Does Wealth Make One Stingy and Cruel?

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There are impossible expectations from the state in every segment of society, both to lower the retirement age, to increase pensions and to increase support for the poor. In the hyperinflation process we are going through, low-income people, who make up more than half of the population, are living in great distress despite the limited support provided by the state and municipalities. What can be done for desperate people in need?

 

If we leave this limited support and aid aside, it is not possible to talk about a tendency to help each other in society. Could this be due to human nature, other than the characteristics of Turkish society?

 

Life success

Skill, talent and luck play an important role in a person’s success in life. A researcher named Paul Piff from the University of Berkeley had 100 pairs of participants play the game of monopoly, which is played with dice and is largely based on luck. However, the game was initially played in a way that the winner would be calculated twice as many times as the dice the subjects rolled. In the monopoly game, the player who rolls the higher dice has the opportunity to access money and the assets and opportunities on the game board much easier and faster. When played as designed by the researchers, one of the players is ahead right from the start and gets all the opportunities the game offers. What is interesting is the changes in the behavior of the privileged subject. The “rich” players advance louder on the squares on the table after throwing the dice, celebrate their success by clenching their fists and raising their arms in the air, lean back with their hands behind their heads and expand their space, dip their hands into the small cookies placed on the table and consume much more than the “poor” subject, make sarcastic and mocking teasers to their opponents and expose their material wealth.

 

Another very valuable finding of the research emerged in the evaluation made after the game. The privileged players attributed their success to their game strategies, the steps they took and the accurate purchase decisions. None of the subjects mentioned the draw, which was the main reason for their success, which put them in a privileged position and was completely dependent on chance. This result is an example of how the human mind perceives a situation that is to its advantage. P. Piff thinks that the rigged monopoly game he played is a good metaphor representing the hierarchical structure in society. While some people in society have a large amount of wealth and high status, others are greatly disadvantaged in terms of both wealth and resources. According to the researcher, as people climb the ladder of wealth and material wealth, their feelings of empathy and compassion decrease and they develop a strong belief that they “deserve” what they have.

 

The statement “greed is good”, uttered by Gordon Gekko, the unforgettable character played by Michael Douglas in the movie Wall Street, is confirmed in this research and those in a privileged position think that thinking about their own interests is both good and moral.

 

Helpfulness is Genetic

It is necessary to focus on the ways these results are reflected in social life. There are studies that show that helping those in need is coded into the genes of humans during their evolutionary development. Social psychologists call helping behavior “prosocial” behavior. Researcher P. Piff examined whether the rich or the poor tend to help more in order to understand this. He gave various amounts of money to rich and poor people that he invited to the laboratory and investigated to what extent they would share it with someone they did not know and would never meet again, and compared those whose annual income was 15-25 thousand dollars to those whose annual income was 150-250 thousand dollars. As a result, he found that those in the low-income group were 44% more likely to share.

 

In another study, Piff investigated which income group had a higher tendency to cheat in a game played with dice to increase their earnings. As a result of this application, it was revealed that those in the upper-income group cheated 3-4 times more to receive a $50 prize. Another study found that children in the child development laboratory stole twice as much candy from a candy jar that was specifically marked as belonging to them.

 

Another study examined the relationship between the prices of the cars drivers use and the frequency of breaking the rules and engaging in illegal behavior. To do this, they recorded the behavior of giving way to pedestrians at pedestrian crossings where the study was conducted. The researchers clearly saw that as the price of the car increased, the probability of the driver breaking the rules increased. The interesting finding of this study was that while the cars in the lowest price category did not break any rules, half of the cars in the highest price category did.

 

In a different study, they found that the rich lie more in negotiations and find immoral behaviors such as taking bribes and lying to customers more acceptable as a requirement of business life.

 

Solution

These findings do not mean that only wealthy people lie and exhibit immoral behaviors. All people have to struggle with conflicting emotions in their daily lives. The vast majority of people tend to both see themselves as a respectable person by looking in the mirror and to benefit from the opportunities that the situation offers them. Because every person wants to stand out in the social hierarchy and as a result, they may want to put their own interests ahead of the interests of others. However, even in developed countries around the world today, injustice in income distribution is growing. For example, in the US, the top 20% of the income group receives 90% of the national income. This difference indicates a gap that is almost double compared to 20 years ago. According to TÜİK’s 2024 data, the top 20% receives 48% of the income, while the bottom 20% receives 5.9% of the income. This situation not only shows that wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a select group, but also reveals that it is becoming increasingly impossible to ensure social justice within society. Economic inequality has the potential to have negative consequences not only for those in the lowest income group in the social income distribution hierarchy, but also for those in the high income group. For example, increasing injustice in income distribution negatively affects social mobility, economic development, social security, life expectancy, educational performance, and people’s health. In addition, injustice in income distribution causes an increase in obesity, substance abuse, early marriage and childbearing, violence, and criminality. It is inevitable that not only those at low income levels but all segments of society will be affected by these results in different ways and measures. It is inevitable that those in the highest income group and those living in their own glass bowls will also be victims of these developments.

 

Some small interventions in the laboratory have been shown to create a sense of equality and develop empathy. Because in reality, wealthy people also have a basic infrastructure regarding the benefits of helping each other and living as a community as a result of their evolutionary heritage. For example, watching a video about child poverty that lasted only 46 seconds strongly signaled wealthy people not to be indifferent to the world around them, and an hour after watching this video, wealthy people were seen to be as generous as the poor in giving their time to people in need as they were indiscriminate.

 

These results show that the characteristics that researchers initially identified in wealthy people, such as lack of empathy and compassion, tendency to cheat and lie, limited to their own interests and indifference to their surroundings, are not innate and do not only belong to wealthy people. With a suitable approach, it seems possible to develop empathy in people and create feelings of compassion and mercy.

 

Conclusion

In a speech he gave in 2007, Bill Gates said; “The greatest development of humanity is not in great discoveries, but in the path these discoveries will take to reduce inequalities in society.” When a person reaches out to someone less fortunate and in need than themselves, it benefits the person who helps more than the person who receives help. In order to ensure this, incorporating this approach into the education system is a very important value that children will gain. If families give a quarter of the importance they give to developing their children’s consciences as much as they give to the subject of “success,” mutual aid in society will increase. On the other hand, it is possible for civil society organizations to receive greater support from society through powerful campaigns that will trigger the emotions that are innate in people. In this way, it will be possible for us to show the bright face of our culture, which we believe is full of historical sacrifices and heroism, to those in need.

 

(*) This article was modified and taken from the book “Akılsız Duyguların Cezasını Kararlar Ceker” (Why do smart people make wrong decisions) published by Remzi Kitabevi.

 

Sources

Piff, P. K. (April 2013). Does money make you mean? Internet [Adequate access]: http : // www. ted.com / talks/paul_piff_does_money_make_you_mean

Piff, P. K. et al. (2010). Having less, giving more: the influence of social class on prosocial behavior, Journal of personality and social psychology, 99. 5: 771.

Piff, P. K. et al. (2012). Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109. 11: 4086-4091.

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