By Elizabeth Lopatto
Maybe, as the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald suggested, the rich really are different. They’re more likely to behave badly, according to seven experiments that weighed the ethics of hundreds of people.
The “upper class,” as defined by the study, were more likely to break the law while driving, take candy from children, lie in negotiation, cheat to increase their odds of winning a prize and endorse unethical behavior at work, researchers reported today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Taken together, the experiments suggest at least some wealthier people “perceive greed as positive and beneficial,” probably as a result of education, personal independence and the resources they have to deal with potentially negative consequences, the authors wrote.
While the tests measured only “minor infractions,” that factor made the results “even more surprising,” said Paul Piff, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a study author.
One experiment invited 195 adults recruited using Craigslist to play a game in which a computer “rolled dice” for a chance to win a $50 gift certificate. The numbers each participant rolled were the same; anyone self reporting a total higher than 12 was lying about their score. Those in wealthier classes were found to be more likely to fib, Piff said.
“A $50 prize is a measly sum to people who make $250,000 a year,” he said in a telephone interview. “So why are they more inclined to cheat? For a person with lower socioeconomic status, that $50 would get you more, and the risks are small.”
Read the rest here.
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The study appears to have flaws. From the Bloomberg article:
“Meredith McGinley, an assistant professor at Chatham University in Pittsburgh who wasn’t involved in the study, was critical of how some of the experiments were designed.
The design of the car experiments complicates the picture because having a flashy car doesn’t necessarily mean the driver is wealthy, said McGinley, who studies positive social behavior. In the experiment involving candy, the participants were told they could have it even though the children were waiting for it. They may have felt they were doing nothing wrong, she said.”
Also, this study has not been published, yet. It’s amazing to see the media jump all over this without reading the full study, or making the study freely available to the public to review.
The Craigslist study also sounds flawed, since they recruited people online. How did they verify the subjects were of the wealth-class they claimed?
Let’s see an objective team repeat the results of these studies and then perhaps I’ll be less skeptical of their conclusions.
Also, since the study is associated with Berkley I am obviously suspicious of some bias.
Here’s a past study I found that Piff was involved with, along the same lines. Here’s the link: http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/facbios/file/Piff%20Kraus%20C%C3%B4t%C3%A9%20Cheng%20Keltner%20JPSP%20in%20press.pdf
From the study linked above I find a few statements from the authors a little biased, like this one:
“For instance, a study conducted by
Independent Sector (2002) found that households earning under $25,000 contributed 4.2% of
their income to charity, whereas households making $100,000 or more contributed only 2.7%.
Several explanations of this trend have been offered, such as class-based differences in religious
affiliation, which we in part address in the present investigation (e.g., Andreoni, 2001).
Importantly, this correlational evidence suggests that lower-class individuals are more charitable
and generous than their upper-class counterparts.”
However, note that based on the figures above, the upper-class households gave more absolute dollars to charity than the lower-class ones ($2,700 to $1,050).
Oh, another flaw in their research: they simulate the classes of subjects in some of their experiments by recruiting students and “inducing” them to pretend like they were in a higher or lower social-class rank. It’s described in the link to their older paper above:
“Adapted from measures of subjective perceptions of socioeconomic rank (Adler et al.,
2000; Kraus et al., 2009) and manipulations of relative deprivation (e.g., Callan, Ellard, Shead, &
Hodgins, 2008), participants took part in a manipulation of their relative social class. In this
manipulation, participants were presented with an image of a ladder with 10 rungs. Participants
were instructed to “Think of the ladder above as representing where people stand in the United
States.” Participants were then randomly assigned to experience either low or high relative social
class based on the following instructions:”
After participants placed themselves on the ladder, they were instructed to imagine
themselves in a “getting acquainted interaction with one of the people you just thought about
from the ladder above.”
How exactly is this acceptable research, with subjects asked to pretend they are someone else?
Ultra, you’re preaching to the converted. Many of these “studies” are published in the media even before review is complete.
I have always complained that access to the data is usually pay-walled, making it hard to assess the reliability.
Typically, if it is a study about conservatives, most likely they set out with a goal and then built their research design in order to guarantee their goal was met.
Thanks, Woodshedder. Yeah, sorry about the rant. I get so annoyed at how poorly the media reports on science, and that article set me off.
Here’s another hypothesis hopefully the media can forward to Mr. Piff. Maybe I’ll forward this hypothesis to him myself for testing.
Hypothesis: There would be an inverse correlation between the percentage of taxes on the wealthy and the percentage of charitable contributions from the same wealthy people.
Ultra, your hypothesis I believe would prove to be statistically significant.
Actually, this may not be that hard to test using already available public data.