The Inner Level

by Richard Wilkinson

  Research continues to confirm that in varying degrees it is not simply a few individuals but whole societies that are damaged by these processes. As well as causing us distress, struggling to keep up also seems to make us less compassionate towards others. An important consequence of greater inequality is the damage it does to social cohesion. Using a very large sample of volunteers taking part in an internet personality survey, Robert de Vries, a sociologist at the University of Kent, and colleagues tested the hypothesis that inequality creates a more competitive, less cohesive social milieu.105 They measured how people scored on an ‘Agreeableness’ scale – a measure of people’s attitudes and behaviours towards others, including being helpful, considerate and trusting rather than tending to find fault with others, being aloof, rude or quarrelsome. The researchers looked to see whether people living in more unequal societies would respond to more hierarchical structures by scoring lower on the Agreeableness scale. This is exactly what they found, even after taking into account age, sex, education, urbanization, average income and the percentage of people belonging to ethnic minorities. People living in less equal US states had significantly lower levels of Agreeableness than those living in more equal states.

  Consistent with this finding are the results of a study by Marii Paskov, a sociologist at the University of Oxford. She found that in more unequal European countries both poorer and richer people were less willing to help neighbours, older people, immigrants, and the sick and disabled.39 Paskov and colleagues have also found that, rather than striving harder for status, it looks as if people are instead discouraged by the greater obstacles put in their way by inequality.106 A further study using data from twenty-four European countries showed that civic participation (belonging to groups, clubs or organizations, including recreational, political, charitable, religious or professional groups) is significantly lower in more unequal countries (see Figure 2.7), and we have known for a long time that levels of trust are lower in more unequal places.107 Evidently, social cohesion is reduced in more unequal societies.

  Figure 2.7: Civic participation decreases in more unequal European countries (income inequality measured by the Gini coefficient).37

  The single most important reason why participation in community life declines with increased inequality is likely to be the increased social evaluative threat: people withdraw from social life as they find it more stressful. More unequal societies become more fragmented as social distances increase. People become more withdrawn, less neighbourly and more worried about appearances and giving the wrong impression, they prefer to ‘keep themselves to themselves’. And when some people feel excluded or threatened, the same processes which affect so many individual minds and bodies also affect the political process.

  Responding to a Twitter challenge to find factors that predicted the electoral swing to Donald Trump in US counties in the 2016 Presidential election, The Economist published Figure 2.8. It reported that a combined measure of obesity, diabetes, heavy drinking, lack of physical exercise and low life expectancy – all of which are made worse by income inequality – was the best measure they could find. Economists at the European economic think tank Bruegel confirmed this: Donald Trump performed more strongly in states with higher income inequality.109

  Figure 2.8: There was a bigger swing in the vote towards Donald Trump in counties with worse health.108

  3

  Delusions of Grandeur

  ‘I’m an opportunist, I don’t really get attached to people, I live for myself and everything I do is seen in terms of “how will this event/person/thing be of use to me?” ’

  ‘I crave respect. I lack the talent, beauty and skill to get it one way … then I will fight for it the other way. With the only weapons I know, lies, deceit, pain and torture.’

  Posted online in 2012, on the internet forum I Am A Narcissist

  PUTTING ON A GOOD FACE

  A few years ago, searching for new academic studies comparing levels of income inequality and health in different countries, we came across an interesting phenomenon. Our search uncovered nine recent studies of this kind in rich, developed countries. Of these, the seven that used objective measures like death rates, or life expectancy, confirmed that health is worse in more unequal societies.1 The two that came to a different conclusion looked instead at income inequality in relation to ‘self-rated health’, based on surveys that ask people to assess their own health on a scale running from excellent to poor.

  This immediately piqued our curiosity: if objective measures of deaths and illness are related to income inequality, why wouldn’t measures of self-rated health show a similar correlation? Geographers Dr Anna Barford and Professor Danny Dorling have since found, counterintuitively, that average levels of self-rated health are actually higher in countries where life expectancy is lower.110 In Japan, for example, a more equal society, only 54 per cent of people rated their health as good, compared to 80 per cent of Americans. Yet Japan has almost the highest life expectancy in the world (topped only by tiny Monaco), at eighty-two years in 2005, whereas the USA is at the bottom of the life expectancy league for rich countries, with an average of seventy-seven years. It appears that in more unequal countries people want to present a more positive view of their own health, and that people in more equal societies are more modest or willing to admit imperfections.

  Clearly, there are cultural differences in how people view and describe their health that are unrelated to their actual risk of illness and death. But the correlation we found suggested that there was a relationship between self-reported health and income inequality – just not the way round that we expected. In more unequal societies, with more status competition, the data imply that it is more important to appear tough and self-reliant. Asserting that you have excellent or very good health might be part of maintaining your self-image in a more competitive environment. In more equal societies, people seem to be more modest and less inclined to rate themselves at the top of a scale. And this phenomenon doesn’t just apply to health; in Japan, it is much less common to report that you are satisfied with your life or happy than in the USA, where it is expected that people at least say they are satisfied and happy.34, 111 We wondered whether growing up in a more egalitarian society might mean that people are less likely to claim to be ‘the best’ or ‘excellent’.

