14 DAY TRIAL // According to the details of a new study published in the February 27 issue of the esteemed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), it would appear that rich and well-off people are more likely to behave unethically than poorer individuals.
The question as to which social class is more likely to engage in morally questioning behaviors has been with researchers for a long time. The new study addresses some of its key aspects, psychologists at the University of California in Berkeley (UCB) and the University of Toronto, in Canada, say.
Scientists even say that a proportional trend may exist between the severity and frequency of engaging in such behaviors and the class people belong to. Their study was not exclusively focused on those who were extremely rich, but rather on people of wealth in general.
In the study, investigators determined that richer individuals were more likely to engage in behaviors such as lying in a negotiation, driving when drunk, and displaying the inclination to take goods from other people without proper compensation.
In addition, they were more likely to break the law while driving, more likely to cheat during a discussion in order to increase their odds of success, and also more likely to endorse unethical behavior by other people at the workplace.
“Our studies suggest that more positive attitudes toward greed and the pursuit of self-interest among upper-class individuals, in part, drive their tendencies toward increased unethical behavior,” UCB lead researcher Paul Piff explains.
He adds that the aforementioned tendencies, which were more prevalent in the well-off group, were calculated by comparison with individuals from lower classes. The new research was funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship.
“The relative privilege and security enjoyed by upper-class individuals give rise to independence from others and a prioritization of the self and one's own welfare over the welfare of others – what we call 'greed',” Piff goes on to say.
“This is likely to cause someone to be more inclined to break the rules in his or her favor, or to perceive themselves as, in a sense, being 'above the law',” the investigator adds. This frame of mind is more likely to make people follow their own interests, regardless of whether this means being ethical or not.
“Across all seven studies, the general pattern we find is that as a person's social class increases, his or her tendency to behave unethically also increases,” Piff concludes.