American conservatives might assume liberals are averse to merit-based compensation. The experiment proves that’s not so. When told the bonus payment was made only to the most productive worker, only 13 percent of the liberals transferred all of the money equally to the less productive worker, which is within the margin of error of the American conservative response (10 percent).

Americans both liberal and conservative were more likely than most people worldwide to accept merit-based income differences. As one of the study’s investigators, Mr. Tungodden, mentioned in his public presentation on the study, people in richer countries were more likely than people in poorer countries to allow merit-based differences. In the rich and more egalitarian country of Norway, 88 percent of respondents transferred the bonus payment equally when told it was allocated by chance, but only 33 percent did so when allocated by merit.

Further illustrating the divide between beliefs and actions, American conservatives were just as likely as the average person around the world (and as American liberals) to say that within the last month they had donated to a charity, helped a stranger or volunteered their time to an organization. Such actions, insofar as they alleviate poverty, would seem to contradict the idea that the poor deserve to be poor and that inequality is fair.

Understanding the causes of inequality

Once you strip away the ideological veneer and look at specific cases, the differences between political parties become superficial in at least one respect: Conservatives will redistribute riches acquired at random, and liberals will reward good performance.

The many implications of this research will be explored in future publications from the Norwegian team. One interesting extension would be to examine whether and how the gender or ethnicity of workers affects a respondent’s willingness to pay or redistribute.