Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Study: How Wealth Reduces Compassion

As riches grow, empathy for others seems to decline
Read it Scientific American
How Wealth Reduces Compassion
by Daisy Grewal

Favorite paragraph: In order to figure out whether selfishness leads to wealth (rather than vice versa), Piff and his colleagues ran a study where they manipulated people’s class feelings. The researchers asked participants to spend a few minutes comparing themselves either to people better off or worse off than themselves financially. Afterwards, participants were shown a jar of candy and told that they could take home as much as they wanted. They were also told that the leftover candy would be given to children in a nearby laboratory. Those participants who had spent time thinking about how much better off they were compared to others ended up taking significantly more candy for themselves--leaving less behind for the children.

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