Purpose of the study: How does a person’s perception of his or her wealth in ref

Question

Purpose of the study: How does a person’s perception of his or her wealth in reference to others’ wealth influence his or her ideas about the redistribution of wealth as a political concept? The authors conducted four studies to answer this question. We will examine Study 2 here. In this experiment, the effect of subjective wealth status on wealth redistribution agreement was tested. The authors hypothesized that subjects who believed they were wealthier than their peers would more strongly oppose the redistribution of wealth as measured by survey score. Method of the study: There were 153 participants in the experiment. They were recruited through the Amazon site Mechanical Turk. Participants were first given false feedback to a questionnaire about their subjective wealth status. They were randomly assigned to either the high-status group (where they were given positive score on a false “Composite Discretionary Index” scale) or the low status group (where they were given a negative score on the false “Composite Discretionary Index” scale). Participants were told to interpret positive scores as their having more discretionary (i.e., extra) income than their peers and negative scores as their having less discretionary income than their peers. Thus’ participants’ actual income did not change, but their perception of their comparison in wealth to others was manipulated. An 11-item survey about the redistribution of wealth (e.g., “In general, the wealthy should be taxed to provide benefits to the poor.”) was used to measure their attitude about redistribution of wealth from the total score on the survey Results of the study: The results indicated a difference between the high and low status in groups in redistribution attitudes. The low status group had a higher mean score on the survey, indicating that they were more strongly in favor of redistribution of wealth. Conclusion of the study: The results from the study indicate that one’s subjective sense of wealth compared with others influences one’s political attitude toward redistribution of wealth independent of actual wealth. 5. What possible sources of bias can you identify in this study?

Explanation / Answer

The experiment suffers from the possibility of a sampling bias. This type of bias occurs when a bias is present in choosing the target population to sample and the participants are not representative of the larger population. In the current study, participants were recruited from the Amazon site that automatically segments only those individuals who are available on that platform.

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