Show off or hide it? Property rights and status competition shape wealth display, evil eye beliefs, and egalitarian norms

Eric Schnell, Robin Schimmelpfennig, Xueheng Li and Michael Muthukrishna

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Visible wealth creates both prestige and envy. In some societies, prestige wins with people gaining status through conspicuous consumption, while in others, envy dominates with people concealing signs of success. We argue that these are alternative cultural equilibria that can be explained by two structural features of societies: (1) the intensity of status competition (how strongly relative status translates into payoffs) and (2) the strength of property rights (how costly it is for others to damage or appropriate others' wealth). We formalize this context in an economic model in which players choose their level of production and consumption, where consumption acts as a signal of a player's status, and players destroy others' wealth at a cost. The model predicts three regimes. When property rights are very weak and status competition is strong, the model predicts compressed and homogenized consumption (i.e., egalitarianism) and low production. Standing out invites destruction, the threat of which serves as a leveling mechanism. This first regime is consistent with many hunter-gatherer societies. As property rights increase, a second regime emerges with most individuals concealing wealth to some degree. This second regime is consistent with societies where evil eye beliefs are common; evil eye may be a culturally evolved mechanism that encourages wealth shielding. When property rights are strong, conspicuous consumption becomes the dominant strategy. This effect increases when the intensity of status competition is stronger, as long as property rights are strong. This third regime is consistent with many highly developed societies. We derive testable predictions linking institutions and competitive intensity to (a) display versus concealment, (b) visible inequality, and (c) productive versus destructive competition, and evaluate them against existing evidence.

Keywords: evil eye beliefs; egalitarianism; conspicuous consumption; zero-sum competition; formal modeling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 D91 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2026-11-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac
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Published in Evolution and Human Behavior, 30, November, 2026, 47(6). ISSN: 1090-5138

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