The Gap Between Us: Income Inequality Reduces Social Affiliation in Dyadic Interactions.

This article investigates how income inequality between individuals affects social affiliation within dyadic interactions. Across three experiments involving both online and university samples, researchers manipulated income inequality and, in one study, the fairness (inequity) of income distribution, to assess impacts on emotional responses, desire for closeness, perceptions of warmth, competence, trustworthiness, and behavioral warmth. Results consistently showed that greater income inequality reduced positive emotions, increased negative emotions, lowered desire for closeness, and led to harsher evaluations of partners, independent of power roles or perceived fairness of the income distribution. These findings suggest that income inequality between individuals can causally undermine key psychological and behavioral components of social affiliation in interpersonal contexts.