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Are rich people meaner? Two teams find errors in each other’s work
- PhisherPrice 9y agoRich people are assholes in my experience. They may have better manners and stuff, but their intentions are evil. A lot of the time, their interests directly conflict with the interests of the middle class.
- jerf 9y agoYou probably have a significant selection effect in play there. You would not notice the rich people you've encountered who were perfectly polite to you and did not have ostentatious displays of wealth that clearly labeled them as rich. You may also be surprised to discover that the "rich asshole" who ducks into the spot in front of you with his Ferrari and then tells you off with his vigorously waving arms decorated with a Rolex could be entirely faking it, actually hip deep in debt and not able to afford what he's waving around. Unsurprisingly such people are often quite stressed. (I don't know "that guy" but I know some people who certainly trend in that direction and I believe would have required only small life pushes to be "that guy".)
- mozumder 9y agoAnd the intentions of the middle-class directly conflict with the intentions of the poor. Middle-class is definitely the worst. Enough power to be harmful to the poor, but not enough self-awareness of their own situation. They're the slave-drivers the wealthy use to whip the slaves.
- tiggybear 9y agoSo the Gestapo was worse than Hitler? I've recently been talking to my therapost about this. I'm not sure there are many jobs where you can be an "ethical producer" under capitalism. It's a shit system that requires 10-20% (at least in the US) of people to be in poverty. Even if every single person in the United States was capable of being a physician, we still would require 10-20% to work shitty jobs and live shitty lives. Yay America!
- KekDemaga 9y ago>Rich people are assholes in my experience. They may have better manners and stuff, but their intentions are evil I'd keep that attitude in check, if you are in a western nation you are likely in the top 1% - 2% in terms of income globally. Things would end pretty badly for you if 98% of the planet decided people like you are evil.
- pc86 9y agoI upvoted you because it's a good point, but if you're discussing interpersonal behavior, does it really matter if someone living in poverty in the American deep south is in the top 2% globally for PPP? Studies like this are not looking at the world as a whole, they're looking at interpersonal relationships, by definition very local or regional.
- KekDemaga 9y agoThe super wealthy proclaiming without citing evidence that the mega wealthy are evil or cheated somehow is a pet peeve of mine, it just seems petty when you put it into a global context.
- icebraining 9y agoBut maybe the effect actually works in a local context. People probably measure wealth relatively to their peers, not on a global scale.
- KGIII 9y agoYeah, people were mad at some of my comments during the OWS phase. They were making comments about stuff like hanging and shooting the 1%. I'd point out that, if they were online, in Slashdot or Fark, in a home with regular power, and had clean water, they were quite probably in the world's 1%. My point wasn't that there was no reason to complain, indeed there are many reasons to complain. My point was that making generalizations and threats based on an arbitrary number wasn't very productive or honest.
- pc86 9y ago
- pavel_lishin 9y agoIs your hypothesis that wealth turns people into assholes, or that only assholes are capable of generating vast amounts of personal wealth?
- mirrormind 9y agoHow do you define rich?
- hwillis 9y agoYou don't. You compare wealth/class to mean-ness. Arbitrarily defining a cutoff would affect the results from the onset.
- esmi 9y agoI was super interested to read how they defined "rich". Is it just networth greater than X? Is someone who saves diligently for 50 years to get X also rich in their definition? Sadly those details appear to be behind a paywall and it seems what they really wanted to determine was the relationship between greedy attitudes and social economic status although their summary does use the word rich plenty, again, without defining it.
- civilian 9y agoSci-hub FTW Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior: https://sci-hub.io/http://www.pnas.org/content/109/11/4086.abstract https://sci-hub.io/http://www.pnas.org/content/109/11/4086.a... A 4-study replication of the moderating effects of greed on socioeconomic status and unethical behaviour https://sci-hub.io/https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata2016120 https://sci-hub.io/https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata2016...
- hwillis 9y agoAnd to answer the question, it seems like class was self-ranked based on the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status[1] rather than having two groups drawn from two classes. "Low" and "High" look like they're just the two groups above and below the median of the study. [1]: http://www.macses.ucsf.edu/research/psychosocial/subjective.php http://www.macses.ucsf.edu/research/psychosocial/subjective....
- chibg10 9y agoEqually important is how you define "unethical." I'd imagine people in higher socioeconomic levels are more likely to lie in a negotiation or ignore traffic laws (traffic penalties fines are regressive in the sense they are fixed, skill in negotiating is probably correlated with skill in lying), but less likely to commit violent crimes or engage in drug abuse.
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- drawkbox 9y agoThe game is selfish, players must be selfish or self-interested to survive. This game efficiently works out niceness/sharing as a matter of survival.
- warent 9y agoDo you have any research to back up that claim? In my experience, selfishness and self-interest leads to isolation where nobody will help you with anything worthwhile. Gotta care about other people and be a team player to succeed
- testvox 9y agoIf you are being a team player because that's what's needed for you to succeed personally then isn't being a team player the selfish strategy?
- allendoerfer 9y agoTaken to the extreme: If you do good to feel good, you are selfish. But I don't think it matters to the outside. Let's judge the whole person and not some Freudian ego of him.
- grasshopperpurp 9y agoI agree with this as a standard for judging others, which is what your post addresses, so I have no disagreement with it. For your self, though, if you are doing good only to feed your ego, the appetite of your ego is still the driving force, so your morality will be subject to the whims of your ego, which means that you're a fair-weather do-gooder - sure to do bad when your ego demands it.
- csomar 9y agoYou are not taking it to the extreme. You are just discovering that "selfishness" is not hard-defined. It is relative, and thus one cannot measure it through different people since each one of them will perceive it differently.
