What They Have but Also Who They Are: Avarice, Elitism, and Public Support for Taxing the Rich

Abstract

Scholarship evaluating public support for redistribution has emphasized that stereotypical perceptions of low-income people inform citizens’ willingness to redistribute wealth to the poor. Less understood, however, is the extent to which stereotypical perceptions of high-income people lead to greater willingness to raise taxes on high-income individuals. These perceptions likely involve resource-based considerations (i.e., what rich people have). However, following recent scholarship, perceptions of the wealthy may also involve more fundamental, trait-based considerations (i.e., who the rich are as people). In this Research Note, we isolate causal effects, utilizing conjoint experiments, of both resource-based and character-based attributes of the rich on support for taxing wealthy people. We find evidence that two character traits—avarice and elitism—significantly increase support for raising taxes on wealthy individuals, and this pattern appears to be the case even among groups generally opposed to redistribution (e.g., Republicans and conservatives). We conclude that, while resource-based considerations remain important, the scholarly literature on redistribution may also benefit from a deeper understanding of the trait-based foundations of public attitudes toward taxing the wealthy.