Keith Payne studies how inequality shapes the human mind.
Why you should listen
Social psychologist Keith Payne uses behavioral experiments to discover how people understand their place on the social ladder. The stories they tell themselves are infused with moral and social meaning, and have big consequences for our politics.Keith Payne is a social psychology professor at UNC Chapel Hill and is author of The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die. President Obama recommended the book as “A persuasive and highly readable account of how rising inequality, and not just absolute poverty, is undermining our politics, social cohesion, long term prosperity, and general well-being.”
