4 ms·

Ironically, the poor are typically more ethical than the wealthy in research. You may be among the ~.5% of humans unconcerned with harming others, regardless of

Ironically, the poor are typically more ethical than the wealthy in research. You may be among the ~.5% of humans unconcerned with harming others, regardless of wealth level.

bumby 3y ago
There seems to be quite a bit of evidence of the opposite, or at least that "high-status" people are equally or more ethical. Some of the misperception seems to be explained by society holding high-status individuals to a higher ethical standard and more attention when they deviate from the norm.
- skygazer 3y ago
  That’s interesting. Of course we can’t 1:1 equate wealth with high-status, but I guess there’s often significant overlap.
- cycomanic 3y ago
  The poster wrote that research shows that poorer people are typically (or in general) more ethical than richer and your reply is that there is evidence to the contrary without any evidence just a hand waving argument. That doesn't show anything. You can indeed question the research of less ethical behaviour by richer people however you need to bring some evidence. This [1] article for example talks about a study which didn't replicate the behaviour. It's actually a well balanced discussion of the overall evidence. [1] https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/are_rich_people_really_less_ethical https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/are_rich_peopl...
  - bumby 3y ago
    What was the hand-waving? A better approach is just to be intellectually curious and ask. Besides, snarkiness is against the HN guidelines. This article [1] has a lot of references that support that claim, and it's a higher quality of rigor than a magazine article. FWIW, I'm not saying the original claim was wrong, just that we should be cautioned against strong claims when there is mixed evidence at best. Likewise, I would caution against extrapolating too much from studies that use cars as a proxy for wealth. Car model != socio-economic status for a variety of reasons. I'd argue that original (and replicated) study from your link is pretty flawed to begin with. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-42204-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-42204-z
    - cycomanic 3y ago
      Sorry I didn't mean to come across as snarky. By handwavy I meant that one can easily come up with "logical" arguments around behaviour that dont reflect reality, so it needs to be backed up by evidence. Thanks for posting the article I was not aware of this research (while I was aware of the research showing the opposite). 2 things to note: 1. How is it possible that the two don't cite each other?! I have to call out the scientific report paper in particular. Piff's work is more than 10 years old and well known. Instead the authors only cite work that supports their premise. I would have thrown it out as a reviewer just based on this. That said the article I linked should have mentioned some of the work cited in the scientific reports article as well. 2. It seems studies are done quite differently, the article you linked seems to largely rely on surveys (sidenote I really dislike the use of mechanical turk for these things, way too unreliable) of assessment others or their own ethical behaviour. Piff's work was more experimental (thus lower numbers and less reliable in that sense)
      - bumby 3y ago
        No apologies needed, but I appreciate the thoughtful response.I agree that surveys are not the best tool. Unfortunately, for a lot of work that covers social components, they are a common method. While wealth is easily quantifiable, people's feelings towards topics like ethics are often best done by asking them. I think the Piff study is just really flawed because they were trying to use a quantifiable proxy. "we used observers’ codes of vehicle status (make, age, and appearance) to index drivers’ social class." IMO they chose a really bad proxy, and they never validated it. It's completely based on an assumption, and one that we can all probably point to personal examples that violate it. To me, that's "hand-wavy" science. To your point, I could probably come up with a handful of different explanations that correlate car make/model to seemingly aggressive driving behavior. Some of them probably correlate with wealth and others not so much. I do think there's a danger of confirmation bias. Just like the nature study demonstrates that there is a normative belief that wealthy people act less ethically, it's really easy for our status-obscessed ape minds to latch onto studies that support it. Even when they aren't the greatest.
        3y ago
- atmavatar 3y ago
  I would argue that holding someone to a standard, ethical or otherwise, requires some sort of accountability. And yet, in the US, we have congressmen/women who regularly engage in insider trading and accept bribes in the form of lobbying and cushy jobs after they leave office, we have multiple sitting Supreme Court justices accepting bribes, and we have a former president who isn't even held to the same standard we hold our children. I'd be hard-pressed to come up with any examples of a high-status individual being held to a higher standard than the rest of us. Sure, there's a lot of belly-aching on social media from time to time, but in most (all?) cases, it's for falling short of a standard we're all expected to satisfy, and there's almost never any real consequences.
  - kortilla 3y ago
    > we have multiple sitting Supreme Court justices accepting bribes When you use the word “bribe” to describe something that isn’t, it dilutes your point significantly. This is a thread about ethics, you can use precise words and still talk about how they are unethical.
- withinboredom 3y ago
  Links?

