'The A**hole Effect': What Wealth Does to the Brain

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/culture/ahole-effect-what-wealth-does-brain



Call it the asshole effect. That is the term coined by US psychologist Paul Piff after he did some stunning new research into the effects of wealth and inequality on people’s attitudes.

As we ponder [Australian politician] Joe Hockey’s budget and his division of the world into "leaners" and "lifters", as we learn from Oxfam that the richest 1% of Australians now own the same wealth as the bottom 60%, we would do well to consider the implications of Piff’s studies. He found that as people grow wealthier, they are more likely to feel entitled, to become meaner and be more likely to exploit others, even to cheat.

Piff conducted a series of revealing experiments. One was remarkably simple. Researchers positioned themselves at crossroads. They watched out for aggressive, selfish behaviour among drivers, and recorded the make and model of the car. Piff found drivers of expensive, high-status vehicles behave worse than those sputtering along in battered Toyota Corollas.

They were four times more likely to cut off drivers with lower status vehicles. As a pedestrian looking carefully left and right before using a crossing, you should pay attention to the kind of car bearing down on you. Drivers of high-status vehicles were three times as likely to fail to yield at pedestrian crossings. In contrast, all the drivers of the least expensive type of car gave way to pedestrians.

[Enthusiast]

1. I wouldn't have believed this.

But there it is. The evidence is in. Take it for what it's worth.

Contrary to popular "wisdom", the wealthy are not more responsible, they are less so. Is the inverse also true? Are the less well off more inclined toward altruism and responsibility toward society? I think this is something we need to answer. But I suspect we already know the answer.

There is one thing we can say for certain. Since this massive wealth disparity has developed, society has become very dysfunctional.

[el_bryanto]

2. A bit like goldfish

They adapt to to the tank they are placed in. They come to accept the benefits their wealth gives them as part of the natural order, they accept that people who work for them or beneath them don't really count as people, not in the same way that they do. I see it with some of the people I work with; they really do believe that they are special people, deserving of every deference because they have a slightly higher position on the org chart. I don't know what it would be like to have servants and publicists and to be bowed to all day long, but I can't imagine it's very healthy.

That's not to say all rich people are assholes or that all working class people are saints - people choose what to do in the circumstances they find themselves in. Some rich people are probably very nice indeed.

Bryant

[whistler162]

3. Not another sucker affect article.

Let see how many idiots fall for a idiotic/false "study".