Can We Achieve “Equality” When We Have Different Understandings of Its Meaning? How Contexts and Identities Shape the Pursuit of Egalitarian Goals

Abstract

People in diverse societies often discuss and debate strategies for achieving egalitarian goals, such as achieving equality in their societies. A tacit assumption in these discussions is that all parties must agree on what equality means in order to pursue and achieve it. In this paper, I use the United States as a context to examine whether that assumption is reasonable, given the effects of macro-level structure and culture on individual psychologies. Specifically, I discuss how patterns of social stratification seep into the mind and affect how different groups of people perceive and make meaning of the world around them, including their understanding of concepts like equality. Further, I discuss what those processes mean for differential motivation to pursue egalitarian goals among sub-groups of people within shared, yet segregated, societies. Finally, I end with some considerations about pathways to achieve equality even when people disagree about what that actually means.

Keywords:

• Social cognition
• social stratification
• identity
• motivation
• intergroup relations