The studies Piff and his colleagues completed weren't meant to measure the ties between socioeconomic status and violent crime, but rather simple bad behavior, he said.
Some of the experiments offered visual evidence, for instance determining whether people with more expensive cars observed traffic laws in the San Francisco Bay Area, yielding to cars and pedestrians at an intersection, or whether individuals took candy identified as being set aside for kids. Others polled people on what decision they might make in a given situation.
In the traffic tests, about one-third of drivers in higher-status cars cut off other drivers at an intersection watched by the researchers, about double those in less costly cars. Additionally, almost half of the more expensive cars didn't yield when a pedestrian entered the crosswalk while all of the lowest-status cars let the pedestrian cross. These experiments involved 426 vehicles.
Another test asked 108 adults found through Amazon.com Inc.'s work-recruiting website Mechanical Turk to assume the role of an employer negotiating a salary with someone seeking long-term employment. They were told several things about the job, including that it would shortly be eliminated. Upper-class individuals were more likely not to mention to the job-seeker the impermanence of the position, the research found.
Meredith McGinley, an assistant professor at Chatham University in Pittsburgh who wasn't involved in the study, was critical of how some of the experiments were designed.
The design of the car experiments complicates the picture because having a flashy car doesn't necessarily mean the driver is wealthy, said McGinley, who studies positive social behavior. In the experiment involving candy, the participants were told they could have it even though the children were waiting for it. They may have felt they were doing nothing wrong, she said.
Candy Test
In the candy test, 129 undergraduates were manipulated to view themselves as wealthy or poor. They were then presented with a jar of individually wrapped candy, which researchers said would go to children in a nearby lab, though they could take some if they wanted. The undergraduates believing themselves to be upper income took more than those believing themselves to be low income, the study found.
The research indicates that valuing greed leads to unethical behavior, not necessarily that income class causes bad behavior, McGinley said, adding, "greediness seems like a much more substantial predictor than income."
The study builds on previous research that has shown wealthy people are worse at recognizing how others feel and are more likely to be disengaged during social interactions than others, the authors wrote in the paper.