THE idea that money changes people for the worse is deeply ingrained in western culture. From A Christmas Carol, with its archetypal miser Scrooge, to Wall Street with its ruthless anti-hero Gordon Gekko, countless stories have featured individuals who forsake compassion as they amass their fortunes. More recently, the press has taken to vilifying bankers for awarding themselves huge bonuses while taking excessive risks with investments.
But what is the truth behind the clichs? Do riches really breed selfishness and greed at the expense of empathy and compassion? If so, why? Although researchers have explored many of the ramifications of class and wealth since the birth of social science in the late 19th century, only recently have they started to look in detail at the way money shapes our ability to relate to other people. The results are surprising, offering a picture of the impact of wealth on our psychology that goes far beyond the usual stereotypes. Understand these effects, and you get a better handle on the other inequalities marking the vast gulf in health and well-being that separates the rich and poor. It might even help explain our diverse reactions to the current economic crisis.
Dacher Keltner at the University of California, Berkeley, has pioneered much of the recent work. He first started to contemplate the link between wealth and empathy after being struck by what he calls "the profound self-interest and social disconnect" shown by Wall Street bankers, while at the same time recalling the generosity of his neighbours growing up in a poor area. Someone going through tough times, he reasoned, needs the help of others to see them through and so becomes more sensitive to the feelings of those around them. For example, if you have less income you may have to rely on friends and neighbours for childcare or travel, and as a result will develop more effective social skills. "If you don't have resources and education, you adapt to the environment - which is more threatening - by turning to other people," says Keltner. "You just have to lean on people." Those with more money, in contrast, can afford to pay less attention to others, which could explain why your well-paid boss is so unsympathetic.
From these musings, Keltner and Michael Kraus at the University of California, San Francisco, designed a series of experiments to test whether people from different social backgrounds really do interact differently. In one of their earliest studies, they divided about 100 volunteers into pairs, and then filmed each pair meeting and getting acquainted for 5 minutes. To make sure that their own expectations couldn't sway their interpretation of the behaviour, Keltner and Kraus asked two independent observers to view the resulting videos and rate each participant's actions during the exchange, by counting how often they showed signs of interest such as nodding, laughter and eye contact, compared with more detached behaviours such as doodling.
In line with Keltner's theory, the poorer subjects were more likely to use warmer and more expressive body language and gestures that signal engagement, while the richer participants were more stand-offish (Psychological Science, vol 20, p 99). "Those from the wealthiest families would go directly to their cellphones to check the time, or they would fiddle with their backpack to make sure it was in order," says Kraus.
The team suspected that these different styles of interaction might have reflected the participants' ability to judge another person's feelings. To find out if wealth can influence empathy, the researchers first asked 200 university employees, with jobs ranging from administrative support to managerial positions, to rate the emotions expressed in 20 photographs of human faces - a standard test of emotional intelligence. As predicted, those with the more prestigious jobs were consistently worse at the task.
In another experiment, the team divided a group of students into pairs and asked them to act out mock interviews - one student as the potential employer, one as the would-be employee. Afterwards, they were asked to rate their feelings, such as excitement, hope or worry, using a 10-point scale. They also had to estimate the scores of their partners. Once again, the students from poorer backgrounds were better at guessing their partner's feelings than those from wealthier backgrounds (Psychological Science, vol 21, p 1716).
Importantly, Keltner and Kraus have found that these differences were fluid, changing with the participant's perception of their position within a group. When asked to imagine a conversation with someone they deemed to be higher up the social ladder, the wealthier participants became immediately better at reading emotions. The team concluded that the observed effects are probably automatic reactions that lead us to become more vigilant and mindful of others when we feel subordinate.
Keen to investigate the way in which wealth might influence other behaviours, the team turned to an experiment designed to test altruism, in which each participant has to decide how to divide a reward with an anonymous partner who is supposedly sitting in another room. Despite being poorer, people from less-privileged backgrounds tended to give more than those higher on the social ladder. Similar results emerged from an online survey and game (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol 99, p 771).
This selfish tendency on the part of the better-off seems to translate to all kinds of situations, with laboratory and real-world experiments revealing many instances in which wealthier people are more likely to behave unethically than those from poorer backgrounds. For instance, Keltner's latest study has found that richer people are more likely to commit an offence while driving, eat sweets that are intended for children, or cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 109, p 4086).
Taken together, the results provide some preliminary support for Keltner's theory. However, it may be best to reserve judgement until someone tests the apparent behavioural differences in more true-to-life settings, says Linda Gallo at San Diego State University, California. She points out that many of the experiments have been conducted in university labs - and people might not be as empathic as Keltner's studies suggest if tested "in situ" in tougher, deprived areas. It is also possible that the choice of participants, who were mostly students, doesn't reflect the rest of the population. If so, they wouldn't be the first experiments to have been skewed by a relatively narrow sample; psychologists are becoming increasingly concerned about studies that rely on educated subjects in western, industrialised countries to draw conclusions about humanity (New Scientist, 13 November 2010, p 42)Movie Camera.
