Ilyana Kuziemko is an assistant professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University. Michael I. Norton is an associate professor at the Harvard Business School.

President Obama’s recent proposal to raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans will surely find opposition among many wealthy voters. But if recent history is a guide, we can expect some middle- and even lower-income voters to be surprisingly lukewarm on the idea as well. After all, these voters previously voiced support for the tax cuts implemented by the George W. Bush administration and elimination of the estate tax.

What explains the recurring tendency of lower-income Americans to vote against their own economic interests?

Recent research suggests a number of underlying causes for this enduring curiosity of contemporary American political discourse: the recurring tendency of lower-income Americans to vote against their own economic interests.

First, a recent paper suggests that Americans may oppose redistributive policies because they simply do not know how unequal the current distribution of wealth is. While current estimates suggest that the richest 20 percent of Americans own as much as 85 percent of the total wealth in America -- with the poorest 40 percent owning nearly 0 percent -- Americans estimate that the richest 20 percent own only 59 percent, and see the poorest Americans as owning far more than they do. The magnitude of this misperception offers one possibility for why people oppose redistribution -- they believe that wealth is already distributed more evenly than it truly is.

Second, Americans show a robust pattern of overestimating the probability that they will one day be rich. This firm belief in an Algeresque ability to rise from “rags to riches” is belied by data suggesting that income and wealth mobility are on the decline. Despite its rarity, however, poor Americans may vote against tax increases on the wealthy today because of their belief that those taxes will apply to them when they strike it rich tomorrow -- or when their children strike it rich as adults.

Our recent research -- with our graduate students Ryan Buell and Taly Reich -- suggests a third possibility: that poor Americans’ antipathy toward redistribution might be due not to their desire to one day be at the top of the income distribution, but to their fear of falling to the bottom. We show that humans have a deep psychological aversion to being in “last place” -- recall the shame of being picked last in gym class -- such that individuals near the bottom of the income distribution may be wary of redistribution because it could help those just below them leapfrog above them.

In one experiment demonstrating “last-place aversion,” we gave individuals different amounts of money and showed them their rank in this “income distribution” -- with each rank separated by $1. We then gave them an additional $2, which they had to give either to the person directly above or directly below them in the distribution: because ranks were separated by just $1, giving $2 to someone below causes that person to leapfrog above you.

Who is least likely to give money to the person below? Players in second-to-last place, for whom that decision moves them into last place. We also found evidence of last-place aversion in people’s preferences for real-world redistributive policies. Last-place aversion predicts that individuals with wages just above the minimum wage might not support increasing it: on the one hand, they may receive a small raise, but now would have the “last-place” wage. We find exactly this pattern in survey data — Americans making between $7.26 and $8.25 were the least likely to support increasing the current minimum wage -- $7.25.

These three explanations may well work in concert. Erroneous beliefs about the current degree of wealth inequality, coupled with overly optimistic beliefs about the future likelihood of upward mobility, together with a focus on ensuring that those below you stay below you, create a perfect storm of opposition to redistributive policies. As a result, attitudes toward these policies -- like Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy -- likely will be highly resistant to change.