Inequality Can Increase Stealing, Reduce Trust, and Undermine Cooperation, Even When It Is Invisible

Higher inequality is associated with higher crime, lower trust, and lower cooperation, but the mechanisms producing these associations remain unclear. Inequality produces compositional effects through changing individuals’ resource levels, regardless of whether or not it is perceived. Inequality’s visibility may have further effects precisely because people perceive it. In Study 1 (N = 496; 64 groups), participants played a multiplayer experimental game in groups of eight, choosing to steal from one another, cooperate, or work alone. Participants’ were never informed of others' points levels. Inequality in the initial points distribution increased stealing rates, lowered trust, and reduced the rate of cooperation, but only when there was a points threshold below which it was disastrous to fall. Study 2 (N = 1,014; 132 groups) replicated these findings. It also tested the additional role of visibility by varying whether participants had no information about others’ points, knew their partner’s points, or knew the group’s point distribution. Making inequality visible had no meaningful effect on any outcome. Together, these findings provide evidence for compositional, but not visibility, effects of inequality: distributing resources unequally around a threshold increased crime, reduced trust, and lowered cooperation, whether or not inequality was visible.