Kok
Jason Moldoff
Andrew Rae
Taya Cohen
Eulena Jonsson
Scott Wolf
Ndidi Okeke
Amy Johnson
Ilana Dew
Jeff Kirchner
Seth Carter
Greg Roeder
Melissa Burkley
Edward Burkley
Olesya Govorun, Ohio State University
MASTERS THESIS COMMITTEES
Carrie Adair
Kristjen Lundberg
Erin Cooley
Jazmin Brown-Iannuzzi
Olivenne Skinner
Megan Joseph
Tanya Vacharkulksemsuk
Daryl Cameron
Paul Miceli
Andrew Rae
Miri Besken
John Donahue
Lindsay Kennedy
Ken Demarree, Ohio State University
Leslie Wade, Ohio State University
John Harrison, Ohio State University
HONORS THESES SUPERVISED
2015 Katelyn Jones. Socioeconomic status, perceived resources, and susceptibility to sickness suggestions: Investigating whether a manipulation of Socioeconomic Status Influences Susceptibility to the Nocebo Effect.
2012 Jean Phillips. Intentionality of implicit attitudes: how metacognition shapes our explicit thoughts.
2012 Maya Foster. Reappraising Interracial Interactions: Can Positive Interactions Reduce Implicit Bias?
2010 Ryan Lei. The effect of attitude ownership on implicit and explicit attitudes toward homosexuals.
2009 Megan Bookhout. Implicit race bias toward children and adults.
2007 Kelly Geoghegan. Implicit racial bias and criminal sentencing decisions.
Winner of the Dashiell-Thurstone Prize
Leia Charnin. Does emotion rely on a limited capacity resource? Implications for memory.
2004 John Wolanin. Projection in Stereotype Use.
FELLOWSHIPS MENTORED
2015 Heidi Vuletich, National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
2009 Tiffany Griffin, Carolina Postdoctoral Program for Faculty Diversity
2008 Daryl Cameron, National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
2006 Chandni Kalaria, Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship
2006 Kirsten Haller, Summer Pre-Graduate Research Experience (SPGRE) program
2004 Chris Loersch, National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
PROFESSIONAL SERVICE AND LEADERSHIP
NATIONAL SERVICE
2015-2016 Convention Chair, Society for Personality and Social Psychology
2013-2016 Executive Committee, International Society for Social Cognition
2012-2015 Convention Committee, Society for Personality and Social Psychology
2008-2010 Eli Lilly and Company Benefits and Risk Communication Advisory Board
2007-2009 Conference co-organizer, Society for Personality and Social Psychology Attitudes Pre-conference.
2005 APA Science Advocacy Workshop Washington DC, April 30-May 2.
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
2010 – 2013 Social Cognition
GUEST EDITOR
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
EDITORIAL BOARDS
2007 – present Psychological Science
2006 – present Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
2005 – present Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
2005 – present Social Cognition
2012 – 2014 Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
AD HOC REVIEWER, JOURNALS
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Psychological Science
American Psychologist
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Basic and Applied Social Psychology
Journal of Applied Social Psychology
Journal of Personality
Quarterly J. of Experimental Psychology
Psychonomic Bulletin and Review
European Journal of Social Psychology
British Journal of Social Psychology
Cognition and Emotion
Social Psychology
Social Neuroscience
Journal of Social Psychology
Memory
Public Opinion Quarterly
American Political Science Review
Health Psychology
REVIEWER, FEDERAL GRANTS AND AGENCIES
National Institute on Drug Abuse
National Science Foundation
National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research
US Food and Drug Administration
UNIVERSITY SERVICE
2015 – UNC Institutional Review Board Member
2014 – Odum Institute for Social Sciences, Faculty Advisory Board
DEPARTMENTAL SERVICE
Neuroscience Major Design Committee 2016
Diversity Committee, 2016-
Program Director, UNC Social Psychology Program, 2015-2020.
Social Psychology Promotion and tenure subcommittee, 2012, 2016.
Non-biomedical Internal Review Board, 2015-
Psychology Department Pre-IRB Review Committee, 2005-2012.
Psychology Department Advisory Committee, 2006-2009, 2010-2013.
Social Psychology Search Committee, 2010, 2011, 2012.
Department of Psychology reappointment committee, Chair, 2014.
Department of Psychology reappointment committee, member, 2014.
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
American Psychological Society
Society of Experimental Social Psychology
Society for Personality and Social Psychology
International Social Cognition Network
ENGAGED SCHOLARSHIP_________________________________________________
2016 Inclusive Teaching Workshop series, with Kelly Hogan, UNC.
2016 Truth, Lies, and Politics: Ideology, rationality, and choice in an election year. Panel discussion, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC.
2015 Chapman, M., V., & Payne, B. K. Fighting fire with fire: Using implicit means to combat implicit bias. Minority Health Month Webinar Series, NIH OppNet, April 22.
2015 Carolina FIRST. Panel discussion on experiences of first generation college students.
2015 The Science of Implicit Bias. Workshop presented for Orange County Justice United and the Organizing Against Racism Alliance. Chapel Hill, NC, March, 2015.
2014 The Science of Implicit Bias. UNC Diversity THINKposium. UNC Center for Faculty Excellence. August, 2014.
2014 Inequality shapes thought and behavior. Open Minds Café, Morehead Planetarium and Science Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
2013 Payne, B. K. The Myth of Executive Stress. Scientific American, Mind Matters column, September 24, 2013.
2013 Payne, B. K. Your Hidden Censor: What Your Mind Will Not Let You See. Scientific American, Mind Matters column, June 11, 2013.
2011 Instructor, Summer Institute in Social Psychology, Princeton University
2009 Has prejudice really faded? How modern forms of unintended bias influence decisions today. Morehead Planetarium and Science Center Current Science Forum. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
2009 Life on autopilot: Exploring the mind’s accidents, curveballs, and backfires. Psychology Today Blog. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/life-autopilot
2004 Understanding intentional and unintentional aspects of race bias in misidentifying weapons. Presentation at the Policing Racial Bias conference at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA.
