收入不平等与收入再分配对幸福感的影响——基于社会认知视角

The Effects of Income Inequality and Income Redistribution on People's Sense of Happiness:From the Perspective of Social Cognition

许多研究发现了收入不平等对人的主观幸福感存在消极影响,但也有研究发现这种影响根本就不存在,甚至发现了相反的结果。本文通过对相关文献的梳理,分析了产生这种矛盾结果的原因,并提出以社会认知为解释机制的理论框架——客观的收入不平等通过个体对分配过程和结果公平的感知形成主观认知,继而通过个体、人际与社会三层机制对主观幸福感产生影响。文章还分析了作为政府减少收入不平等手段的收入再分配对居民幸福感提升的影响。这些分析对理解和解决目前中国社会存在的不公平问题具有重要的现实意义。

Many researches demonstrated the negative effect of income inequality on people*s subjective sense of happiness,while others demonstrated opposite results or no relationship.After reviewing the relevant literature,this paper tries to answer why results are contradictory,explain it from the perspective of social cognition,and illustrate it via individual,interpersonal and social mechanisms.A theoretical framework of this problem is proposed that objective income inequality forms individual subjective cognition of inequality by perceived legitimacy of distributive outcomes and procedures,and then influences subjective sense of happiness via individual,interpersonal and social mechanisms.In addition,this paper also reviews the literature about the effect of income redistribution as governmental effort toward reducing income inequality on people's subjective sense of happiness,and finds that the positive effect was widely demonstrated.The findings of the relevant researches are of great significance to understand and solve the problems of inequality in current China.