Investigating How High Perceived Economic Inequality Exacerbates Intergroup Competition, Zero-Sum Beliefs, and Perceived Intergroup Prejudice.

This article investigates how higher perceived economic inequality in individuals' geographic regions influences psychological processes that exacerbate perceptions of intergroup prejudice. Across five preregistered experiments with diverse U.S. samples, the research demonstrates that perceiving greater economic inequality increases zero-sum beliefs—the idea that one group's gain is another's loss—and perceived competition for limited resources, which together mediate heightened perceptions of prejudice toward various resource-relevant social groups, including racial/ethnic, religious, socioeconomic, and immigrant groups. Notably, the studies extend beyond prior research focused on White Americans’ prejudice toward Black Americans by examining multiple racial/ethnic groups and other social categories, revealing nuanced patterns where zero-sum beliefs and competition differentially influence perceived prejudice across groups. The final study shows that reducing perceived intergroup competition can mitigate perceived prejudice, suggesting that addressing economic inequality and competition perceptions may help break the cyclical relationship between inequality and prejudice.