A Large Scale Test of the Effect of Social Class on Prosocial Behavior
Does being from a higher social class lead a person to engage in more or less prosocial behavior? Psychological research has recently provided support for a negative effect of social class on prosocial behavior. However, research outside the field of psychology has mainly found evidence for positive or u-shaped relations. In the present research, we therefore thoroughly examined the effect of social class on prosocial behavior. Moreover, we analyzed whether this effect was moderated by the kind of observed prosocial behavior, the observed country, and the measure of social class. Across eight studies with large and representative international samples, we predominantly found positive effects of social class on prosociality: Higher class individuals were more likely to make a charitable donation and contribute a higher percentage of their family income to charity (32,090 ≥ N ≥ 3,957; Studies 1–3), were more likely to volunteer (37,136 ≥N ≥ 3,964; Studies 4–6), were more helpful (N = 3,902; Study 7), and were more trusting and trustworthy in an economic game when interacting with a stranger (N = 1,421; Study 8) than lower social class individuals. Although the effects of social class varied somewhat across the kinds of prosocial behavior, countries, and measures of social class, under no condition did we find the negative effect that would have been expected on the basis of previous results reported in the psychological literature. Possible explanations for this divergence and implications are discussed.
Giving behavior of millionaires
SignificanceWealthy individuals play an important role in charitable giving. We present evidence that millionaires give more than any other group studied in the literature. This holds particularly in a clear giving situation. In our study, millionaires either participated in a dictator game or an ultimatum game and they either interacted with another millionaire or with a low-income individual. In the dictator game, the millionaire decides how to split an amount between herself and a recipient who has no power. In the ultimatum game, the receiver needs to approve the proposer’s proposal; otherwise, both players are paid zero. Millionaires give more to a low-income participant in the dictator game than in the more strategic ultimatum game.
Abstract
This paper studies conditions influencing the generosity of wealthy people. We conduct incentivized experiments with individuals who have at least €1 million in their bank account. The results show that millionaires are more generous toward low-income individuals in a giving situation when the other participant has no power, than in a strategic setting, where the other participant can punish unfair behavior. Moreover, the level of giving by millionaires is higher than in any other previous study. Our findings have important implications for charities and financial institutions that deal with wealthy individuals.
There in US or other first world country, no in Brazil... lol
ReplyDeleteDo not just analyze superficially. It seems obvious that one who has more money, will donate more money because he has more money to be donated. But this is not enough. For example, 10% of the richest make constant donations, compared to 5% of the middle class, hypothetical example. But tons of rich people do not make any donations. And do not just make donations, it is also important to know that with that motivation, that possible results.
Let's be honest here. Precious '' cognitive elite '' of hbd'ers are directly responsible for many of the problems that continue to affect most nations, whether they are the elites who decide the life of the rest of the population.
The hbd'ers has an arduous task to continue treating your kind cognitive elites as poor rich kids, misunderstood, just trying to do good, while these same people continue to marginalize them within academia.
At least in most of the underdeveloped countries, the cognitive elites are parasites that use democracy as a way of minimizing the semi-slavery regimes who happily enforces much of the population.
I do not romanticize the majority of poor people, in fact, I believe that poor people have more in common with the upper class than the middle class, because they are more psychopathic than those that end in the middle of the social stratum. The middle class is only apathetic in most cases.
The more power you have more influence you will have on the lives of millions of people.
steve shoe reported the same as the "no doubt impartial professors" even though he's usually an hereditist fucktard. but he does have the bona fides of a decamillionaire.
ReplyDeletehttp://infoproc.blogspot.com/2012/07/nice-guys-finish-last.html
it's also been mis-reported that conservatards give more. they don't. and subtracting what they give to their church they give 1/10th the amount of those who don't self-identify with the american conservative perversion/deviance. never mind that all formal religion, like formal education, is perverted.
and the picture reminds of me.
ReplyDeletemy black standard poodle is the most human dog i've had. he combined noble and mean.
he urinated on my irish setter. right on top of her. among other things.
and this is an ideological question again.
ReplyDeleteconservatards in general cannot distinguish between status and virtue. whatever traits make high status more likely are virtues ipso facto...for them.
and even more they describe any who point out that the correspondence isn't even approximate of "envy" and "resentment".
the american conservatard has no conscience.
rarely, but sometimes, he is otherwise smart, but morally he's subhuman...and unique to america.
