What individual characteristics predict inequality acceptance? Previous literature has focused on economic and sociological determinants of accepting inequalities. Here, we present experimental evidence of one individual correlate of inequality acceptance: the personality trait known as locus of control. In our study, inequality is induced experimentally through the exogenous assignment to one of two experimental treatments. In one treatment, initial inequalities depend on individual performance in a previous real-effort task, that is, they are earned through effort, while in the other they are randomly determined. We report that people who show an internal locus of control (the belief that life’s outcomes are under one’s control) are significantly more likely to accept both arbitrary and effort-based inequalities, although they accept the latter more often.

哪些个体特征可以预测不平等的接受程度？先前的文献集中于接受不平等的经济和社会学决定因素。在这里，我们提出不平等接受的一个个体相关性的实验证据：称为控制源的人格特质。在我们的研究中，不平等是通过对两种实验方法之一的外生性分配而在实验上诱发的。在一种治疗中，初始不平等取决于先前的实际工作中的个人表现，即，它们是通过努力获得的，而在另一种情况中，则是随机确定的。我们报告说，具有内部控制源（相信生活的结果在人的控制之下）的人更有可能接受任意和基于努力的不平等，