IGX

To see whether dishonesty varies with social class, psychologist Paul Piff of the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues devised a series of tests, working with groups of 100 to 200 Berkeley undergraduates or adults recruited online. Subjects completed a standard gauge of their social status, placing an X on one of 10 rungs of a ladder representing their income, education, and how much respect their jobs might command compared with other Americans.

The team's findings suggest that privilege promotes dishonesty. For example, upper-class subjects were more likely to cheat. After five apparently random rolls of a computerized die for a chance to win an online gift certificate, three times as many upper-class players reported totals higher than 12—even though, unbeknownst to them, the game was rigged so that 12 was the highest possible score.

When participants were manipulated into thinking of themselves as belonging to a higher class than they did, the poorer ones, too, began to behave unethically. In one test, subjects were asked to compare themselves with people at the top or the bottom of the social scale (Donald Trump or a homeless person, for example.) They were then permitted to take candies from a jar ostensibly meant for a group of children in a nearby lab. Subjects whose role-playing raised their status in their own eyes took twice as many candies as those who compared themselves to "The Donald," the team reports online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In another test, participants were asked to list several benefits of greed; they were given the example that greed can help further one's professional goals, then asked to come up with three additional benefits. Again, lower-class subjects whose attitudes toward greed had been nudged in this way became just as likely as their wealthier counterparts to sympathize with dishonest behavior (taking home office supplies, laying off employees while increasing their own bonuses, overcharging customers to drive up profits).

n an interesting twist, about one-third of Prius drivers broke crosswalk laws, putting the hybrid among the highest "unethical driving" car brands. "This is a good demonstration of the 'moral licensing' phenomenon, in which hybrid-car drivers who believe they're saving the Earth may feel entitled to behave unethically in other ways," Piff says. (The Prius results were observed but not analyzed for statistical significance in the study.)

Shafpocalypse Now wrote:There's nothing noble about the poor. Those fuckers are boozing it up, beating their kids, and raping each other's daughters and doing assholish stuff as much as the rich bastards.

DARTH wrote: I had a chip on my shoulder like Blaid for a long time when I was younger.

To see whether dishonesty varies with social class, psychologist Paul Piff of the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues devised a series of tests, working with groups of 100 to 200 Berkeley undergraduates or adults recruited online.

johno wrote:

To see whether dishonesty varies with social class, psychologist Paul Piff of the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues devised a series of tests, working with groups of 100 to 200 Berkeley undergraduates or adults recruited online.

The test might say more about Berkeley undergrads than anything about the general population.

Blaidd Drwg wrote:

DARTH wrote: I had a chip on my shoulder like Blaid for a long time when I was younger.

come knock it off, along with this battery. punk.

DARTH wrote:

Blaidd Drwg wrote:

DARTH wrote: I had a chip on my shoulder like Blaid for a long time when I was younger.

come knock it off, along with this battery. punk.

I dare you! Great commercials, as Bob Conrad actually would get pissed off and knock the shit out of people from time to time.

The Honored Ball-Sack wrote:Behind every great fortune is a great crime.

Turdacious wrote:Berkeley is in the Bay Area-- douchebaggery at all class levels abounds.

WildGorillaMan wrote:ISometimes some people suck less than others.

Blaidd Drwg wrote:True... =D> =D> =D>

provoking moral corruption in that crowd is like pushing an old man down a flight of stairs