Laypeople's beliefs about the current distribution of outcomes such as income and wealth in their country influence their attitudes toward issues ranging from taxation to healthcare - but how accurate are these beliefs? We review the burgeoning literature on (mis)perceptions of inequality. First, we show that people on average misperceive current levels of inequality, typically underestimating the extent of inequality in their country. Second, we delineate potential causes of these misperceptions, including people's overreliance on cues from their local environment, leading to their erroneous beliefs about both the overall distributions of wealth and income and their place in those distributions. Third, we document that these (mis)perceptions of inequality - but not actual levels of inequality - drive behavior and preferences for redistribution. More promisingly, we review research suggesting that correcting misperceptions influences preferences and policy outcomes.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 83. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 16 December 2025.
All research outputs
#653,093
of 34,583,980 outputs
Outputs from Current Opinion in Psychology
#168
of 1,773 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#10,114
of 357,533 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Current Opinion in Psychology
#5
of 81 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,583,980 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 98th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,773 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 35.1. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 90% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 357,533 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 81 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 93% of its contemporaries.