Yet Hazel Rose Markus at Stanford University in California, who studies the effects of culture on behaviour, has also found that social and financial success can make people less caring. She suggests that the differences may arise from the sheer range of opportunities afforded by wealth - the rich spend more time considering how to spend their fortune than worrying about the needs of others, she thinks (Social Psychological and Personality Science, vol 2, p 33). "The conditions of life of those in the professional middle class focus their attention on themselves and their own needs, interests and choices, which makes them less caring," she says.
Markus suspects that psychological differences may help to explain some of the other inequalities between the rich and poor. Consider a few districts in London; the average male life expectancy is 88 years in one particularly well-heeled district in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, as compared with 71 in one of the poorest areas, Tottenham Green in the north of the city.
Part of the explanation for this is straightforward: money can buy a better diet, a gym membership and better healthcare. Furthermore, wealthier people are more likely to have a better education, which leads to less physically stressful and more rewarding jobs.
Poorer people have less of all of this, and they also have the stress of knowing they are low down in the pecking order. There is now much evidence that this tension compounds the impact of a less comfortable lifestyle. For instance, the extensive Whitehall studies, which examined the health of British civil servants over decades, found a very clear link between illness and job grade. Those lower down the hierarchy were more likely to have cardiovascular and respiratory disease and to die younger than those in more senior positions, even after other social and economic factors had been taken into account.
Richard Wilkinson, who studies the social determinants of health at the University of Nottingham, UK, has described the distress caused by social inequality as equivalent "to more rapid ageing", because it "compromises the immune and cardiovascular systems and increases our vulnerability to so many diseases".
Emotional double hit
Where do the recent findings come into this? Social interaction is meant to be vital to mental and physical well-being, so you might expect the closer social ties in poorer communities to mitigate these stresses. Yet the increased empathy may in fact amplify the burden, by making people more acutely aware of their lowly position on the economic ladder. "My hunch is that the increased empathy of the working class does not buffer them from stress but rather adds to the stress," says Markus.
Her intuition finds some support in one of Kraus's most recent series of experiments. He placed pairs of participants in slightly tense social situations, in which they were encouraged to create amusing nicknames for one another. Rating their emotions before and after the exchange, those from poorer backgrounds tended to show a greater dip in their mood - suggesting they are more sensitive to perceived social slights (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, vol 37, p 1376). "This is one of the negative consequences of being empathic in a context that is profoundly unfair," says Kraus.
It adds up to a double whammy of disadvantage: not only do the worse off face poorer resources and opportunities; they are also more attuned to the injustice of their situation, which may contribute to higher levels of anxiety, hopelessness and depression - and, as a result, ill health. Gallo agrees that "a low sense of control and self-esteem and high levels of negative emotions such as depression and hostility help to explain why individuals with low socio-economic status have worse physical health".
The more self-centred mindset that comes with riches might also have a profound effect on someone's political opinions. When the team asked university students to explain increasing economic inequality in American society, those from poorer backgrounds thought it due to political influence or disparities in educational opportunities. Those from wealthier backgrounds put it down to hard work or talent (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol 97, p 992). In other words, poorer people, who must rely much more on others to get by, are more aware of contextual or social factors that might contribute to someone's circumstances, while those with the social and financial resources to go it alone consider that life is what you make it.
On one level, this seems predictable: wealthy people want to feel they deserve their high income, and no one who is hard up wants to hold themselves responsible. But such perceptions may have important consequences when it comes to politics. Although the links between wealth, personality and political opinion are difficult to disentangle, it's plausible that the reduced empathy that comes with wealth and success may contribute to a more conservative, right-wing position aimed at preserving the interests of the rich.
Dishearteningly, Keltner's research might also suggest that the money and prestige of high office could degrade the altruistic tendencies of even the most well-meaning politicians. "A government run by wealthy, educated people is going to be interested in maintaining the current social order," says Kraus. "[Its members] will not be interested in the welfare of everybody, but in the welfare of themselves and their own goals."
More generally, the work could be seen to undermine "trickle-down economics": the notion that money made or inherited by rich people will end up benefiting poorer individuals, through the creation of new businesses that provide jobs for middle or low-income earners, for example. This argument is often made in support of tax cuts for the wealthy. Yet if the rich do create more jobs as a result, Keltner's findings suggest they will be more concerned with preserving their own interests, by awarding themselves hefty bonuses, for instance, rather than creating a constructive working environment with fair wages for all. "Our results say you cannot rely on the wealthy to give back, to fix all the problems in society," Keltner says. "It is improbable, psychologically."
Fortunately, not everyone seems to be corrupted by the trappings of success - as many instances of generous philanthropy attest (New Scientist, 24 September 2011, p 36). And although Kraus and Keltner's experiments may seem to offer a pessimistic view for those hoping to achieve greater social equality, they do at least suggest that the tendencies aren't set in stone, and that under the right circumstances, the well-off can be encouraged to become more empathic.
"If you can make them aware of those things, you can shift their self-interest," says Kraus. Future research will no doubt offer some suggestions for the best approach - although it will probably take more than psychological trickery to open the eyes of many dyed-in-the-wool politicians.
