"For each inequality, participants first read a description of the disparity between an advantaged and disadvantaged group (e.g., “According to a recent report, in 2018, White homebuyers received roughly $386.4 billion in mortgage loans from banks, while Latino homebuyers only received around $12.6 billion in mortgage loans overall”). In the equality-enhancing policy condition, participants read proposals to increase resource access for the disadvantaged group and not change resource access for the advantaged group (e.g., “Several banks propose increasing the total amount of mortgage loans to Latino homebuyers by $7.3 billion and not changing the total amount of mortgage loan funding to White homebuyers”). The policy would thereby increase proportional equality in access to a given resource between the two groups. In the inequality-enhancing policy condition, participants read proposals to decrease resource access for the disadvantaged group and not change resource access for the advantaged group (e.g., “Several banks propose decreasing the total amount of mortgage loans to Latino homebuyers by $7.3 billion and not changing the total amount of mortgage loan funding to White homebuyers”). "
. . .
"As predicted, participants misperceived equality-enhancing policies as more harmful to their advantaged ingroup’s resource access than policies that maintained the status quo [b = 0.75, SE = 0.087, t(590.68) = 8.62, P < 0.001, 95% confidence interval (CI) [0.58, 0.93]] or worsened inequality"
But do the participants really "misperceive" the hypothetical policies as "more harmful" if one doesn't agree with the study's framing, and conclude that increasing lending to a purported subset of the population results in higher housing costs for all due to market forces?
. . .
"As predicted, participants misperceived equality-enhancing policies as more harmful to their advantaged ingroup’s resource access than policies that maintained the status quo [b = 0.75, SE = 0.087, t(590.68) = 8.62, P < 0.001, 95% confidence interval (CI) [0.58, 0.93]] or worsened inequality"
But do the participants really "misperceive" the hypothetical policies as "more harmful" if one doesn't agree with the study's framing, and conclude that increasing lending to a purported subset of the population results in higher housing costs for all due to market forces?