Measuring hearts and minds: A validated survey module on inequality aversion and altruism

Social preferences are widely studied in behavioral economics, with some validated survey modules to measure trust, altruism and reciprocity. Despite growing interest in inequality aversion—defined as an individual’s dislike of disparities in outcomes—there is, however, no dedicated and validated module to assess this specific social preference. Moreover, inequality aversion and altruism are often hard to disentangle, which points to the need for a unified module that incorporates both preferences. To bridge these gaps, we introduce a novel survey module that captures general attitudes toward inequality aversion and altruism. This module was developed and validated through an experimental study with a representative U.S. population sample. Our results demonstrate that the proposed module effectively captures variations in both inequality aversion and altruism, with consistent reliability across individual heterogeneity. This tool offers researchers a standardized and generalizable approach for measuring inequality aversion and altruism, paving the way for future studies and across diverse contexts.