Subjective socioeconomic status and income inequality are associated with self-reported morality across 67 countries

Individuals can experience a lack of economic resources compared to others, which we refer to as subjective experiences of economic scarcity. While such experiences have been shown to shift cognitive focus, attention, and decision-making, their association with human morality remains debated. We conduct a comprehensive investigation of the relationship between subjective experiences of economic scarcity, as indexed by low subjective socioeconomic status at the individual level, and income inequality at the national level, and various self-reported measures linked to morality. In a pre-registered study, we analyze data from a large, cross-national survey (N = 50,396 across 67 countries) allowing us to address limitations related to cross-cultural generalizability and measurement validity in prior research. Our findings demonstrate that low subjective socioeconomic status at the individual level, and income inequality at the national level, are associated with higher levels of moral identity, higher morality-as-cooperation, a larger moral circle, and increased prosocial intentions. These results appear robust to several advanced control analyses. Finally, exploratory analyses indicate that observed income inequality at the national level is not a statistically significant moderator of the associations between subjective socioeconomic status and the included measures of morality. These findings have theoretical and practical implications for understanding human morality under experiences of resource scarcity.


Table S4
Notes: All models are linear mixed-effects models (two-sided).between GINI and Prosocial Intentions (willingness to donate to a national and international charity).The grey shade area, in all panels, represents the 95% confidence interval.Notes: All models are linear mixed-effects models (two-sided).Notes: All models are linear mixed-effects models (two-sided).Notes: All models are linear mixed-effects models (two-sided).Notes: All models are linear mixed-effects models (two-sided).

Multilevel Confirmatory Factor Analysis Alignment
Please note: For all supplementary results on the two Multilevel Confirmatory Factor Analysis Alignments, we were unable to export table output from the statistical environment R, due to characteristics of the packages used in these analysis.Therefore, the outcomes of these analysis are not reported as formatted tables, but instead as the direct output from the analyses.All analyses can be easily reproduced using the data and the script available at OSF.   .99  .62

Table S23
Table S23 | Estimated Item Parameters for Factor Loadings

Fig. S1 |
Fig. S1 | Within-country and between-country associations between Moral Identity, Morality-as-Cooperation, size of Moral Circle, Prosocial Intentions, and Subjective Socioeconomic Status (SES) for countries with nationally representative samples.For all four panels (a, b, c, d), colored lines indicate withincountry associations highlighting a main pattern where most associations are negative, while simultaneously outlining the degree of heterogeneity between-countries, as a selection of within-country associations are positive.The bolded black line for each panel indicates the overall relationship across the 67 countries.a, Association between SES and individual-level Moral Identity.b, Association between SES and Morality-as-Cooperation. c, Association between SES and the size of one's Moral Circle, where size indicates the circle of people or other entities for which one is concerned whether right or wrong is done toward them.d, Association between SES and Prosocial Intentions, measured as the amount of money (out of a median income) one would be willing to donate to a national and international charity.

Fig. S2 |
Fig. S2 | Country and region-level relationships between Moral Identity, Morality-as-Cooperation, size of Moral Circle, Prosocial Intentions, and level of Income Inequality (GINI) for countries with nationally representative samples.a, Association between GINI and Moral Identity.b, Association between GINI and Morality-as-Cooperation. c, Association between GINI and the size of one's Moral Circle.d, Association between GINI and Prosocial Intentions (willingness to donate to a national and international charity).The grey shade area, in all panels, represents the 95% confidence interval.

Fig. S3 |
Fig. S3 | Nested OLS regression estimates for associations between Moral Identity and Subjective Socioeconomic Status (SES) across all 67 countries.Dots indicate OLS regression estimates and error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals.Dots and errors bars in red indicate regression estimates with p-values < 0.05.Dots and error bars in light blue indicate regression estimates with p-values > 0.05.Ordinary Least Squares regressions (two-sided) for each of the 67 countries (i.e., Nested OLS).N = 50,563 survey participants.

Fig. S4 |
Fig. S4 | Nested OLS regression estimates for associations between Morality-as-Cooperation and Subjective Socioeconomic Status (SES) across all 67 countries.Dots indicate OLS regression estimates and error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals.Dots and errors bars in red indicate regression estimates with pvalues < 0.05.Dots and error bars in light blue indicate regression estimates with p-values > 0.05.Ordinary Least Squares regressions (two-sided) for each of the 67 countries (i.e., Nested OLS).N = 50,563 survey participants.

Fig. S5 |
Fig. S5 | Nested OLS regression estimates for associations between the size of one's Moral Circle and Subjective Socioeconomic Status (SES) across all 67 countries.Dots indicate OLS regression estimates and error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals.Dots and errors bars in red indicate regression estimates with pvalues < 0.05.Dots and error bars in light blue indicate regression estimates with p-values > 0.05.Ordinary Least Squares regressions (two-sided) for each of the 67 countries (i.e., Nested OLS).N = 50,563 survey participants.

Fig. S6 |
Fig. S6 | Nested OLS regression estimates for associations between Prosocial Intention (willingness to donate to a national and international charity) and Subjective Socioeconomic Status (SES) across all 67 countries.Dots indicate OLS regression estimates and error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals.Dots and errors bars in red indicate regression estimates with p-values < 0.05.Dots and error bars in light blue indicate regression estimates with p-values > 0.05.Ordinary Least Squares regressions (two-sided) for each of the 67 countries (i.e., Nested OLS).N = 50,563 survey participants.

Table S12 | Nested OLS regression results
Notes: MAC = Morality-as-Cooperation, SES = Subjective Socioeconomic Status.Model is a Nested Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression(two-sided).Each row indicates a separate OLS regression.