QUOTED: "My personal experiences with poverty and wealth, with high status and low status, have been so incongruous and startling to me that it drove home how far apart people’s subjective experiences of poverty and their actual income can be. And when I looked at the new psychology research, I realized that it was often the subjective experiences that matter most."
"For example, in the fourth grade lunch line, when I first realized that my free lunches meant I was poorer than other kids, my world suddenly changed. My family’s income was the same, but now I felt poor, and started seeing the world and acting accordingly."
"It was a huge demotion, psychologically. Later when I went to college and graduate school, the opposite happened. I had no money but felt upper class because I was on a trajectory that made me feel confident for the first time in my life that things would go my way. I felt that disconnection again when I began my first position as a professor. At 27 years old I went from being a poor graduate student one day to being called “professor” by everyone and treated with more respect than I had ever experienced."
"These incongruous experiences made me aware of the profound disconnections between people’s objective incomes and their subjective experiences of it. And that disconnection is the linchpin that psychologically connects inequality (the size of the gap between rich and poor) to poverty. When inequality gets very high as it is today, everyone feels poorer. Even the middle class feels left behind."
INTERVIEWS
The Broken Ladder: Keith Payne on How Inequality Affects Our Behavior
By SHANNON L. BOWEN
July 14, 2017
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Photo © Shutterstock
Americans believe strongly in personal responsibility. It’s one of the underpinnings of our culture—and of all of Western thought—and rightly so. But Americans also believe deeply in fairness, and it’s increasingly difficult to square either of these American values with the dramatic rise in income inequality that this country has witnessed over the last fifty years.
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The Broken Ladder
by Keith Payne
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According to nonpartisan policy and research institute the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, since the 1970s, income growth for high-earning households has vastly outpaced that of low- and middle-earning households. Over the last ten years, the wealthiest one percent of households’ share of before-tax income “has climbed to levels not seen since the 1920s.” And when it comes to households’ wealth—the value of assets minus debts—the top three percent possess more than half of all wealth in the United States.
Keith Payne tackles inequality and its wide-ranging effects in his timely and illuminating new book, The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die. In America and all over the world, more inequality correlates to more health and social problems. It influences how we think about social justice, how we vote, how we save for retirement or don’t, what illnesses are likely to afflict us, and how long we can expect to live. But inequality is about more than just the amount of money in a person’s bank account. “Inequality is not the same as poverty,” Payne writes. “Inequality makes people feel poor and act poor, even when they’re not. Inequality so mimics poverty in our minds that the United States of America, the richest and most unequal of countries, has a lot of features that better resemble a developing nation than a superpower.”
Payne recently spoke with Signature about how inequality permeates our perception of ourselves and others, the role of fundamental attribution error and how it reinforces the notion of poverty as a result of personal failings, and what we can do to feel more at ease in our own skin.
SIGNATURE: You punctuate this book with stories from your own life, like how, when you were in the fourth grade, a new lunch lady asked you to pay for your lunch, not knowing you received free lunches. How did your personal experiences inform your career path and your decision to write this book?
KEITH PAYNE: My personal experiences with poverty and wealth, with high status and low status, have been so incongruous and startling to me that it drove home how far apart people’s subjective experiences of poverty and their actual income can be. And when I looked at the new psychology research, I realized that it was often the subjective experiences that matter most. For example, in the fourth grade lunch line, when I first realized that my free lunches meant I was poorer than other kids, my world suddenly changed. My family’s income was the same, but now I felt poor, and started seeing the world and acting accordingly."The increasing residential and social segregation that is happening today changes what people think of as 'normal.'"
TWEET THIS QUOTE
It was a huge demotion, psychologically. Later when I went to college and graduate school, the opposite happened. I had no money but felt upper class because I was on a trajectory that made me feel confident for the first time in my life that things would go my way. I felt that disconnection again when I began my first position as a professor. At 27 years old I went from being a poor graduate student one day to being called “professor” by everyone and treated with more respect than I had ever experienced. These incongruous experiences made me aware of the profound disconnections between people’s objective incomes and their subjective experiences of it. And that disconnection is the linchpin that psychologically connects inequality (the size of the gap between rich and poor) to poverty. When inequality gets very high as it is today, everyone feels poorer. Even the middle class feels left behind.
SIG: If you regard yourself as poor, regardless of your actual income, what are some things that are more likely to happen to you?
PAYNE: Subjective feelings of wealth and poverty are associated with a huge range of health and emotional problems. Holding constant people’s actual incomes, those who feel poorer are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety disorders, cardiovascular disease, and obesity and diabetes. The cumulative effect of all these illnesses is that people who feel poorer actually have shorter life expectancies. I saw this dynamic in one study that my colleagues and I conducted with cancer survivors.
This group of survivors had undergone a kind of stem-cell therapy that is brutal to experience. A high rate of patients who survive the treatment experience post-traumatic stress disorder from the treatment itself. We measured their quality of life (including PTSD, anxiety, and depression) six months after the treatment. Their objective incomes didn’t predict their quality of life, but those who felt poorer were more likely to develop PTSD as well as to suffer from depression and anxiety in the following months. The interesting thing about this study is that the stem cell therapy is expensive and cutting edge, and not generally covered by insurance. That means that patients in our study were all relatively wealthy. And even among this wealthy group, feeling poor predicted poor outcomes.
SIG: One of the most striking themes of your book is just how inaccurately people see themselves, especially regarding where they stand on what you call the “status ladder.” In your research or elsewhere, have you had occasion to show people where they actually fall on the ladder, and if so, how have they responded when confronted with the truth?
PAYNE: This question of where people “really stand” on the status ladder is interesting, and tricky. When we ask people to rate themselves on the status ladder, we ask them to consider things like their income, education, and jobs, and rate where they stand compared to other people. If you feel that you are better off than most people, you can probably find an angle that justifies that feeling. Maybe it’s focusing on your education and ignoring the income part.
Or maybe it’s selectively picking the “other people” you compare to. Likewise, if you feel worse off than others, you can probably focus on one or two aspects of the comparison to justify it. The important part—for predicting people’s behavior and their thoughts—is their subjective experience. And if someone feels above or below average, providing them facts about income distributions does not change much.
SIG: What is fundamental attribution error and how does it affect our ideas about inequality?