Ironically, the poor are typically more ethical than the wealthy in research. You may be among the ~.5% of humans unconcerned with harming others, regardless of wealth level.

bumby 3y ago

There seems to be quite a bit of evidence of the opposite, or at least that "high-status" people are equally or more ethical. Some of the misperception seems to be explained by society holding high-status individuals to a higher ethical standard and more attention when they deviate from the norm.

skygazer 3y ago
That’s interesting. Of course we can’t 1:1 equate wealth with high-status, but I guess there’s often significant overlap.
cycomanic 3y ago
The poster wrote that research shows that poorer people are typically (or in general) more ethical than richer and your reply is that there is evidence to the contrary without any evidence just a hand waving argument. That doesn't show anything. You can indeed question the research of less ethical behaviour by richer people however you need to bring some evidence. This [1] article for example talks about a study which didn't replicate the behaviour. It's actually a well balanced discussion of the overall evidence. [1] https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/are_rich_people_really_less_ethical https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/are_rich_peopl...
- bumby 3y ago
  What was the hand-waving? A better approach is just to be intellectually curious and ask. Besides, snarkiness is against the HN guidelines. This article [1] has a lot of references that support that claim, and it's a higher quality of rigor than a magazine article. FWIW, I'm not saying the original claim was wrong, just that we should be cautioned against strong claims when there is mixed evidence at best. Likewise, I would caution against extrapolating too much from studies that use cars as a proxy for wealth. Car model != socio-economic status for a variety of reasons. I'd argue that original (and replicated) study from your link is pretty flawed to begin with. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-42204-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-42204-z
  - cycomanic 3y ago
    Sorry I didn't mean to come across as snarky. By handwavy I meant that one can easily come up with "logical" arguments around behaviour that dont reflect reality, so it needs to be backed up by evidence. Thanks for posting the article I was not aware of this research (while I was aware of the research showing the opposite). 2 things to note: 1. How is it possible that the two don't cite each other?! I have to call out the scientific report paper in particular. Piff's work is more than 10 years old and well known. Instead the authors only cite work that supports their premise. I would have thrown it out as a reviewer just based on this. That said the article I linked should have mentioned some of the work cited in the scientific reports article as well. 2. It seems studies are done quite differently, the article you linked seems to largely rely on surveys (sidenote I really dislike the use of mechanical turk for these things, way too unreliable) of assessment others or their own ethical behaviour. Piff's work was more experimental (thus lower numbers and less reliable in that sense)
    - bumby 3y ago
      No apologies needed, but I appreciate the thoughtful response.I agree that surveys are not the best tool. Unfortunately, for a lot of work that covers social components, they are a common method. While wealth is easily quantifiable, people's feelings towards topics like ethics are often best done by asking them. I think the Piff study is just really flawed because they were trying to use a quantifiable proxy. "we used observers’ codes of vehicle status (make, age, and appearance) to index drivers’ social class." IMO they chose a really bad proxy, and they never validated it. It's completely based on an assumption, and one that we can all probably point to personal examples that violate it. To me, that's "hand-wavy" science. To your point, I could probably come up with a handful of different explanations that correlate car make/model to seemingly aggressive driving behavior. Some of them probably correlate with wealth and others not so much. I do think there's a danger of confirmation bias. Just like the nature study demonstrates that there is a normative belief that wealthy people act less ethically, it's really easy for our status-obscessed ape minds to latch onto studies that support it. Even when they aren't the greatest.
      - 3y ago
atmavatar 3y ago
I would argue that holding someone to a standard, ethical or otherwise, requires some sort of accountability. And yet, in the US, we have congressmen/women who regularly engage in insider trading and accept bribes in the form of lobbying and cushy jobs after they leave office, we have multiple sitting Supreme Court justices accepting bribes, and we have a former president who isn't even held to the same standard we hold our children. I'd be hard-pressed to come up with any examples of a high-status individual being held to a higher standard than the rest of us. Sure, there's a lot of belly-aching on social media from time to time, but in most (all?) cases, it's for falling short of a standard we're all expected to satisfy, and there's almost never any real consequences.
- kortilla 3y ago
  > we have multiple sitting Supreme Court justices accepting bribes When you use the word “bribe” to describe something that isn’t, it dilutes your point significantly. This is a thread about ethics, you can use precise words and still talk about how they are unethical.
withinboredom 3y ago
Links?