| Resumo: | Income inequality is on the rise in many countries. From the current literature, we can see that a lot of research has focused on how income/economic inequalities are harmful both at the individual and societal level. However, very little is known about the subjective perceptions of inequality and how they are related to socio-psychological processes and outcomes. For this study, we focus on conducting a cross-cultural comparison on two countries (Portugal and Kenya), which are both relatively unequal but differ significantly in their absolute wealth. There are a lot of factors that would determine how individuals see themselves as being similar or different from others. For this study, it is hypothesised that effects of perceived inequality on psychological processes would be more pronounced in Kenya than in Portugal. 142 participants from Portugal and 426 participants from Kenya responded to an online survey and results from the study showed that the higher the inequality index of a country, the stronger the perception of inequality which also translated to lower levels of social outcomes. We also found that stereotypes of agency and communality were assigned differently between the rich and the poor with the rich being rated as more agentic than communal and the poor being rated as more communal than agentic with these relationships being influenced by the perception of inequality in the country. We discuss the implications of this study in light of the global increase in income inequality with the hope of improving social relationships amongst the world population.
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