New Scientist (21 April, 2012) has published an article on the price of wealth. Michael Bond states that money changes our behaviour in subtle ways. While there has been much research on class and wealth, recent research has focused on the relationship between money and the way wealthier people relate to other people.
Dacher Keltner at the University of California, Berkeley, researched the link between wealth and empathy. He was interested in why financially disadvantaged people seemed to be more generous whereas wealthy Wall Street bankers appeared self-interested and disconnected from their community. So he designed a series of experiments with Michael Kraus to test whether people from different social backgrounds really did interact differently. They found that less-privileged participants in their study were more expressive that signaled engagement, while wealthier participants were more aloof. With further experiments, they revealed that participants with more prestigious jobs were consistently less empathetic. However, they found that differences were fluid and changeable – changing with the participants’ perception of their wealth and position in society. Keltner and Kraus supposed that some reactions were automatic that lead people to become more vigilant and mindful of others when they felt subordinate. In further experiments to test how people rewarded others, Keltner and Kraus found that people from less-privileged backgrounds tended to give more than those higher on the social ladder. However, they reserved judgment at conclusive results because they conducted the experiments in university laboratories, and not “in situ” – i.e. in real life situations. In addition, most participants were students, and not taken from a general cross-section of society.
Hazel Rose Markus at Stanford University in California also studied the effects of culture on behaviour and found that social and financial success can make people less caring of others. She found that wealthier people tended to think more about how they would spend their wealth than on the needs of others. She explained it further: money can buy a better diet, healthcare, and education, which could lead to better jobs whereas less-privileged people knew that they had a less comfortable lifestyle and were therefore more empathetic toward others. However, Markus believed that increased empathy of the working class may not buffer them from stress, but add to it. She said that there was therefore a double whammy for the less-privileged: poorer resources and opportunities, and more in tune to the injustices of their situation – both leading to higher levels of anxiety, hopelessness, and depression. Hence, Markus stated, the less-privileged are more engaged and empathetic with people because they rely more on others to get by, whereas those with financial and social resources tend to go it alone because they believe that life is what you make it.
Researchers agree that the links between wealth, personality, and political opinion are difficult to disentangle. However, it seems that resources gained by the more-privileged in societies may not trickle down to the less-privileged (even if wealthier people created businesses that could lead to job creation because they are more concerned with their own interests). Keltner says “Our results say you cannot rely on the wealthy to give back, to fix all the problems in society – it is improbable, psychologically.” He appears to infer this more to politicians in societies (and Wall Street bankers) rather than to all categories of wealth creationists. While it appears to be a pessimistic forecast, Keltner and Kraus acknowledge that, under the right circumstances, the well-off can and do become charitable and philanthropic – they maintain that it’s a matter of shifting their self-interest.
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