Greed drives the rich to bend ethics- study
The rich really are different from the rest of us, scientists have
found - they are more likely to commit unethical acts because they are
more motivated by greed.
People driving expensive cars were more likely than other motorists
to cut off drivers and pedestrians at a four-way-stop intersection in
the San Francisco Bay Area, researchers at the University of California,
Berkeley, observed. Those findings led to a series of experiments that
revealed that people of higher socio-economic status were also more
likely to cheat to win a prize, take candy from children and say they
would pocket extra change handed to them in error rather than give it
back.
Because rich people have more financial resources, they're less
dependent on social bonds for survival, the researchers reported in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. As a result, their
self-interest reigns and they have fewer qualms about breaking the
rules.
"If you occupy a more insular world, you're less likely to be
sensitive to the needs of others," said study lead author Paul Piff, who
is studying for a doctorate in Psychology.
But before those in the so-called 99 percent start feeling ethically
superior, consider this: Piff and his colleagues also discovered that
anyone's ethical standards could be prone to slip if they suddenly won
the lottery and joined the top one percent.
"There is a strong notion that when people don't have much, they're
really looking out for themselves and they might act unethically," said
Scott Wiltermuth, who researches social status at USC's Marshall School
of Business and wasn't involved in the study. "But actually, it's the
upper-class people that are less likely to see that people around them
need help - and therefore act unethically."
Self-interest
In earlier studies, Piff documented that wealthy people were less
likely to act generously than relatively impoverished people. With this
research, he hoped to find out whether wealthy people would also
prioritise self-interest if it meant breaking the rules.
The driving experiments offered a way to test the hypothesis
"naturalistically," he said.
Trained observers hid near a downtown Berkeley intersection and noted
the makes, model years and conditions of bypassing cars. Then they
recorded whether drivers waited their turn.
It turned out that people behind the wheels of the priciest cars were
four times as likely as drivers of the least expensive cars to enter the
intersection when they didn't have the right of way. The discrepancy was
even greater when it came to a pedestrian trying to exercise a right of
way.
There is a significant correlation between the price of a car and the
social class of its driver, Piff said. Still, how fancy a car looks
isn't a perfect indicator of wealth.
So back in the laboratory, Piff and his colleagues conducted five
more tests to measure unethical behaviour - and to connect that
behaviour to underlying attitudes toward greed.
For example, the team used a standard questionnaire to get college
students to assess their own socio-economic status and asked how likely
subjects were to behave unethically in eight different scenarios.
In one of the quandaries, students were asked to imagine that they
bought coffee and a muffin with a $10 bill, but were handed change for a
$20. Would they keep the money?
Hypothetical scenario
In another hypothetical scenario, students realised their professor
made a mistake in grading an exam and gave them an A instead of the B
they deserved. Would they ask for a grade change?
The patterns from the road held true in the lab - those most willing
to engage in unethical behaviour were the ones with the highest social
status.
One possible explanation was that wealthy people are simply more
willing to acknowledge their selfish sides. But that wasn't the issue
here. When test subjects of any status were asked to imagine themselves
at a high social rank, they helped themselves to more candies from a jar
they were told was meant for children in another lab.
Another experiment recruited people from Craigslist to play a "game
of chance" that the researchers had rigged. People who reported higher
social class were more likely to have favourable attitudes toward greed
- and were more likely to cheat at the game.
"The patterns were just so consistent," Piff said. "It was very, very
compelling."
Piff, who is writing a paper about attitudes toward the Occupy
movement, said that his team had been accused of waging class warfare
from time to time.
"Berkeley has a certain reputation, so yeah, we get that," he said.
But rather than vilify the wealthy, Piff said, he hopes his work
leads to policies that help bridge the gap between the haves and
have-nots.
Acts as simple as watching a movie about childhood poverty seem to
encourage people of all classes to help others in need, he said.
Los Angeles Times
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