PAYNE: Imagine that you see Mary weeping. It might be because of something about Mary (is she a depressive personality?) or it might be something about the situation she’s in (maybe she has just been dumped?). The fundamental attribution error is the widespread bias to think about person-based explanations and ignore situation-based explanations.
When it comes to unequal economic outcomes, this means that we look at successful people and assume it’s because of their hard work and talent, and we look at unsuccessful people and assume they are lazy or dumb. We ignore situational factors—like whether they were raised by wealthy or poor parents, attended good or bad schools, or had opportunities in their lives.
Both can matter, but the data show that by far the best predictor of how much people will achieve in terms of income and education is the income and education of their parents and the geographical locations in which they were born. And yet, many people can’t help seeing millionaires as brilliant, and food stamp recipients as deficient.
SIG: In Chapter Two, about why we can’t stop comparing ourselves to others, you write that inequality is hard to see because “its essence is the lack of a single shared experience.” Essentially, “the haves and the have-nots separate themselves from one another where they live, where they work, and where they go to school.” What is this segregation doing to how people perceive one another and the world?
PAYNE: The increasing residential and social segregation that is happening today changes what people think of as “normal.” If you live in a wealthy suburb of Washington DC, you may think that it is completely normal to drive an Audi, and spend a thousand dollars a month on restaurants, and it would be very strange if your friend’s child did not go to a four-year college.
But if you live in a trailer park in rural Kentucky, you might think it’s totally ordinary that the neighbor’s teenager sells drugs and that no one you know has gone to college. People do what seems normal to them. Segregation creates increasingly different norms for what regular people do, and that has the effect of reinforcing inequality.
SIG: In exploring how inequality divides our politics, you debunk the notion that poor people tend to vote conservative and rich people tend to vote liberal. But in the 2016 presidential election, we heard a lot about working class people who voted for Donald Trump. To what extent was voting in this election in line or out of line with historical trends, and what can we learn from it?
PAYNE: The journalistic coverage of the 2016 election fell prey to the same bias as was observed in the previous several elections—depicting poor people voting mainly Republican and wealthy people voting mainly Democrat. In fact, higher income was associated with a greater likelihood of voting for Donald Trump in 2016.
The typical Trump voter earned above the national average income, and the typical Clinton voter earned below the national average. The misperception arises because, although richer individuals tend to vote Republican, the average person in richer states tends to vote Democrat. I think that the resolution to this puzzle is found in the fact that people vote not based on their objective income but on their subjective experiences of the status ladder. The more money you make, the higher you will tend to feel on the status ladder. That means that conservative policies like tax cuts will probably sound like they are in your interest, even though most people who feel subjectively rich would not actually benefit from tax cuts that help the top tax brackets.
Conversely, the poorer you feel, the more it will feel in your interest to strengthen the social safety net. But here’s the surprising thing: the poorer the state you live in, the richer you are likely to feel. Imagine two people who earn $58,000 a year (about the national average household income). One who lives in Alabama will feel much richer than one who lives in Connecticut. So if people vote based on their subjective perceptions—what feels in their self-interest—rather than economic realities, it explains both why richer people vote Republican and people in poorer states vote Republican. From the liberal perspective this looks like poor people voting against their self-interest. But if you ask those people what they see as their self-interest, they will tell you they are voting rationally.
SIG: Thomas Jefferson has often been credited with saying, “An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.” But these days, it seems like the populace, at least in the U.S., is woefully uninformed. For example, you describe a survey that showed that 40% of people who had received government benefits did not believe they had. If the public is that ignorant of the facts, how can we hope for legislation and change that will actually benefit most people?
PAYNE: When the stimulus package was passed in the wake of the 2009 financial crisis, the government did something savvy: projects funded by the stimulus carried big signs that said, in effect, “This project is brought to you by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.” You would see those signs at road construction sites and bridge repairs, for example. Political scientists have a term—the submerged state—for the fact that many government programs that help people are invisible. We don’t see tax breaks, Medicare, or government subsidies for policies like Obamacare or social security on a day-to-day basis. I think those policies should carry signs—like the ones on construction sites—that let you know that you are getting a break because of a particular policy. For example, tax forms could say, “Here is what you owe based on your income. But here is what you actually pay because of the Earned Income Tax Credit.”
SIG: In your chapter about how inequality is a matter of life and death, you write about something that’s been in the news a lot lately: in the U.S., death rates have been steadily declining, with the exception of middle-aged whites, especially those without a college degree. I was especially struck by the line, “This demographic group is dying of violated expectations.” Can you describe these deaths of despair and explain what you mean by that sentence?
PAYNE: The group for whom death rates are alarmingly increasing—middle-aged whites without a college degree—is a great example of how subjective experiences of the status ladder can peel apart from objective wealth. This group has been hit hard by increasing automation, just like low-education black and Hispanic Americans. But black and Hispanic death rates continue to trend down. What separates the groups is that whites expected, based on their past experiences and their parents’ generation, to do better. By comparison to those expectations they feel left behind. That’s why it is interesting that the causes of death driving this increase are largely self-inflicted wounds like drug overdoses and suicides.
SIG: Your chapter about racial and economic inequality is full of sobering research about implicit bias around race, like how many people view black welfare recipients as lazy and dishonest and white ones as the “deserving poor,” and how blacks receive more severe criminal sentences. But you remain optimistic. You conclude that section by saying, “Consider this chapter an invitation to look forward.” Can you elaborate?
PAYNE: The living conditions of black and white Americans really are staggeringly different. But the perceptions of these groups are also in different worlds. Black Americans believe that racial discrimination against blacks is widespread, but whites see racial discrimination as largely a thing of the past. Psychologists Richard Eibach and Joyce Ehrlinger discovered that those perceptions are driven by different reference points. If you ask how bad racial prejudice is today, white Americans tend to think about the Jim Crow past. By comparison to that, today seems pretty good. But when you ask black Americans the same question, they think of what true equality would look like. By comparison to that ideal future, today seems woefully prejudiced. These researchers found that if you first get each group to consider the other group’s reference point, their differences of opinion about the present largely disappear. What I’m trying to do in this chapter is encourage white Americans to think about what a truly equal America would look like. By comparison to that, I think most readers will agree we have work to do.
