Well this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. This is a good reason for supporting a return to more progressive taxation since the wealthy most likely got much of their wealth unethically to begin with. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Are rich people more unethical? (Health.com) -- Since the economic implosion of 2008, the news has been littered with accounts of questionable behavior in boardrooms, corner offices, and other gold-plated spaces. What's not clear from the headlines, however, is whether white-collar criminals like Bernard Madoff are bad apples or extreme examples of a widespread trend. A new study may offer a clue to answering that question: A series of experiments conducted by psychologists at the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that people who are socially and financially better-off are more likely to lie, cheat, and otherwise behave unethically compared to individuals who occupy lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. "Elevated wealth status seems to make you want even more, and that increased want leads you to bend the rules or break the rules to serve your self-interest," says Paul Piff, the lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate in psychology at the university. Health.com: 7 simple ways to be happier The research team's findings, which appear this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were drawn from seven separate experiments that together included more than 1,000 people from all walks of life. Piff and his colleagues used a variety of measures to gauge the participants' socioeconomic status, such as education levels, annual income (which ranged from about $16,000 to $150,000), and the participants' own perception of their social standing. Regardless of the measure used, however, higher-status people tended to behave in ways that served their own self-interest. In the first two experiments, the researchers took to the sidewalks near Berkeley and investigated the relationship between car type -- a reliable, if crude, measure of status -- and driver behavior. Drivers with shinier, newer, and more expensive cars were more likely to cut off other motorists at a busy four-way stop and less likely to yield to pedestrians in a crosswalk. Roughly 45% of people driving cars the researchers deemed "high status" ignored a pedestrian, compared to just 30% of those in more modest vehicles. Health.com: Money trouble? How to stave off depression In another experiment, a group of college students were asked to rate how willing they were to engage in unethical behavior in various everyday scenarios -- such as taking a ream of printer paper from the office where they work, failing to correct a cashier's error in their favor, or accepting ill-gotten tips about an upcoming exam. The results echoed the driving experiments. Students who saw themselves as being higher on the socioeconomic ladder were more likely than their peers to say they would make a less-than-honorable decision in the hypothetical situations. These findings don't show that unethical behavior is somehow ingrained in people of higher status, Piff says. However, he says, they do suggest that small changes in a situation or environment cause people of varying backgrounds to express their instincts and values in different ways. "We're not saying you should distrust the rich, or the rich are corrupt," says Piff. "Instead, this highlights the disparities in social environments -- that different positions occupied give rise to almost natural tendencies and divergent social values." Health.com: Learn to be assertive and love it! What accounts for this divergence? The independence offered by financial security may foster a sense of entitlement and a lack of concern for others, the authors suggest. On a more concrete level, affluent people may be more likely to get away with misbehavior (because they are less supervised at work, for example), and they may be more willing to take ethical risks because they have the resources to bail themselves out -- both literally and figuratively -- if they get caught. Then again, there may be a simpler explanation: greed. The researchers found that unethical behavior was closely related to positive feelings about greed. Although the connection appeared to be strongest among high-status individuals, even lower-status individuals were more prone to ethical lapses if they felt that greed was good. Study participants, for instance, were more likely to cheat on a dice game or mislead a hypothetical job candidate about an available position if they agreed strongly with a series of greed-related statements, such as "To be a successful person in this society, it is important to make use of every opportunity" and "It is not morally bad to think first of one's own benefit and not other people's." http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/27/health/rich-more-unethical/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
Well all greed capitalist individuals not respect for others, actually something is did good researching so yes rich people are nasty, rude, don't care and lairs. The problem if poor people still shut up in the future rich will eat poor people in life. Bloodsuckers.
Quite frankly I think this just proves that academics are less ethical than anybody else. They come up with studies like this to hurt achievers. The socialist cabal in academia is well known. Just look at the den of scum at Penn State.
Oh joy, more left wing junk science. So far we've 'learned' that conservatives are stupid/bigoted, Republicans are less empathetic than rats, and now we know that the rich are less ethical.
Ahh yes, Penn State. Where the assistant coach of the football team raped young boys in the shower room, got busted, the head coach got fired for knowing about it and doing nothing, and all the hippy liberal sports queer students rioted over their head coach getting the axe. I hope Penn State gets their asses kicked next season and in the seasons beyond. I will laugh!
What, you didn't realise that 'Eat sh*t and die' were everyday American words? It's what the say in MacDonald's when they are served with a triple Mac and find they can accommodate the whole burger in one foul bite.
Well, money is the root of all evil. Power corrupts -- both in government and the private sector. There's really no getting around that. It's why you have to "water the tree of liberty" every once in a while. Maybe it's time to do so again.
But on the other hand, the liberals like CarlB assure us that poor people are criminals. It's not their fault of course but they're criminals because they're poor. And, yes, it's political science all over again.
Exactly. And just a newsflash for the lower 5% OP: there were no rich people cited in that study. $150,000/yr - particularly in California - isn't even in the zipcode of rich. Sorry. You just bashed the middle class. Nice job.
It is funny, but the measures they used don't isolate truly rich people, just people with expensive lifestyles. It does match what many people seem to expect of rich people, but doesn't match what rich people do - or at least what self-made millionaires do. The kind of people who care about status symbols are naturally the kind of people who will behave selfishly - but they aren't necessarily rich. In fact, such status symbols eat a lot of a person's income and many people who have such things have a rather low net-worth, even though they have a fairly large income. The income gets wasted on status symbols instead of going toward valuable investments.
Not only that Paco. The same administrators that gave a pass to pedophiles and child rapists also cleared Michael Mann of wrongdoing in his AGW Climategate coverup.
Here is my favorite part: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...y-from-babies/2011/08/25/gIQAXE0beR_blog.html Man, such advanced, flawless method!
Is this really what constitutes a reputable study by a couple of liberal Berkley professors? Going out to sit on a corner and seeing a few new and shiny cars cut somebody off??? And then pronouncing that this means "the rich are more unethical?" Maybe the "shiny new cars" were being driven by drug dealers; entirely possible in California in that area. But I guess they would count as unethical rich people, eh? It's amazing how the mainstream is working overtime to get these ridiculous "studies" out there to try to help further the liberal mantra of class warfare during this election year. We can count on it each and every election year. Like clockwork!! Doesn't surprise me at all.
Does anyone want to point out the obvious? These are liberal rich professors, doing a study in CA, about how the "rich" are unethical. They are in CA, there are no ethics there.
You point is worthless, because if Californians all had no ethics then they would have got the same results for everyone.
