I'm Elise Hugh, and this is TED Talks Daily. The gap between rich and poor has grown astronomically, and the U.S. is the wealthiest and most unequal of the nations. What are we doing about it? Really little. And psychologist Keith Payne says that's because of another gap, political polarization.

In his TEDx University of Nevada talk from 2020, Payne shows us the psychological reasons for these gaps and how to get out of them.

You've probably heard by now that economic inequality is historically high.

That the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent in the United States

have as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent combined.

Or that the wealthiest eight individuals in the world

have as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion inhabitants of the planet.

Did you know that economic inequality is associated with shorter lifespans, less happiness,

more crime, and more drug abuse?

Those sound like problems of poverty, but among wealthy, developed nations, those health and social problems are actually more

tightly linked to inequality between incomes than to absolute incomes.

And because of that, the United States, the wealthiest and the most unequal of nations,

actually fares worse than all other developed countries.

Surveys show that large majorities of Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, believe inequality

is too high and want more equal pay. And yet, as a society, we don't seem to be able to find

the common ground, the consensus,

the political will to do anything about it. Because as inequality has risen in recent decades,

political polarization has risen along with it. We see those who disagree with us as idiots or as immoral. Nearly half of

Democrats and Republicans now think that the other side is not just mistaken, but a threat to the

nation. And that animosity prevents us from finding the common ground to change things.

I'm a social psychology professor at the University of North Carolina,

and I study the effects of inequality on people's thinking and behavior.

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