SIG: At the end of the book, you write that big-picture economic change is a long-term prospect, but suggest that we might “improve the quality of individual lives on a more immediate basis”—for example, by recognizing when we are compulsively comparing ourselves to others and consciously choosing comparisons that are relevant and useful, redirecting our comparisons from other people to our own pasts, and assessing what is most meaningful to us. Can you explain how changing one’s perspective can help people live better despite the realities of inequality?
PAYNE: The best solution to the problems we’ve been discussing is to reduce economic inequality and widen the ability of ordinary people to share in the historic increases in wealth that America has been experiencing for the past half century. But in the short term, I outline a number of psychological strategies that people can use, for themselves and their children, to get off the treadmill of constant social comparison. We discussed that importance of subjective experiences—how much it matters if we feel poor, regardless of actual income.
By making social comparisons strategically and purposefully rather than as a knee-jerk reaction, we can take control of how we feel compared to others. So when we need inspiration or motivation, it makes sense to compare ourselves to those more successful than us. It may make us feel inferior, but it can also give us an energy boost. And when the problem is that we are feeling stressed or left behind, then it makes sense to compare to those who are not as far ahead as we are. It might encourage us to rest on laurels, but downward comparison can give us some much-needed breathing room on the status ladder.
All of these comparisons, however, are really indirect ways of reassuring ourselves that we are good, valuable people worthy of respect and admiration. The best strategy is to go straight to the heart of the matter: spend some time reflecting on what really matters to you. This simple activity, which can be done on a moment’s notice and on a daily basis, gives us the best of both worlds. It motivates us to pursue the things that really matter, ignore the things that don’t, and to feel comfortable in our own skin regardless of what those around us may have.
QUOTED: "This historical element is what is missing from Payne's book. Status may be a part of our brain circuitry, but it has also been conditioned in us over time. Our present interest in inequality comes principally in response to the obsession with status that arose after World War II."
"Despite this omission, Payne's book will make its readers pause to consider the human condition in more depth. Some will no doubt conclude that the ladder-in-our-minds has become so dysfunctional that in 2016, voters elected a president whose life has long been consumed by a craving for status. The serious disability, which Payne underscores, of casting votes based on feelings over facts fits all too neatly, and that's scary."
Waking from the dream: most Americans assume society is more egalitarian than it is
Nancy Isenberg
The American Scholar. 86.3 (Summer 2017): p112+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Phi Beta Kappa Society
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/
Full Text:
THE BROKEN LADDER: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die
BY KEITH PAYNE
Viking, 256 pp., $28
KEITH PAYNE, A PROFESSOR of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina, is intent on showing how the problem of inequality operates within the human mind. He does not claim to have studied the historical causes of the American class system, nor does he aim to explore the political or cultural ideologies that have been used to rationalize differences between the haves and the have-nots. His singular focus is on how the brain is evolutionarily wired for ambition and justice alike. When societies such as ours deviate from the primitive sense of fair play, he asserts, everyone suffers.
Payne writes about both poverty and the broader condition of "feeling poor," which affects not just the actual poor, but also many people in the middle class. For Payne, inequality is a malaise that leads struggling Americans to engage in risky, self-defeating behaviors, while simultaneously strengthening a self-serving conclusion among Americans who have become steadily richer: namely that the system works.
To tell his story, Payne intertwines two narrative voices--one left over from his poor-boy past in Kentucky, the other of the erudite thinker he has become. His youthful experience informs the story every bit as much as statistical information gleaned from psychological experiments meant to offer clues to the hidden "logic" of human behavior. Sociologists use the term alienation for the phenomenon he describes, and historians have studied status anxiety as well, but Payne is interested in psychic pain and the social costs of failure. As he amply shows by citing compelling examples from scientific research, the brain masks the degree of inequality we perceive, and most Americans assume our society is far more egalitarian than it is.
Scholars have discovered that most people grossly underestimate the amount of wealth on either side of the economic scale. They are not even close when it comes to the salaries of CEOs, estimating that they earn 30 times what an average worker takes home; in fact, it is 350 times. Assembling a group of 5,000 American participants, researchers in one remarkable study asked the subjects to compare pie charts of the wealth distribution found in two unnamed countries. As it turned out, 92 percent of the participants chose Sweden over the United States as the place they wished to live because of its greater economic equality. This held for both Democrats (94 percent) and Republicans (90 percent).
Ignorance is not bliss, however. The macro-level deception conceals a more dangerous conflict between evolutionary impulses for status and power and our survival instincts to live in a world (which Payne traces back to the hunter-gatherer stage) that relies on sharing resources. The ladder is broken, he writes, because human beings can't forgo their desire for status, and yet are like hamsters on a wheel, chasing a dream that gives them little satisfaction. The top is so far out of reach that ambition generates debilitating levels of stress and depression, and makes the most emotionally vulnerable among us prone to risky behaviors such as outbursts of rage on a plane, sabotage at work, or taking drugs to deal with the emotional pain. Health and happiness are sacrificed in pursuit of unobtainable goals.
Neither conservative nor liberal rationales address this problem. Hard work and talent are no more important than chance and privilege in determining success, and a lack of character or a constricted social environment does not alone explain the mental poverty trap. Humans are creatures of instinct and improvisation, and poor people who live in precarious situations adapt and devise different rules for survival--what Payne identifies as the "fast strategy," to "live fast, die young." More successful, middle-class Americans will defend the hard work explanation even when they know from experience that rewards are allotted randomly. No one, Payne insists, can avoid that evolutionary craving for status, which leads people to constantly evaluate where they are on the ladder, subconsciously comparing themselves to others. Once again, average Americans conceal this impulse, often convincing themselves that they care more about love, faith, loyalty, and integrity. But it's not true, writes Payne. All we need are a few primate studies to remind us that the hunger for status is what the proto-psychologists of the 18th century considered to be an "animal passion."
