Don’t Count on the Wealthy to Be Generous or Helpful, says a University of California Study — if True, the Findings Have Profound Political and Economic Implications

09 August 2011

The spiritual wisdom that lies in exhorting us to walk in each other’s shoes

A University of California study found that people with wealthy backgrounds are less generous and less interpersonally helpful than lower socioeconomic groups. The accustomed-to-being rich also don’t read other people’s emotions particularly skillfully.

If this research is accurate, the reasons for the wealthy classes’ reduced generosity appear to be experiential:

People who come from a lower-class background have to depend more on other people.

“If you don’t have resources and education, you really adapt to the environment, which is more threatening, by turning to other people,” [Dacher] Keltner says.

“People who grow up in lower-class neighborhoods, as I did, will say,’ There’s always someone there who will take you somewhere, or watch your kid. You’ve just got to lean on people.’”

Wealthier people don’t have to rely on each other as much. This causes differences that show up in psychological studies.

People from lower-class backgrounds are better at reading other people’s emotions. They’re more likely to act altruistically.

“They give more and help more. If someone’s in need, they’ll respond,” Keltner says.

When poor people see someone else suffering, they have a physiological response that is missing in people with more resources.

“What I think is really interesting about that is, it kind of shows there’s all this strength to the lower class identity: greater empathy, more altruism, and finer attunement to other people,” he says.

Upper-class people are different, Keltner says. “What wealth and education and prestige and a higher station in life gives you is the freedom to focus on the self.”

In psychology experiments, wealthier people don’t read other people’s emotions as well. They hoard resources and are less generous than they could be.

Citation

Michael W. Kraus, Paul K. Piff, and Dacher Keltner, Social Class as Culture: The Convergence of Resources and Rank in the Social Realm, Current Directions in Psychological Science 20(4): 246-250, doi: 10.1177/0963721411414654 (August 2011)

Caveat — I can’t comment on this study’s scientific accuracy

Without access to the report, I cannot comment on its definitional or methodological accuracy. There are obvious pitfalls the researchers would have had to avoid in both.

On the other hand, psychology has developed into a discipline that is generally aware of biases and seeks to guard against them.

Given that the group’s findings generally accord with my life experience, I’m inclined to think that they can’t be easily dismissed.

If the report’s observations are true, their social implications are significant

The study’s findings about class-based differences in generosity obviously apply to the nation’s current situation.

The divide between the ever-richening class and everyone else is exacerbated by the former’s selfishness. The political chasm is deepened by the lower classes’ reasonably accurate perspective on the wealthy class’s arguably soul-deficient grasping.

Not a recipe for political harmony or progress.

A spiritual note

The vows of poverty that reverberate with the most dedicated practitioners of the world’s religions aren’t there by accident.

PeteFree.com

Don’t Count on the Wealthy to Be Generous or Helpful, says a University of California Study — if True, the Findings Have Profound Political and Economic Implications