It seems obvious that people who are wealthy likely have larger social networks, a greater ability to read others, and perhaps even a more developed sense of charity. According to a series of experiments conducted at the University of California, San Francisco, however, the wealthy are actually far less likely to exhibit these traits, than people of lower socioeconomic status. Lead researcher Michael Kraus speculated that the poor might be more emotionally and socially attuned to others because they need to be to get by, and further because they relate better to others in similar predicaments to their own, which triggers a more empathetic response.
Higher Education, Lower Empathy
In the first of a series of three experiments, 200 volunteers were divided into groups depending on the highest level of education they had attained. The subjects in the different groups were then asked to look at a series of photographs of strangers' faces and asked to identify the emotions portrayed. Subjects who had only a high school diploma scored, on average, seven percent higher on this task than subjects with college degrees.
Face to Face Interaction
In the second experiment,106 subjects participated in mock job interviews, and then took surveys identifying and rating the emotions of their interview partners, as well as their own emotions during the encounter. Again, wealthier subjects (and those who perceived themselves as wealthy) scored worse than poorer ones, being less in tune with their own emotions as well as those of others.
Correlation vs. Causation
The third experiment was designed to tease apart correlation and causation; in other words, to determine if socioeconomic status affects empathy, or the other way around. The experiment itself consisted of a similar task of identifying emotions from photographs (this time only of people's eyes).
However, before this task, subjects were "manipulated" into placing themselves either lower or higher on the socioeconomic scale than they actually were by being asked to compare themselves to someone either extremely wealthy (e.g. Bill Gates) or to someone completely destitute. By manipulating subjects' self-perception in this way, researchers were confident that they had demonstrated class leading to empathy, rather than the opposite scenario.
Related Findings on Rich and Poor
Researchers found that this "empathy gap" existed across ethnic and gender lines, and speculated that those of lower socioeconomic status may display more empathy due to their more precarious life situations and their greater need to negotiate with others in order to get by. In related studies, the poor were also found to be more generous with their money than the rich, and displayed far more politeness toward strangers than their wealthy counterparts.
Source:
Pappas, Stephanie. "To Read Others' Emotions, It Helps to Be Poor." LiveScience. 16 Nov. 2010. Web. 17 Nov. 2010.
Jenny Ashford - Jenny Ashford is a writer and graphic artist from central Florida. Her main area of interest in her Suite 101 articles is science, with a ...
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