Beyond its case studies, the memoir portion of Payne's book is compelling in its own way, and is a counternarrative to J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy. The Broken Ladder is a liberal man's view of his own rise. From the first chapter, he lets us know that he remembers the feeling of shame he had as a poor child. One memory of worthlessness stands out: A new lunch lady at school asked him to pay for his meal, and he didn't have the money. As a poor kid, he wasn't supposed to pay, but all at once, he recognized that he had been lowered in the eyes of his peers. Comparison is at the heart of Payne's system of inequality, so it is not surprising that he offers symbolic contrasts between himself and his working-class sibling. We encounter his brother Jason as a kid picking tobacco as the tar turns his hands black. We meet him again as he recklessly drives his pickup truck. He spends eight years in prison, while his author-brother lands a prestigious post at the University of North Carolina.
The most disturbing tale in the book involves the author's uncle Sterman, an alcoholic living in an abandoned barn at a landfill. When diagnosed with lung cancer, he chooses whiskey over painkillers. This decision would seem irrational to most middle-class Americans, Payne writes. Yet the cause, I suggest, has a much longer history. His uncle was a quintessential squatter, part of a long line of hoboes and landless poor who live on the margins of society and contest its rules. They dismiss middling sensibilities and reject the masculine value of hard work. That is to say, the "broken ladder" of Payne's concern long predates today's crisis; it only looks new because the one percent have gained the lion's share of the nation's wealth only in the past 50 years.
This historical element is what is missing from Payne's book. Status may be a part of our brain circuitry, but it has also been conditioned in us over time. Our present interest in inequality comes principally in response to the obsession with status that arose after World War II. The historian Richard Hofstadter won the Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Reform , his 1955 study of "status anxiety." Vance Packard's influential best seller The Status Seekers appeared in 1959. This was no coincidence. The postwar creation of a stable middle class encouraged parents to expect that their children would do better than they had done. The emergence of the homogeneous class environs of suburbia and the rise of the white-collar corporate ladder created the perfect breeding grounds for a personal preoccupation with status. Payne is right to conclude that status is not new, but it is crucial to add that the rules we now live by were shaped by the "ideological toolbox" of the 1950s.
Despite this omission, Payne's book will make its readers pause to consider the human condition in more depth. Some will no doubt conclude that the ladder-in-our-minds has become so dysfunctional that in 2016, voters elected a president whose life has long been consumed by a craving for status. The serious disability, which Payne underscores, of casting votes based on feelings over facts fits all too neatly, and that's scary. Wishing for a quick fix ("Make America Great Again") means that those in Donald Trump's column were so desperate that they refused to plan for the future and instead adopted the "fast strategy," by betting all their chips on one very risky choice. The sad conclusion this book compels is that Americans are so out of touch with reality, and so hobbled by mental crutches, that social inequality will remain the dirty little secret that we cannot possibly purge.
Nancy Isenberg is the author of several books, including White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America and Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr . She is the T. Harry Williams Professor of American History at Louisiana State University.
Caption: Human beings can't forgo their desire for status, and yet are chasing a dream that gives them little satisfaction .
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Isenberg, Nancy. "Waking from the dream: most Americans assume society is more egalitarian than it is." The American Scholar, Summer 2017, p. 112+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495666329/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=41037c15. Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
QUOTED: "Though the author doesn't break much new ground, he provides valuable psychological insights into our daily behaviors."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A495666329
Payne, Keith: THE BROKEN LADDER
Kirkus Reviews. (Apr. 1, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Payne, Keith THE BROKEN LADDER Viking (Adult Nonfiction) $28.00 5, 2 ISBN: 978-0-525-42981-4
The surprising consequences of inequality.In a wide-ranging exploration of how we view ourselves in relation to others, Payne (Psychology and Neuroscience/Univ. of North Carolina) shows that "the social comparisons we make can alter how we see the world." Going beyond obvious measures--e.g., income, education, and employment--the author argues that the key to understanding what lies at the heart of self-perception is the hunger for status, which humans crave. Comparing ourselves to the people we meet each day, and often falling short, we set ourselves up for acting and thinking in predictable, generally detrimental ways. For example, Payne recalls the moment from his school days when he discovered that getting a free lunch made him different. He soon noticed other kids dressed better, and so on: "Inequality makes people feel poor and act poor, even when they're not." Smartly blending personal observations with recent research in psychology and neuroscience (his own and that of others), he details how our perceived relative position in the scheme of things plays a "critical role" in shaping our biases, habits, and ideas. "There are good reasons," he writes, "why people with different experiences tend to have incompatible understandings of the world." In revealing vignettes, Payne describes how feelings of inequality help account for our political choices, unhealthy behaviors, racial prejudices, and tendency to seek meaningful patterns. He also explains why poor women often have more children and why working-class individuals are less inclined to plan for the future. We experience inequality most directly in hierarchical workplaces, and there would be far less job satisfaction if the extreme inequality in CEO pay was more widely known. In discussing the "implicit bias" involved in killings of unarmed black men by police, he cites numerous studies showing people are "more likely to think they saw a gun when it was linked to a black face." Though the author doesn't break much new ground, he provides valuable psychological insights into our daily behaviors.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Payne, Keith: THE BROKEN LADDER." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A487668430/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ea7b6d34. Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A487668430
QUOTED: "The Broken Ladder is a clear and useful book about the gap between the society we have and a society we want. It’s an important step toward understanding how these complicated issue affect our country—alongside books like Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, which takes a more narrative approach to the issue, and Per Molander’s The Anatomy of Inequality, which analyzes it from an economic point of view. Inequality can seem intractable, but these writers are steering us in the right direction."
INEQUALITY IS EVERYONE’S PROBLEM: THE BROKEN LADDER BY KEITH PAYNE
REVIEWED BY BRADLEY BABENDIR
May 4th, 2017
A pair of epidemiologists, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, wanted to know how economic factors impacted health and social problems in several developed nations. When they made a graph with one axis showing average income and the other showing an index of health and social problems, the countries formed an amorphous cloud with no discernible pattern. But when they swapped the average income for a measurement of inequality, a clear correlation appeared: regardless of income, the countries most likely to have health and social problems were the most unequal ones, with the United States of America worst off of all.
