Money really DOES make you mean: Feeling flush makes you more likely to snub friends and break the law, claims scientist
- This is according to Paul Piff from University of California, Berkeley
- His tests reveal money isolates people psychologically and materially
- In a rigged game of monopoly, richer players were rude and dominant
- Another study found people in better cars were more likely to break law
They say money can corrupt even the most honest of people.
Now one social psychologist has revealed a series of experiments that shows this adage to be true.
Instead of transforming people into a charitable benefactors, Professor Paul Piff believes money causes people to break the rules at the expense of others.
Professor Paul Piff from the University of California, Berkeley, has revealed several experiments in which the rich struggled with empathy and generosity towards others, compared with their poorer companions
'It makes you more attuned to your own interests, your own desires, your own welfare,' the University of California, Berkeley, researcher told Lucy Hooker at the BBC.
'It isolates you in certain ways from other people psychologically and materially. You prioritise your own needs and your own goals and become less attuned to those around you.
In one experiment, Professor Piff spent an afternoon going back and forth over a pedestrian crossing in Los Angeles.
He found that none of the least expensive cars broke the law, while almost 50 per cent of the most expensive car drivers sped across the pedestrian crossing.
In another recent study, Professor Piff brought in more than 100 pairs of strangers into the lab, and flipped a coin to assigned one of the two to be a rich player in a rigged Monopoly game.
The rich players collected twice the salary when they passed Go, and they were able to roll both dice instead of one, so they got to move around the board more.
Money isolates people psychologically and materially, according to recent research. As a result they prioritise their own needs and goals and become less attuned to those around them
Hidden cameras revealed, over the course of 15 minutes, the rich player showing signs of dominance, smacking the board with their piece and talking loudly.
The rich players also became ruder toward the other person, less sensitive to the plight of the poor players, and more demonstrative of their material success.
'When the rich players talked about why they had inevitably won in this rigged game of Monopoly they talked about what they'd done to buy those different properties and earn their success in the game,' Professor Piff said in a recent Ted talk.
'They became far less attuned to all those different features of the situation, including that flip of a coin that had randomly gotten them into that privileged position in the first place.
'And that's a really, really incredible insight into how the mind makes sense of advantage.'
Other scientists have conducted similar studies to back up the findings.
Last year, after undergoing psychological testing to measure individual differences, including honesty, a group of volunteers in Switzerland played the 'dictator game'.
In the game, they were given complete control over deciding pay outs to themselves and their followers.
The leaders had the choice of making pro or anti-social decisions - the latter resulting in awarding less money to the group but more to the leader's own earnings.
The findings showed those rated as less honest at first exhibited more corrupt behaviour.
But, over time, even those who initially scored high on honesty scales were not shielded from the corruptive effects of power, according to the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.
Professor Piff, however, says not all hope is lost for the wealthy.
'We've been finding in our own laboratory research that small psychological interventions, small changes to people's values, small nudges in certain directions, can restore levels of egalitarianism and empathy.
'For instance, reminding people of the benefits of cooperation, or the advantages of community, cause wealthier individuals to be just as egalitarian as poor people.'
In one study, volunteers watched a brief video, 46 seconds long, about childhood poverty that served as a reminder of the needs of others in the world around them.
'After watching this video, an hour later, rich people became just as generous of their own time to help out this other person, a stranger, as someone who's poor,' said Professor Piff.
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