  THE ‘LAKE WOBEGON EFFECT’

  In 2011, this intuition was confirmed in a study by Australian psychologist Steve Loughnan and his colleagues.112 They studied what psychologists call ‘self-enhancement bias’, or ‘illusory superiority’ – people’s tendency to emphasize or exaggerate their desirable qualities, relative to other people. This is the phenomenon we all laugh about when we hear that almost everyone believes they are a better driver than average. It’s also known as the ‘Lake Wobegon effect’, after American comedian Garrison Keillor’s fictional town where ‘all the children are above average’. It’s a well-known effect, demonstrated time and time again across many different areas of performance. For example, almost 70 per cent of academics at one university rated themselves in the top 25 per cent for teaching ability,113 and 25 per cent of American students rated themselves in the top 1 per cent for getting along with people.114

  Although self-enhancement bias has been found all over the world, and in relation to all kinds of characteristics and abilities, the degree to which people exaggerate their talents varies from culture to culture. While over 90 per cent of Americans think they are better than average drivers, less than 70 per cent of Swedes feel the same way.115

  Most explanations of these differences have focused on notions of individualism versus collectivism: the idea that some cultures emphasize individual autonomy, independence and assertiveness, whereas others emphasize the needs of, and relationships within, groups such as families, communities and workplaces. Western cultures are more individualistic and have higher levels of self-enhancement bias, compared to Eastern cultures.

  Partly to test our argument about th
e effects of inequality, Dr Loughnan, working with an eighteen-strong international team, tested whether self-enhancement was related to inequality.112 He reasoned that ‘in unequal societies, individuals are strongly motivated to stand out as superior to others. One expression of this desire may be to engage in stronger self-enhancement. In societies with more economic equality, the benefits of superiority diminish, and people’s tendency to see themselves as above average should weaken.’ In a study of fifteen different countries, Loughnan and his colleagues show that self-enhancement is strongly related to income inequality. They found that income inequality was a much stronger predictor of self-enhancement bias than a measure of individualism vs collectivism in these fifteen countries (Figure 3.1).

  Psychological research shows that this picture, both of increased self-enhancement in more unequal countries and the paradoxical tendency for self-rated health to be better in countries where death rates are actually higher, reflect responses to increased social evaluative threat. There is a robust body of evidence which shows that people’s tendency to self-enhancement increases when they are faced with a greater social evaluative threat.116-118 In a typical psychological experiment, people are told that either a higher or lower proportion of their fellow students thought they were likeable. They were later asked to rate themselves compared to their peers on various characteristics, such as how stingy they were, how jealous, messy or bossy. Just as in other experiments, those who had been led to believe they were regarded as less likeable rated themselves more positively compared to others. In the research literature this is usually seen as a form of ego-defence, but it could be seen as analogous to the way dogs raise their hackles, or other animals try to look bigger, when threatened.

  Figure 3.1: Income inequality is related to higher levels of self-enhancement bias.112

  We saw in the last chapter (Figure 2.1) that status anxiety increases with inequality. The evidence that self-enhancement also increases in more unequal societies provides additional confirmation that inequality does indeed raise the social evaluative threat. We tend to big ourselves up as a consequence.

  WHAT DO WE MEAN BY SELF-ESTEEM?

  Are these tendencies to self-enhancement just amusing cultural differences, allowing us to poke fun at boastful Americans and po-faced Japanese, or do they reflect a more dangerous, insidious effect of inequality, harmful to individual well-being and to social cohesion? Isn’t it a good thing, if people view themselves positively, believe in their capabilities and have strong self-esteem?

  Modern popular psychology places a high value on the concept of self-esteem. Feeling good about ourselves is considered the bedrock of mental health and well-being, a necessary underpinning for achievement and success. It gives us the confidence to realize our potential; if we believe we’re special, we’ll become special. But will we?

  It now seems that what we think we mean by self-esteem is probably not what we are measuring when we think we’re measuring it. Psychologists used to think that there had been a paradoxical tendency for rising trends in anxiety to be accompanied by rising trends in self-esteem. In the 1950s, only 12 per cent of American teenagers agreed that they were a very important person; by the 1980s, 80 per cent of them were sure of their own importance.119 At the same time, their levels of anxiety were rising dramatically.

  The standard measure of self-esteem was for decades the Rosenberg scale. It asked whether people agreed or disagreed with ten statements, such as: ‘I feel that I’m a person of worth’; ‘I am inclined to think that I am a failure’; ‘I wish I could have more respect for myself’; ‘I take a positive attitude toward myself’; and so on. But it failed to distinguish between ‘secure self-esteem’, based on a realistic appraisal of one’s own efficacy and capabilities, and defensive or protective self-enhancement – saying that you are OK when you are not – sometimes called ‘insecure self-esteem’. And so we arrive at the apparent paradox of increasing anxiety levels at the same time as self-esteem appears to rise.

