Other People’s Suffering
By THOMAS B. EDSALL
NYT
The publication last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of “Higher Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior” provided fresh fodder for the liberal critique of the Republican Party and the corporate ethic.
The paper, by Paul K. Piff of the University of California, Berkeley, and four colleagues, reports that members of the upper class are more likely than others to behave unethically, to lie during negotiations, to drive illegally and to cheat when competing for a prize.
“Greed is a robust determinant of unethical behavior,” the authors conclude. “Relative to lower-class individuals, individuals from upper-class backgrounds behaved more unethically in both naturalistic and laboratory settings.”
The Piff paper is part of an extensive academic critique of the right. In a paper published last year, “Class and Compassion: Socioeconomic Factors Predict Responses to Suffering,” Jennifer E. Stellar, also of Berkeley, writing with three colleagues, points out that:
NYT
The publication last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of “Higher Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior” provided fresh fodder for the liberal critique of the Republican Party and the corporate ethic.
The paper, by Paul K. Piff of the University of California, Berkeley, and four colleagues, reports that members of the upper class are more likely than others to behave unethically, to lie during negotiations, to drive illegally and to cheat when competing for a prize.
“Greed is a robust determinant of unethical behavior,” the authors conclude. “Relative to lower-class individuals, individuals from upper-class backgrounds behaved more unethically in both naturalistic and laboratory settings.”
The Piff paper is part of an extensive academic critique of the right. In a paper published last year, “Class and Compassion: Socioeconomic Factors Predict Responses to Suffering,” Jennifer E. Stellar, also of Berkeley, writing with three colleagues, points out that:
Our findings suggest that when a person is suffering, upper-class individuals perceive these signals less well on average, consistent with other findings documenting reduced empathic accuracy in upper-class individuals (Kraus et al., 2010). Taken together, these findings suggest that upper-class individuals may underestimate the distress and suffering in their social environments.(More here.)
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1 Comments:
I tend to pity greedy people as they are perennially unhappy and can never have enough. At the same time it is hard to ignore Edsall's unspoken aim that people are wealthy because of greed. He would do well instead to focus on the difference between productive people and those who are less productive. To blame wealth on greed is akin to blaming airplane crashes on gravity.
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