I've always been suspicious of these types of broad psychology studies. They always seem to make claims that go beyond what their data says. Laboratory experi

I've always been suspicious of these types of broad psychology studies. They always seem to make claims that go beyond what their data says. Laboratory experiments where the people know it's an experiment don't seem like they should be able to say things like "rich people act meaner." There's just so many variables that could be different--for example rich people might be more competitive and a lab environment makes them feel more like they're playing a game than dealing with real wealth and well being. For the car experiment, he's not really looking at rich people, he's looking at people who choose to buy an expensive looking car and live in the Bay Area. Notably, there are a number of people who live in the bay area, are quite wealthy, and drive a car that doesn't show off their wealth. He also says "hundreds" in the video when his paper[1] says 152, notably with n=5 for those with a car rated 1. The methodology also states that they didn't actually record the car type, they just guessed based the cost at the time based on what they saw. They claim the observer was blind to the study's hypothesis, but the task was to record on a scale of 1-5 how expensive he or she thought the car was and whether they stopped for a pedestrian. It doesn't take half a brain to figure out what the hypothesis they were testing was. [1] http://www.pnas.org/content/109/11/4086.full.pdf+html http://www.pnas.org/content/109/11/4086.full.pdf+html