Equality in the eye of the advantaged beholder: Group status shapes perceptions of equality as zero-sum

Equality is widely endorsed in principle, yet equality-enhancing policies are routinely opposed as if one group's gain is another's loss. We propose that group status fundamentally shapes motivation to enhance equality-above and beyond ideological beliefs, threat-based reactance, personal gain, or underlying cognitive biases-determining whether individuals see equality-enhancing policies as harmful. Across five preregistered lab and representative field studies (N = 5,116), we find that advantaged-but not disadvantaged-group members systematically perceived equality policies as harmful to advantaged group resource access, even when policies explicitly preserve or improve access. Effects persisted when non-zero-sum policies were jointly evaluated with explicitly zero-sum policies, suggesting a mechanism other than cognitive zero-sum biases (Study 2). Independent of participants' particular group membership, both advantaged societal status (Study 3) and contextual resource advantage (Study 4) predicted lower motivation to enhance equality between two groups, which in turn predicted perceived resource access. Experimentally manipulating motivation to enhance equality or to preserve the status quo directly affected both advantaged and disadvantaged participants' perceptions of policy harm (Study 5). Equality may be elusive not only because of cognitive zero-sum biases, threat reactance, and vocal antagonists, but also because the social motivations imbued by one's hierarchical position dictate whether equality itself is seen as necessarily zero-sum. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).