Are you interested in economic inequality? Depends on where you live

Although several scholars and international institutions have considered high levels of economic inequality an issue for society, the populations who live in more unequal countries tend to be less concerned about it. Given the ideological connotations in the construct of people’s concerns about economic inequality, whether those who live in more unequal countries are more interested in economic inequality remains unclear. In this research, we aimed to examine whether objective economic inequality is related to individuals’ interest in the topic of economic inequality. First, we used data from the United States Census Bureau and Google Trends to examine whether the objective level of economic inequality predicted the interest of the population in searching Google for terms such as “economic inequality” and “income inequality.” Our results showed that individuals who live in more economically unequal U.S. states more often search these terms. Second, we analysed the tweets that contained the terms “economic inequality” and “income inequality” (10,118 tweets) published over 9 days and localised by U.S. state. We found that individuals who live in more economically unequal U.S. states more often post tweets about economic and income inequality. To take a closer look at the narrative around economic/income inequality, we conducted a network analysis using tweets as nodes and retweets as edges. Our results suggest that the public narrative about economic inequality via Twitter was built on three large communities. Finally, we discuss the implications of our results in relation to economic inequality consequences.

Country‐level and individual‐level predictors of men’s support for gender equality in 42 countries

Men sometimes withdraw support for gender equality movements when their higher gender status is threatened. Here, we expand the focus of this phenomenon by examining it cross‐culturally, to test if both individual‐ and country‐level variables predict men’s collective action intentions to support gender equality. We tested a model in which men’s zero‐sum beliefs about gender predict reduced collective action intentions via an increase in hostile sexism. Because country‐level gender equality may threaten men’s higher gender status, we also examined whether the path from zero‐sum beliefs to collective action intentions was stronger in countries higher in gender equality. Multilevel modeling on 6,734 men from 42 countries supported the individual‐level mediation model, but found no evidence of moderation by country‐level gender equality. Both country‐level gender equality and individual‐level zero‐sum thinking independently predicted reductions in men’s willingness to act collectively for gender equality