Social equality vs. individual freedom: a pilot study on individual differences in adults’ preferences

Motives for social equality and individual freedom are at the heart of group living. However, when equality and freedom are pitted one against the other, would people show a preference for social equality, or would they prefer individual freedom? Moreover, are individual differences in these preferences related to classical measures used in moral and political psychology, such as social dominance orientation, left- and right-wing authoritarianism, competitive jungle social world view and support for social welfare and redistributive policies? In this pilot study (N=29), the topic of interest is how people intuitively evaluate simple social scenarios depicting the presence or absence of social equality and the presence or absence of individual freedom in a certain group of agents. We found that both gender and support for social welfare and redistributive policies significantly predict how people evaluate situations depicting individual freedom vs. social equality. In particular, being a female and showing support for social welfare and redistributive policies are associated with a tendency to prioritise equality over individual freedom. Future studies could use a more representative sample in order to reach stronger conclusions that could be better generalised