This information appears early on in The Broken Ladder by Dr. Keith Payne, a professor of Psychology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. His new book focuses on the psychological impact of economic inequality. He makes every effort to legitimize the conversation and include people who might otherwise disagree with his conclusions. Inequality, in Payne’s eyes, is massively detrimental to everyone in unequal societies, and everyone needs to know it.
Payne’s chapter on politics is both illuminating and confounding. After debunking the myth that the Republican Party’s voter base is poorer than the Democratic Party’s voter base (using analysis of the 2004 Presidential election), he moves on to how inequality is correlated with partisanship, measured by the frequency with which Congresspersons vote against one another (the short version: it’s very correlated). He says conservatives believe “that a society in chaos is the worst possible condition.” This, in reference to the tendency of Republicans to work towards the preservation of the status quo, seems a little outdated, at best. Payne does little to account for the causes of inequality in this chapter, but he ends it with a plea for peace.
In 2014, about a third of respondents [to a Pew Research Center poll] thought that members of the opposite party were not just mistaken, but were a threat to the nation’s well being… These trends are dangerous because when opponents become enemies, people can justify almost anything in responding to them.
Certainly, what the poll found is not indicative of a healthy political climate. And treating political parties like teams to whom one bears unwavering allegiance is bad. But calling one party a “threat to the nation’s well-being” is not inherently silly; it could be accurate. And The Broken Ladder is extremely good evidence of exactly that.
Payne’s writing on how inequality changes people’s decisions, beliefs, and even their health is eye-opening and efficient. Each piece is explained clearly, and he has a useful tendency to layer the information from the relevant studies in such away that it creates a narrative and intellectual flow. These sections are well crafted and informative, but perhaps the best chapter in the book is the one on racial inequality.
He starts by explaining the different perceptions that white people and black people have in terms of how much discrimination each race faces.
Whites seemed to view discrimination as a zero-sum game: The less discrimination they perceived against blacks, the more they saw it turned against whites. The trend was so stark in the eyes of white respondents that by the 2000s they judged discrimination against whites to be a bigger problem than discrimination against blacks.
Payne then cites a variety of studies on an array of subjects—job applications and prison sentencing among them—that prove conclusively that this is not the case, that black people still face much more discrimination than white people do. The barrage, for those who do not need to be convinced, can be arduous, but it has to be proved. He adds further nuance by highlighting studies that show when white people feel that their social or economic positions are diminishing for any reason, they act more racist. It is not tied, necessarily, to their material conditions, but their perceptions of their material conditions.
The last piece of Payne’s puzzle comes from a study he cites by political scientist Martin Gilens, which found that “the best predictor of wanting to slash funding for welfare recipients is racial prejudice.” Here is where the value of his evenhandedness becomes obvious. There are moments in the book when his concessions, for someone already convinced that inequality is major issue, can feel unnecessary. Without that approach, though, the argument he makes about racism might not be possible. A deliberate and detailed explanation of how racism impacts economic inequality is necessary, and the slow pace is necessary for it to land with everyone who reads the book.
The Broken Ladder is a clear and useful book about the gap between the society we have and a society we want. It’s an important step toward understanding how these complicated issue affect our country—alongside books like Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, which takes a more narrative approach to the issue, and Per Molander’s The Anatomy of Inequality, which analyzes it from an economic point of view.
Inequality can seem intractable, but these writers are steering us in the right direction. It is no doubt difficult to situate the problem of inequality in such a fraught political landscape, with a President so intent on hurting so many, but keeping an eye on a long-term vision of a more egalitarian society is necessary, too. Keeping Payne’s book on your bedside table is a good place to start.
QUOTED: "an important and disturbing book"
READ THIS: EXPLORING THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DAMAGE CAUSED BY INCOME INEQUALITY
The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die by Keith Payne
Viking, 256 pp.
Economists are showering us with alarming statistics about income inequality. The top 10% of Americans hold 76% of the nation’s wealth; the richest 85 people in the world have more wealth than the poorest 3.5 billion. Now Keith Payne, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina comes along with an important and disturbing book to tell us how inequality is affecting Americans psychologically – and it is not pretty.
Payne, who grew up poor in Kentucky hill country, felt the injuries of class as a child: he recalls being painfully embarrassed when he first realized that his classmates were paying for their school lunches while he was getting his for free. As an adult, he is helping to create a new “science of inequality," by studying such subjects as the connection between social status and stress (monkeys with higher rank in their troop have less bodily stress) and income inequality and life expectancy (nations and U.S. states with more inequality have shorter lifespans).
It is sobering stuff, and it should make us think about the hidden costs of growing income inequality -- and about the messages society is sending to people about where they fit in. What matters psychologically, Payne argues, is not just people’s objective economic situation, but how they perceive their place on the “status ladder” – and he’s got evidence to back it up. “If you place yourself on a lower rung, then you are more likely in the coming years to suffer from depression, anxiety, and chronic pain,” he writes. “The lower rung you select, the more prone you are to weight issues, diabetes, and heart problems. The lower the rung you select, the fewer years you have left to live.”
Review: “The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live and Die"
Reviewed by Bill Schwab Sep 11, 2017 (0)
"Th Broken Ladder"
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A 2017 Oxfam study, “An Economy for the 99%,” reported that the richest eight people in the world have as much wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion people. To give this statistic an added perspective, while these eight billionaires could easily fit into a single van, the entire population of North, Central and South America totals only about 1 billion. In other words, those eight people have more wealth than three times the number of persons living in the Western Hemisphere.
In 2012, the average CEO in the U.S. earned about 350 times the average worker’s income. The United Nations Children’s Fund estimates that eleven children under age five die every minute due to poverty.
Author Keith Payne cites these statistics to show that the disparity between rich and poor has ramifications extending far beyond financial means. Payne examines how inequality divides us not just economically, but how it also has acute consequences for how we think, how we react to stress, how our immune systems perform and how we think about moral concepts, such as justice and evenhandedness.
“The Broken Ladder” provides in-depth analyses of the dangers of all of these expressions of inequality and their effect on us all.
