In california you're supposed to stop for a pedestrian in a crosswalk.
And in a recent study, some ninety percent of drivers did--
--except for those driving luxury cars
like this BMW they were almost as likely to run the intersection
as wait for the person to cross the street drivers those BMW's those portis
those mercedez or anywhere from three to four times more likely
to break the law then drivers have less expensive
low status cars in a country more and more polarized by
any quality you cal berkeley's Paul PF
latest series have startling studies showing an apparent link between wealth
and well unseemly behavior owned by the way this can be there is actually for
and children for another study by iraq was a key pieces if you want to
thank you that's the script in experiment 2 recited to
every subject and the results wealthier participants took two times as much
candy from children
as did poor participants another experiment tested
honesty reporting die scores when cash was on the line
people all the way at the top who made
150 two hundred thousand dollars a year we're actually cheating
four times as much as someone all the way at the bottom
made under fifteen thousand dollars a year just
to win credits for a fifty dollar cash price
so experimental evidence that rich people are more likely to break the law
while driving
help themselves they can demand for children
sheet in a game of chance also
tell lie during negotiations and
endorse unethical behavior including stealing at work
the academic paper that resulted made headlines
everywhere the Wall Street Journal article leading with the question
ready the pitchforks it is very clear
that this study of social class touched and nerve
psychology professor doctor Keltner is Paul pips boss
and co author we publish these studies in
relatively obscure scientific journals and literally
the next day we're getting hundreds of emails from around the world been a lot
quite hostile I've gotten I a lot of vitriol and hate mail from people
calling me out for
junk science and having a liberal agenda he but wait
didn't those who complained have a point that the research was done at a famously
some might say infamously liberal university
hey there in Berkeley what other results do you expect them to get
I'll regularly here the berkeley
idiot scientist who's finding what they expect to find
let me tell you we did not expect to find this our findings
apply to both liberals and conservatives it doesn't matter who you are
if you're wealthy you're more likely to show these patterns results
results consistent across 30 studies he's run on thousands of people
all over the United States so
what is it about wealth that might make people behave differently
what are we doing here were playing a game of Monopoly thats raid
this game is typical of another kind of experiment PIF likes to write
instead of studying actual rich people
if get subjects to feel rich in the lab
the designated monopoly money bags
starts with a few legs up two thousand dollars versus the poor man's 1000
an upscale playing peace the roles
verses an old shoe the right to toss to dice
is that have just one to
get Snake Eyes about weaning I has signed the roll
rich person get an extra turn as a but I roll again cuz I've got
yet because your old office 60
123 456 thats Tennessee Avenue and of course of by that
meanwhile poor Paul to I only get to roll one die
and is it says here when I Pasco I clicked the lower salary
i click two hundred dollars if you want guy great
thanks so much I can't roll doubles
it don't get opportunities to move very far along or
if has run this experiment with hundreds of people on the Berkeley campus
the rich players are determined randomly by corn toss
the game rigged so they cannot lose
and yet says bf despite their presumably liberal bent
going in when we asked them afterwards
how much do you feel like you deserve to win the game the rich people
felt in tied they felt like they deserved to win the game
and that's a really incredible insight into what the mind does
to make sense if advantage or disadvantage so even though a subject
like myself
is just play acting you consistently find
that I begin to attribute success
to myself even though it's a coin flip that got me on this site at the borders
because that
you like a real rich person
start to attribute success to your own individual skills and talents
and you become less attuned to all the other things that contributed
to you being in the position that you're in how's the American Dream NC
if is part of a team headed by dagger Keltner
that studies the psychological effects have both absolute
and relative poverty and wealth you can also ask the people who believe in this
dream
what they're studying is economic any quality
which is our viewers probably know is as high as it's been
in almost a century in this country their new data
coming out on a daily basis from top laboratories showing
no matter how you look at the effective inequality are pernicious
upon things like bullying on school playgrounds the quality of your physical
health how you handle disease
what somewhat surprising says Keltner is that
even there have his suffered one of the things that welfare money does is it
comes with a set of values in a
and if you wanna deeper ideology and one of them is
generosity is for suckers right and its greed is good
I but it turns out there are a lot of new data that show
if you if your generous and charitable an altruistic
you live longer you feel more fulfilled you feel more
expressive who you are as a person you probably will feel
more control and freedom in your life of course there are plenty of wildly
generous rich folks
just look at the growing list the billionaire's who've pledged to give the
bulk of their fortunes to charity
and 6i gotta doubles again but statistically speaking
6 there's a significant tendency to look out for number one
if you're at the top what do I oh you gotta get out of jail free card our
excellent that's very nice
all I could probably given the fact that on the rich person
get bailed out you could and as PIF observed when he ran this experiment
with hundreds a
doggedly friendly berkeley types
want those in the role of top dogs began to bark like what and so I get the two
hundred dollars
you get two hundred books about giving 140 cuz I'm gonna buy Mediterranea
okay done Alice in the way that you just spoke to me
is very directive you know almost like a demand
but we found consistently with people who were the rich players
that they actually started to become
in their behavior at this as if they were like rich people in real life
they were more likely to eat from ball pretzels that we positioned of
inside they with their mouths full so they were a little router
in their behavior to the other person while I was thinking god no pretzels
were present
if continued those arbitrarily assigned the role overload Aug
became more nearly man's best friend
if I take someone who's rich and make them feel psychologically
a little less well-off they become way more generous
way more charitable way more likely to offer help to another person
so when people are playing this monopoly game and their
in the poor person role that you're playing
they if they were rich in real life
become more understanding more compassionate
not just in this game monopoly but in a whole bunch of other experiments that
we've run
we make rich people feel poorer or poor people feel rich
you find the same kinds of differences differences that could conceivably help
people understand their subconscious bias is
and perhaps even moderate the costly effects
have economic inequality but until that happens
we suggest you look both ways before crossing