- trapperkeeper74 9y agoPeople often conflate nebulous “evil” with more specific rational self-interest, good investments and cheating/underpaying/stealing from people. There are a lot of middling rich people whom do underpay people because it works and don’t care about long-term views of themselves or of the relationship... this can sabotage greater opportunities later on or current income streams now (it’s a small world and a hyperconnected one). There are many whom don’t because it also reflects poorly on them and their associates, and it turns off their friends, potential customers, investors and partners... also some people have integrity and wouldn’t dream of it. In fact, the more connected someone is, the less likely they are to screw people over because it’s a bigger risk. The big headlines of harassment or scams are the exceptions. Certainly, there are instutions like many banks whom obscure their wealth extraction from less rich and transfer it to their investor/owners. They are culpable but may not believe or realize they are. Wealth is a spectrum, as are integrity and personality. How is squishy “science” going to “measure” take those nuances or mentally-compartmentalized/hidden wealth transfer into account?
- hwillis 9y ago> Wealth is a spectrum, as are integrity and personality. How is squishy “science” going to “measure” take those nuances or mentally-compartmentalized/hidden wealth transfer into account? By measuring on a spectrum of wealth and integrity, and choosing a sample size so as to to ameliorate personality to p < .05. They have graphs of socioeconomic class vs. unethical behavior. A few studies also included priming the subjects to think in "greed is good" ways and measure the impact.
- trapperkeeper74 9y agoSpectrum isn’t an axis. There is much grey in the world statistics can’t capture. Looking for data to fit a narrative is political science, not science.
- mirrormind 9y agoPeople who do such research are a waste of money in my opinion and must be fired. Do something useful. What is the use of this? Rich people go grab pussies, some get rid of poverty. They are mean, they are nice.. they are across the spectrum
- sctb 9y agoPlease don't post like this on Hacker News. It amounts to unsubstantive inflammation and we're shooting for something different here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- randyrand 9y agoIs this even a question? Having spent my teenage years in what would otherwise be called a ghetto and now living in a wealthier suburb, poor neighborhoods have way more selfish assholes. I'm very glad I got out of there. I think being an asshole hurts you more than is helps you as you get richer.
- noja 9y agoIn one case you were looking at the world from the perspective of a poor boy, in the other from a rich earner.
- cirgue 9y ago> I think being an asshole hurts you more than is helps you as you get richer. As a product of private school: my experience is yes and no. There are certainly some behaviors that hurt your success, and there are plenty of extremely successful people who are successful specifically because they are excellent human beings all-around. There are also plenty of people who are financially successful because they are exceptionally selfish and generally horrible to others, but not in overt or combative ways.
- mruniverse 9y agoI have the same experience. When I was younger I was puzzled when my friends mom (richer family) was so nice. Cooked large breakfast for us when I stayed over, etc. And his friends were nice. And they talked normally to each other and were funny and clever. Where I came from, the norm was just anger. And the conversation was mostly putting each other down. Or challenging each other. Still trying to overcome that.
- ozim 9y agoFor me maybe not a ghetto but dirt poor people that rest of a small city referred to as 'miracles street' (drunks, poor people, police visits once a month) had bunch of decent people and friends I think will have contact for life whereas I got to know quite some rich people who were maybe smooth in contact but in reality they were awful backstabbers. So your mileage may vary...
- KGIII 9y ago
- Simulacra 9y agoI think wealth can sometimes give a false sense of superiority and invincibility
- averagewall 9y agoYou imply there is a true sense of superiority somewhere. What could be more a true measure of general superiority than wealth? It comes from succeeding in a game that everyone's playing.
- davidshalev 9y agoThe majority of wealthy people became that way by some combination of lying, cheating, stealing, fraud, misrepresentation, intimidation (extortion and/or blackmail), market manipulation, insider trading, aggressive selling to vulnerable people such as seniors, etc...... If you succeed on Wall Street, you're most likely engaging in that behavior. Do people actually think that most of these billionaires added billions in value? That every exchange is voluntary and makes each side better off? Is the old lady with dementia who unknowingly signed up to a terrible annuity "better off". Was the woman with dementia a "sucker" for signing up and placing trust in the broker? The ethical way to become rich is largely by inventing or innovating. Corporate raiders such as Kravis, Icahn and Peltz are very far from being moral. Arguably sociopaths with a mean streak. Surprised with the naive posts.
- averagewall 9y agoWho, besides dementia sufferers, are being cheated by those rich people? Anyone with a sounds mind is surely making a rational decision that they probably benefits themselves. If they're just trading at better prices than the market, that still means they're providing value by actually being available to trade with.
- mcny 9y agoI know I'm going to sound like a broken record when I say this because I recently learned about this thing called principal agent problem and now everything in the world looks like it to me (when all you have is a hammer yada yada) So with the apology it of the way, there is a lot of what we can call inefficiency when we look at things from a bird's eye view. Of course, usually someone else benefits from it. Even if you ignore my silly comparison, there are new individuals born everyday. We don't all start from an equal position. Not that I have a better solution but you could argue some are in a better position to exploit certain opportunities than others are.
- davidshalev 9y agoThere are enough vulnerable people to become rich off of? When I worked in sales the calculus was pretty simple - either you sell to these people to make money or you'll barely make money. The dirty little secret of success in sales is is scoping out people who can be manipulated. Most products being sold do not benefit the buyer. There is not enough ingenuity for that. The view that capitalism just creates a collection of voluntary exchanges that better both sides, is ludicrous.
- stmfreak 9y agoThis is confirmation bias epitomized. Rich people mean? Or do rich people simply have a different view of the world than not-rich people? My kids think I am mean. They are not rich by comparison. The differences in our behaviors are the major reasons for our differences in incomes.