''conservatards in general cannot distinguish between status and virtue. whatever traits make high status more likely are virtues ipso facto...for them.''
ReplyDeleteSpectacularly right!!!
Mugabe,
ReplyDelete"http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2012/07/nice-guys-finish-last.html"
Piff and his research team would stake out the intersection at rush hour, crouching behind a bank of shrubs near the Sea Breeze Market and Deli, and catalogue the cars that came by, giving each vehicle a grade from one to five. (Five would be a new-model Mercedes, say, and one would be an old, battered Honda like the one Piff drives.) Then the researchers would observe the drivers’ behavior. A third of people who drove grade-five cars, Piff found, rolled into the intersection without first coming to a complete stop—a violation, he reminds readers in his PNAS study, of the California Vehicle Code. “Upper-class drivers were the most likely to cut off other vehicles even when controlling for time of day, driver’s perceived sex, and amount of traffic.” When Piff designed a similar experiment to test drivers’ regard for pedestrians, in which a researcher would enter a zebra crossing as a car approached it, the results were more staggering. ... fully half the grade-five cars cruised right into the crosswalk. “It’s like they didn’t even see them,” Piff told me.
Even assuming this result replicates, do you not see any problem in conflating "driver of luxury branded vehicle" and "upper class". As someone who has actually driven and been a pedestrian in both upper middle class and lower class areas, it's impossible for me to take a study like this seriously for what it purports to show.
The typical owner of a luxury make is apparently upper middling in income but barely above average in education.
Looking at the data from the heart monitors, Stellar found a direct, negative correlation in biological terms between class and compassion. “Lower-class individuals showed greater heart-rate deceleration in response to the suffering of others,” Stellar wrote. The heart rates of the upper-class subjects generally did not change.
What exactly do you know about "heart-rate deceleration" as a measure of "compassion", Mugabe? How confident are you these results mean what the article tells you they mean, and are free from any potential confounding factors?
Interestingly, the research has clear class biases.
ReplyDeleteThe kinds of social relationships and behaviors tend to be different depending on class. Research has shown that the poor have larger immediate social networks of nearby extended family, friends, and neighbors. They are more dependent on the daily reciprocity of their social networks.
The poor also have less excess wealth to give, as a percentage of their income, and so it isn't surprising they would give less to charity as a percentage of their income. But I'm willing to bet they are more likely to loan or give money within their social network.
That is what pro-social behavior means when you are poor. It doesn't mean helping or giving money away to strangers. When you are poor, immediate relationships are more important for daily survival. The wealthy never have to worry about daily survival. I bet, for example, that the poor have more close relationships than the wealthy with people who would put their lives on the line for them, a greater sacrifice than all the money in the world.
What is pro-social is context-dependent. In a poor neighborhood with high unemployment, an unemployed father selling drugs or an unemployed mother prostituting herself to make enough money to house and feed his family is involved in pro-social behavior in a particular situation. They might end up in prison, but if the social environment and economic conditions are not pro-social it can't be blamed on those who find themselves in those impossible situations.
None of these kinds of things gets measured in studies such as in this post, because those doing these studies aren't poor and don't understand poor people. They don't look for what they don't know to look for.
As someone mentioned HBDers, I'd point out that even they would acknowledge that pro-social behavior is context-dependent. It is a central part of many of their arguments.
Violent groups like the Scots-Irish and other border people is pro-social behavior that developed over centuries in defense of their own people, because they lived in violent border regions between conflicting powers and find themselves attacked from both sides. The Scots-Irish originated from the border between England and Scotland, two ethnic populations that had been fighting for centuries and neither side trusted the Scots-Irish.
Both liberal progressives and HBDers are more likely to look to environmental causes. The difference between the two groups is that HBDers think that those environmental conditions create permanent genetic changes. Progressives, on the other hand, believe that if you change the environmental conditions the behavior will likewise follow. Most of the research seems to favor the liberal progressive interpretation.
Plus, there is the issue of environmental factors like nutrition, parasite load, and toxin exposure. Toxins, in particular, are proven to alter brain development, cognitive development, and IQ; along with rates of ADHD, autism, aggressive behavior, impulse control problems, etc. All of those can get magnified across generations through epigenetics, the one factor no HBDer I've met takes seriously, despite all the growing evidence. Populations in areas that had long impact by slavery show many continuing social and economic problems, and it should be noted that slavery is well within the range of epigenetic influences.
It's obviously more complex than most appreciate.