Payne grew up poor in the Kentucky hill country and was terribly embarrassed when he discovered he was receiving free lunches when his friends were paying for theirs. His book explores how human beings react to realizations of inequity in their own lives. As a psychologist he has studied people’s innate sensitivity about status and investigates the “fundamental attribution error” which assumes another person’s successes and failures are their own doing. “The college graduate is smart. The drug addict is weak- willed. The person shopping with food stamps is lazy,” are just some of the assumptions we make about others which are detrimental to us all.
Payne purports most attitudes and actions are “shaped by particular situations” rather than by an individual’s nature. Most of the time, individuals have little control of their own situations, such as birthplace or social class.
The author contends, “The workplace is where most people experience inequality most directly on a daily basis.” The constant stress of workplace inequality can create physical and emotional problems. Nations with the least workplace inequality — Japan, Sweden, Norway—have fewer health and social problems than those with the greatest inequality.
The United States, with the most inequality of all developed nations, is the unhealthiest of all. Payne documents how the psychological stresses of poverty, racism and class inequality affects our bodies, leading to inflammation, heart attacks and other serious medical issues.
Coincidentally, as I was preparing this review, I came across a new study just published in the medical journal, “The Lancet.” It concludes: “For at least 40 years, research evidence has been accumulating that societies with larger income differences between rich and poor tend to have worse health and higher homicide rates. More recently, this has been contextualized by findings that more unequal societies not only have higher rates of poor health and violence, but also of other outcomes that tend to be worse lower down the social ladder, including teenage births, lower math and literacy scores, obesity and imprisonment.” This is one of many research projects that support Payne’s work on what he calls “the science of inequality.”
“The Broken Ladder” is filled with important social, psychological and economic perspectives that can help us understand the effects of unrestrained inequality and the countless problems that result. The author addresses why women in poor societies often have more children and why they often have them in early adolescence; how social status affects political beliefs and why unequal societies tend to become more religious.
He stresses the importance of our perceptions of ourselves. “If you place yourself on a lower rung, then you are more likely in the coming years to suffer from depression, anxiety, and chronic pain,” he writes. “The lower the rung you select, the more prone you are to weight issues, diabetes, and heart problems. The lower the rung you select, the fewer years you have left to live.”
Book review: 'The Broken Ladder' explains how inequality hurts America. How does Utah fare?
By
Brittany Binowski
@binowski
Published: May 9, 2017 11:30 am
+ Leave a comment
Penguin Random House
"The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die" by Keith Payne
"The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die," by Keith Payne, $28, 256 pages (nf)
Utah is an outlier in almost every measure of inequality detailed in psychologist Keith Payne's new book, "The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die."
Compared with the rest of the county, Utahns have lower health and social problems, such as violent crime, teenage births, infant mortality, obesity and mental illness, as well as higher life expectancies. The reason? Utahs also have lower income inequality than most states, which, Payne argues, is a buffer against many of society's most polarizing contemporary issues.
But Payne's book isn't about Utah. Rather, it's an in-depth look at inequality in America and beyond, and even more importantly, the effects of how people perceive that inequality.
Payne argues that the mere perception of inequality — feeling lower on the social ladder than another person, regardless of fact — drastically changes the way people act, think, and feel, often in predictable ways.
Explaining that while poor decisions are a factor in keeping some of the low-income population where they are, Payne argues that there is also a complex network of human instincts, social conditioning, societal structures and chance that contribute to some of those same decisions, and can be detrimental for both the rich and poor alike.
To make this point, the author blends facts, his personal stories growing up in a poor household, and current social studies, all the while driving home his belief that inequality must be addressed and eliminated.
While acknowledging his biases, Payne points to some Republican politicians that he believes have had an adverse effect on national inequality, but attempts to take a middle-of-the-road view, backed up by data, and gives people the benefit of the doubt.
The ending of the book is also refreshingly non-partisan, though readers may be able to guess how the author leans. Instead of focusing on the hot-button political issues that dominate so much of today's popular culture, like tax rates and minimum wage, Payne points to small, personal changes individuals can make to remedy some of the problems caused by inequality.
Some solutions he cites include being more mindful of the comparisons we make to others, moving to neighborhoods with lower levels of inequality than others, recognizing the impact of chance on some of our successes, and doing what we can to contribute to people who are below us on the ladder, either through charity or creating a more balanced pay scale for employees.
If Americans can be a little more mindful of our inherent biases and emotional impulses, he argues, the country may have slightly better chance of becoming more like a state such as Utah — with its high life expectancy, fewer social problems, and low inequality — but only if the state can hold on to what makes it so unique in the first place.
QUOTED: "Research buffs will enjoy the data-driven narratives that form the backbone of this book, while those who prefer anecdotal perspectives will find several personal stories that tie the research together and mover the main ideas along smoothly and persuasively. Each chapter builds common ground by delving into aspects of our shared cultural experiences as Americans. The topics are often challenging but the language is straightforward and easy to digest."
The Broken Ladder: Book Review
January 30, 2018
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The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die
By Keith Payne
YW Book Review:
Over the past fifty years there has been a dramatic rise in income inequality in America. According to Psychologist Keith Payne, studies show that “the income gap between white and black families has remained more or less constant since the 1960s. In 1967 the average black family earned 55% of what white families earned. In 2011, that figure was 59%. In 2013, white families had 13 times the wealth of average black families and 10 times the wealth of Hispanic families.” The disparities outlined in the nine chapters of Payne’s book, The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die offer a framework for understanding inequality through a series of studies conducted at the intersections of psychology, neuroscience and behavioral science.
Pairing anecdotes with research studies, the book makes a strong case for why all of us, regardless of race or social status should care about the negative impacts of inequality, and the many threats it poses to the health and wellness of individuals, communities and society as a whole.
Research buffs will enjoy the data-driven narratives that form the backbone of this book, while those who prefer anecdotal perspectives will find several personal stories that tie the research together and mover the main ideas along smoothly and persuasively. Each chapter builds common ground by delving into aspects of our shared cultural experiences as Americans. The topics are often challenging but the language is straightforward and easy to digest.
