In one more iteration of the relentless meme that reality has a strong liberal bias,a study published in Scientific American demonstrates that wealthy people are more likely to be greedy, lack compassion and steal from others.
The study, conducted by Berkeley psychologists Paul Piff and Dacher Keltner, used several different testing methods to come to these conclusions. In one test they hung out at busy traffic intersections and noted what kind of vehicles were being driven by people who cut others off at intersections. They found that luxury car drivers were more likely to cut off other motorists instead of waiting for their turn at the intersection. They controlled for a variety of other factors when they made these observations. In a different study they found that luxury car drivers were also more likely to speed past a pedestrian trying to use a crosswalk, even after making eye contact with the pedestrian.
In another test, subjects were divided into two groups. One group was instructed to think about how much better off they were than others, another to think how much worse off they were than others. At the end of the test, members of both groups were shown a jar of candy and told they could take as much of it as they liked, and that the rest would be given to children in antoher lab. Guess who took the most candy? The ones who thought about how much better off they were than others.
There was another test too, but read the damn article if you’re interested. Fact is, rich people are just less likely to give a damn about the rest of us. Explains a lot that has been happening in politics and the economy over the last couple of decades, doesn’t it?
In other news, bears shit in woods, Pope suspected of Catholocism.
I am a little surprised that the really poor crowd didn’t show up as grasping too, though; they have reason to be that way. I’ll just assume that there were sampling flaws that missed that part.
We can stop pretending that they are morally superior and automatically deserve respect because of the size of their back account. And taxing away most of their money and re-investing it in the economy would be a good idea, yes.
It’s a concern because wealthy people wield a lot of power in this country. They run the companies we work for and they have a great deal of political influence. If they’re greedy and lack compassion, how does that bode well for the rest of us who work under them?
Or maybe, greedy people who lack compassion have a better chance of getting rich. Put me in the “So what?” camp. I don’t think this justifies any specific change in public policy. We want to tax them more because it makes financial sense, not because they are bad, mean people who cut off my grandmother in traffic.
I think you’ve got it ass-backwards: people who are greedy, lack compassion and steal from others are more likely to be wealthy. And that just makes the observation trivial.
I saw that “people in shiny cars aren’t nice to pedestrians”, and my first thought was that this was likely due to another underlying factor. Specifically, drivers who are also pedestrians on a regular basis are more likely to be nice to other pedestrians. Poor people have to walk or take public transit more frequently. People who choose to walk or take public transit are less likely to spend serious money on a car they only drive on weekends.
Ah, I see. So basically, anyone who makes more money than you doesn’t deserve to make more money than you and is clearly an asshole, therefore that money should be taken away. Brilliant!
No, that isn’t the point, but let me try to make it even simpler for you: Rich people as a whole aren’t better than poor people, and in some ways they are worse.
And it’s unhealthy for the wealth of society to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, especially when they are unethical ones; so yes, it’s good to distribute the wealth some.
The paper wasn’t published in Scientific America. It was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Also, this was not just one study. Several studies (both field and laboratory observation) were performed. The abstract summarizes a wide variety of bad behavior:
Other related studies on a lack of empathy in upper class and/or powerful individuals. (Although one explanation is that upper class people may not recognize certain distress signals?)
My point is that when people propose programs that help the rich like not taxing them so much, we should think hard about the source and the likely motivation, whatever the declared motivation might be.