The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Changes the Way We Think, Live and Die

Making the conscious effort to consider what genuinely matters interrupts the unconscious default pattern of looking to others to gauge how much we value ourselves.

writing about cherished values also made people less impulsive and more likely to delay immediate gratification for longer-term benefits. These studies suggest that the live fast, die young mind-set cued by inequality can be mitigated by recentering attention on what one really cares about.

simple exercise of focusing on what matters most can have remarkable effects on experiences of inequality. First, it makes people care less about what others think of them.

talking for five minutes about an empowering experience significantly increased willingness to enroll in benefits programs.

high-inequality contexts make contentment even harder.

unreflective assumptions that the world is always a fair place where good outcomes await the virtuous and bad outcomes signal vice.

Upward social comparison is a constant pressure nudging us to the outermost limits of what we can afford.

addition to changing your comparisons, you can choose your situations wisely.

Even when their accomplishment had been randomly determined by the experimenters, successful subjects assumed it was their own hard work and talent that entitled them to their rewards.