  There is also the additional puzzle of high rates of self-esteem being found in groups that actually experience more low social status, discrimination and prejudice, which you’d think were damaging to self-esteem. Numerous studies have shown over the years that African American men appear to have higher rates of self-esteem than white men (the same pattern is true for women, although the differences are not as marked). In a 2011 poll conducted by the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation, 72 per cent of black men had high levels of self-esteem, compared to 59 per cent of white men.120 This was despite the fact that, in the same survey, black men were much more worried than white men about losing their jobs, not having enough money to pay their bills, not getting the healthcare they needed, getting HIV or AIDS, being the victim of a violent crime, being a victim of discrimination, and providing a good education for their children.

  The clue to this disjunction lies in the answers to the survey questions that asked about respect.120 Seventy-two per cent of black men said it was very important to be respected by others, compared to only 55 per cent of white men, but black men were much more likely to say they had been treated with less respect than other people, received poorer service than other people in restaurants and stores, and felt ignored or overlooked. Twenty-eight per cent of African Americans thought it was a bad time to be a black man in America.

  Of course it’s natural, and probably psychologically sensible, for any group experiencing low social status, lack of respect, discrimination and prejudice to maintain their self-respect as much as possible, and to do all they can to avoid sinking into the insecurity of self-doubt. Rising inequality seems to have resulted in a heightened need for people to defend their self-worth in the face of increasing status competition and worries about how they are seen by others. Inequality might be expected to increase this defensive self-esteem, but not the genuine article.

  THE DARKER SIDE OF LOVING OURSELVES

  If we are to use the term to mean what we think it means, we need to drop our blunt measures of ‘self-esteem’ and find one that separates realistic confidence and self-appraisal from a defensive, narcissistic, presentation of self. We need a scale on which people score high if they have a positive, but reasonably accurate, view of their strengths in different situations, and a different scale for narcissism.

  Having confidence in ourselves, feeling a sense of self-worth, is obviously a good thing if it is realistic and goes along with empathy and good relationships with other people. But if empathy is lacking, if people deny rather than recognize their weaknesses, if they react badly to criticism, or are excessively preoccupied with themselves, with success and with their image and appearance in the eyes of others, then self-regard is dangerous.

  This pathological, unhealthy brand of what can look like high self-esteem is narcissism. Narcissistic characteristics include attention-seeking, reacting badly to criticism, self-importance, a tendency to exaggerate your own talents and achievements, a lack of empathy and a willingness to take advantage of others.

  The Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) was developed by psychologists at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1980s. People are given forty paired statements and asked to choose which one describes them best; they are not told that the test measures narcissism. For example, people are asked to choose between:

  A. I am no better or worse than most people

  or

  B. I think I am a special person

  And:

  A. I prefer to blend in with the crowd

  or

  B. I like to be the centre of attention

  Some of the paired statements seem to offer a weird choice, where neither seems quite right. It is easy to imagine, for example, that many will feel neither of the statements I like to look at myself in the mirror or I am not particularly interested in looking at myself in the mirror quite describe how they feel about mirrors. Many will enjoy looking at themselves in a mirror when dressed in something nice, on a good hair d
ay, with flattering lighting, but prefer not to look in many other circumstances. Indeed, we may not be embarrassed to find ourselves agreeing that if we ruled the world it would be a much better place (or at least a bit better), while at the same time agreeing that the thought of ruling the world frightens the hell out of us.

  Evidently, the two types of self-regard outlined above can be difficult to tell apart, but quibbles aside, most research on narcissism uses the Narcissistic Personality Inventory and it has been shown to be a valid measure of narcissistic attitudes, values and behaviours, capable of identifying insecure self-esteem. It measures gradations in a personality trait, not a psychiatric disorder. (Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as diagnosed by a psychiatrist, is a pathological long-term diagnosis for a constellation of self-centredness, self-importance and lack of empathy.) Although most people can be a bit narcissistic at times, the Narcissistic Personality Inventory is a valuable tool because, just as with the diagnostic interview schedules we described in Chapter 2, it can be used to measure levels of narcissism in populations. This means we can assess whether some societies and cultures are more narcissistic than others, and whether or not levels of narcissism change over time, and why.

  THE NARCISSISM EPIDEMIC

  Professors Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell are psychologists who research self-esteem and narcissism. We referred to some of Twenge’s work showing dramatic rises in rates of anxiety in Chapter 1. Their 2009 book, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement, describes a worrying rise in narcissism in America.119 It is full of stories of self-esteem gone mad, from the bride whose wedding cake was in the shape of herself, to the company called Celeb4ADay, where you can hire fake paparazzi photographers to follow you around, taking pictures and shouting your name. Chapters on vanity, relationship troubles and antisocial behaviour show the extent to which narcissism has spread through American culture. As the authors say, ‘The fight for the greater good of the 1960s became looking out for number one by the 1980s.’