Psychological barriers to perceiving societal problems

One impediment to addressing large-scale social problems is that these issues are perceived subjectively, leading to disagreement about their very nature. In this talk, I expose key psychological processes that act as barriers to progress on these, focusing on three specific areas. First, I show that when perceiving diversity, the salience of minority group members can be mistaken for broader representation. As a result, the success of the few may undermine support for the improvement of conditions for the whole. Second, I present how economic segregation leads to reduced concern regarding economic inequality via suppressing social comparisons. This highlights the importance of experience sampling processes in forming beliefs about social issues. Finally, I show evidence that higher economic inequality can ironically reduce support for higher minimum wages, via a process of “is-to-ought” reasoning, where people form judgments about what should be from what is. In this context, I develop a specific intervention for counteracting the effect, showing that inducing people to design a hypothetical society mitigates the effect of economic inequality on minimum wage prescriptions. To conclude, the synthesis of the work shows the importance of grounding belief formation in both facts—to avoid the pernicious role of distortions to salience and comparisons—and counter-factuals, which avoid the status-quo having an oversized impact on our attitudes and decisions.