Wealth Makes You a Jerk (and this is News?)

Stealing Candy from Babies (Images from Flick, by Qfamily and jantik)

As people’s wealth increases, so does their tendency to engage in unethical behaviors, according to researchers from UC Berkeley and the University of Toronto, whose work was published in last week’s PNAS.  (A summary of the report can be read at Wired).

The researchers conducted seven different experiments. In the first, they found that wealthier individuals were more likely to cut off other drivers and pedestrians at busy intersections in the San Francisco Bay Area, even when controlled for time of day, gender, age, and traffic conditions.

In one experiment, participants were asked what they would do if given change for $20 if they had paid with a $10 bill. Higher SES individuals were significantly more likely to keep the change.

In another experiment, participants played the role of job contract negotiators. They were told that applicants wanted job stability and would accept lower pay in exchange for longer contracts. They were also offered bonuses for hiring people at lower salaries. Under these circumstances, wealthier participants were much less likely to be honest with applicants about job stability.

In another study, researchers let participants play a computer game of chance and then report their results. They were told that there were cash prizes for high scores. Higher SES individuals were significantly more likely to cheat or misrepresent their scores.

One of the authors was interviewed by FSRN on Monday, 3/5/12. When asked how he knew that the rich weren’t already jerks or that being a jerk is what made them rich in the first place, he said that they also created simulations in which they made people of modest incomes feel rich and even they were more likely to take candy from a bowl designated for children than were people who were not wealthy nor made to feel wealthy.

Yes, wealth apparently makes people steal candy from babies.

The Rich Prefer Cash, Not Good Schools

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

I recently reported on a fundraising drive to raise $1 million in one week to save teaching and support staff jobs in Beverly Hills Unified. The results are in: While they did raise enough to save eleven jobs, according to the L.A. Times, they barely made half of their $1 million goal.

The Times noted that many “middle class hardworking” families made donations, as did one child who found a dollar on the playground, making it seem as though the district is a typical American school district. However, there are more millionaires in Beverly Hills than in almost any other region of the country. Coming up with a million bucks in a week should have been easy. What this failure tells us is that the rich prefer to hold onto their own wealth, even if they have far more than they’ll ever be able to spend on themselves, than to donate a tiny fraction for their benefit of their community or their own children.

Beverly Hills teachers, however, are just as dedicated to their privileged students as are other teachers. To prove the point, their union said it would accept two unpaid furlough days to help fill the remaining budget gap (and help wealthy parents continue to enjoy high quality schools for their kids without making any sacrifices). However, they have not yet checked with their members on this.

Will teachers accept this de facto pay cut? Unlike many other basic aid districts, the median salaries in BHUSD ($55,000 to $65,000) are not that high so it’s possible they might say no. After all, they would be accepting a pay cut so that privileged families can continued to enjoy class sizes of 20:1, while the rest of the state is over 30:1, and so that millionaire parents can avoid paying higher taxes or even making a small donation to their district.