“You are useful objects”: Economic inequality leads people to approach instrumental others
Economic inequality has been shown to increase the social distance between groups. We proposed that in more unequal societies, people’s affiliation with others depends on whether a relationship partner is instrumental for self-enhancement goals. The results from four experiments supported our proposition. We found that inequality increased people’s focus on the instrumentality aspects of others (Experiment 1). In a work setting, economic inequality prompted people to choose colleagues who were instrumental in achieving their performance goals as partners (Experiment 2). Moreover, the effect could be extended to situations where there is no clear benefit. Specifically, participants in high inequality contexts tended to approach instrumental people with instrumentality more than participants in low inequality contexts, and the effect was driven by self-enhancement goals (Experiments 3-4). Taken together, our findings suggest that economic inequality leads to an instrumentality orientation in social interactions, which changes how people view relationships and interact with others.