The chapter include the following titles:
Lunch Lady Economics: Why Feeling Poor Hurts Like Being Poor
Relatively Easy: Why We Can’t Stop Comparing Ourselves to Others
Poor Logic: Inequality Has a Logic of Its Own
The Right, the Left, and the Ladder: How Inequality Divides Our Politics
Long Lives and Tall Tombstones: Inequality Is a Matter of Life and Death
God, Conspiracies, and the Language of the Angels: Why People Believe What They Need to Believe
Inequality in Black and White: The Dangerous Dance of Racial and Economic Inequality
The Corporate Ladder: Why Fair Pay Signals Fair Play
The Art of Living Vertically: Flatter Ladders, Comparing with Care, and the Things That Matter Most
Given YW Boston’s mission of eliminating racism and empowering women, this book caught our attention. It is a timely and informative text that provides additional insights into why we at YW invest a great deal of energy working to eliminate racism, address inequalities and promote peace, justice, freedom and dignity for all. While there is a lot of information to process, the chapters that packed the most punch for us in our work were chapters 3, 5,7 and 8. These chapter hone in on the problems of inequality using lenses that magnify the intricacies of systemic oppression and the toll it takes on the health and wellness of not only the disenfranchised, but also those in the middle and upper echelons, those who most benefit from a system that is seriously fractured and growing steadily out balance. Payne emphasizes the importance of understanding this from a human centered perspective. He considers intersectionality and explores the ways in which multiple factors like race, class, gender and socio-economic status determine the severity of our experiences and shape intrinsic biases that perpetuate and compound problems of inequity over time.
“Racial inequality is qualitatively different from income inequality. Rich and poor exist among all racial groups and racial discrimination affects the lives of African Americans and other minority groups even when they are not poor. Although racial and economic inequalities are separate issues, they have been intersecting more and more often in recent years as racial inequality stumbles ever so slowly downward and income inequality steadily rises. In this chapter, we will discuss how widening inequality throws fuel on the fire of racial prejudice and how racial stereotypes are used to justify and preserve that inequality.”
This introduction to chapter 7, Inequality in Black and White: The Dangerous Dance of Racial and Economic Inequality, makes a strong case for how and why “economic anxieties fuel racial conflicts.” In the political climate we currently find ourselves in, it is not difficult to see the correlations. Payne references a poll given to both white and black research participants who were asked if they believed that discrimination was more of a problem for white or black people.
“Whites seemed to view discrimination as a zero-sum game. The less discrimination they perceived against blacks, the more they saw it turned against whites. The trend was so stark in the eyes of white respondents, that by the 2000s they judged discrimination against whites to be a bigger problem than discrimination against blacks. The data however, tell a very different story.”
Payne goes on to reference several findings that magnify how little progress has been made in creating economic equality between races. He points out data that show improvements in access to educational opportunities for people of color, but ongoing stagnation overall in upward mobility.
“Although the gaps between black and white families have narrowed for high school graduation rates and more modestly for college graduation, those improvements have not translated into a lessening of the income gaps… Something is preventing gains in education from translating into reduced income and wealth gaps. One factor is home-ownership, which is much higher for white families. A second, closely related factor is inheritance. Once a family has accumulated some wealth, it can be used for buying a home or establishing other assets for the next generation, but in black and Latino families, where the average wealth is close to zero, each generation starts essentially from scratch.
Economists have identified several other factors that contribute to wealth gaps, including differences in incarceration rates and marriage and divorce rates. But it is impossible to understand these disparities without also understanding the role of racial discrimination, which creates a constant set of pressures on minority families. These imbalances in wealth, education and home ownership can serve as a kind of Rorschach test. If you believe that minority families are themselves to blame for their fates, then you can view these data as proof of it. And if you think minority families are the victims of discrimination and a systematic lack of opportunity, you can find support for that theory in the numbers as well. The problem is that the role of discrimination is very hard to isolate using statistics… Data on average wealth or home ownership can tell us that disparities exist but they can’t explain why. For that, we need to turn to people’s behavior.”
Payne introduces an experiment conducted by a sociologist named Devah Pager, who set out to test for real-world discrimination by studying the behavior patterns of potential employers in Milwaukee. She gave a black applicant and a white applicant the same script and identical credentials on a fabricated resume and sent them out to apply for a total of 350 randomized jobs.
“Did the results support the anti-white bias that the zero-sum survey respondents believed existed? Not even close. The white applicant was called back twice as often as the equally qualified black applicant. Similar studies have been repeated with the same result in New York, Chicago, Atlanta and other cities.”
Despite the gains of the Civil Right Movement in the 1960s, income inequality between blacks and whites has remained a problem for many decades and does not appear to be letting up any time soon. At least not without our direct participation and willingness to confront the racial biases, the rampant racism and discrimination that permeates almost every system or institution that might potentially create meaningful change in balancing inequities.
“Statistically speaking, if you want to predict who is predisposed against welfare, you can mostly ignore their economic principles. What you really need to know is their prejudices. While it may not be surprising, that the average person views welfare in racially tinged terms, the truth is that welfare recipients are about evenly divided among white, black and Hispanic recipients. But when analyzed, depictions of welfare recipients on television and news magazines since the 1960s, studies found a clear racial bias. When welfare recipients were depicted as the deserving poor, they were mostly white but when they were portrayed as lazy and dishonest, they were overwhelmingly black. This cultural messaging linking welfare to lazy people in general, and lazy black people in particular, makes it difficult to discuss welfare without racial overtones.”
How do we reach out and help lift those who need support, when the resources to do so are constantly contested, or worse, nonexistent? How do we help empower people who have to live their lives battered by systems built and maintained by those far removed from the realities of the lives they impact and affect with their choices? How do we help people see and understand the roles they play in creating and sustaining inequality? The Broken Ladder provides an abundance of ways to think through the problems of inequity and offers, as a key step, the opportunity for self-reflection.
“Understanding implicit bias requires taking a more nuanced approach to the individuals we are easily tempted to label as racist or not racist. If you consider whether you yourself are biased and why, you will likely focus on your conscious thoughts and beliefs, your values and good intentions. Having reflected on what a fundamentally good person you are, you will conclude that implicit bias is other people’s problem. Although we would all like to believe ourselves to be members of the not-racist club, we are all steeped in a culture whose history and present is built on massive, racial inequality.”