Mensen uit de hogere klasse zijn vaak minder oprecht

Leuk bericht, met name voor de mensen op dit forum die zichzelf graag op de borst kloppen omdat ze zogenaamd beter zijn omdat ze de universiteit doen en meer verdienen dan anderen. Gefeliciteerd, maar de kans dat je een rat bent of wordt, is groter. Maar he, gelukkig heb je dan meer geld. Dat is belangrijker dan jezelf in de spiegel kunnen aankijken toch?

Upper class people more likely to cheat: study

People from the wealthy upper classes are more likely than poorer folks to break laws while driving, take candy from children and lie for financial gain, said a US study on Monday. The seven-part study by psychologists at the University of California Berkeley and the University of Toronto analyzed people's behavior through a series of experiments.

For instance, drivers of expensive vehicles such as Mercedes, BMW and Toyota's Prius hybrid were seen breaking the rules more often at four-way intersections than people who drove a Camry or Corolla. They were also more likely to cut off pedestrians trying to cross the street than drivers of cheaper cars.

In another test using a game of dice, given the opportunity to win a $50 prize, people who self-reported high socio-economic status were more likely to lie and say that they had rolled higher numbers than they actually had.

"Even in people for whom $50 is a relatively small amount of money, cheating was three times as high," said lead author Paul Piff of UC Berkeley.

"It really shows the extreme lengths to which wealth and upper rank status in society can shape patterns of self-interest and unethicality," he told AFP.

In other studies, people with higher status were less likely to tell the truth in a hypothetical job negotiation in which they were the employer trying to hire someone for a job they knew was soon to be eliminated. And when given a jar of candy that they were told was for children in a nearby lab -- though they could take some if they wanted -- the richest people took more candy than anyone else.

Even Piff, who has studied the impact of wealth on people's morality and charitable giving in the past -- finding that rich people tend to give less to charity than poor people -- was surprised to see them taking sweets from kids.

"I was astonished," Piff said. "On average, people in the upper rank condition took two times as much (candy), so it was a pretty sizeable effect."

Also, in that particular study, researchers conditioned some of the subjects first to think of themselves as of a higher social rank by asking them to compare themselves to others with less. The exercise showed that people could be trained to think more highly of themselves, and that they would in turn act with more greed and less ethicality, demonstrating that status drives greed.

"We also got them to increase their likelihood of saying 'I'd do all these unethical things,'" such as keeping the change without saying a word if a coffee shop cashier returned them too much money.

The study, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, theorizes that a series of factors "may give rise to a set of culturally shared norms among upper class individuals."

For instance, richer people are more independent from others, have more resources and are therefore less concerned with what others think of their actions than poorer people, the authors suggested.

According to Piff, people with more money tend to look more positively on greed and rely less on family and friend networks for support in times of need, and this elevated status tends to disconnect them from society.

"It is that very different level of privilege in your everyday life that gives rise to this independence from others, this reduced sensitivity to the impact of your behavior on others' welfare, and the prioritization of your self-interest," he said.

Certainly there are exceptions, said the study, pointing to famous upper-class whistleblowers at Worldcom and Enron; and wealthy philanthropists such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Previous research linking poverty and violent crime also disproves the notion that all poor people are more ethical than the rich, it added. However, self-interest is "a more fundamental motive among society's elite, and the increased want associated with greater wealth and status can promote wrongdoing," it said.

Although the study focused on US subjects, with each of the seven parts measuring between 100 and 200 participants, Piff said the findings are likely to be relevant to societies outside America, too.

"These patterns are going to be particularly salient in societies where wealth is as unequally distributed as it is here," he said.

http://www.zeitnews.org/s(...)-to-cheat-study.html

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Op donderdag 8 maart 2012 18:11 schreef Life2.0 het volgende:
nice guys finish last..

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Op donderdag 8 maart 2012 18:43 schreef robin007bond het volgende:

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Precies.

Daarnaast, wat is het probleem? Ik ben liever vals en gelukkig, dan een braaf burgertje in een Fiat Panda met een visje er op.

Kun je gelukkig zijn dan als je jezelf niet recht in de spiegel kunt aankijken?

Op de werkvloer zie je dit soort dingen natuurlijk ook gebeuren. De mensen die recht voor zn raap zijn, worden vaak minder gewaardeerd door de baas dan de persoon die de baas naar de mond praat.

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Op vrijdag 9 maart 2012 18:24 schreef YazooW het volgende:

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Ik werk om geld te verdienen, niet om vrienden te maken.

Personality change key to improving wellbeing

People's personalities can change considerably over time, say scientists, suggesting that leopards really can change their spots.

Psychologists from The University of Manchester and London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) also showed that small positive personality changes may lead to greater increases in happiness than earning more money, marrying, or gaining employment.

The study, published in the journal Social Indicators Research, should be of interest to British Prime Minister David Cameron, who has suggested that a measure of the nation's 'happiness' was a better guide to how the country was performing than Gross Domestic Product (GDP) alone.

Lead author Dr Chris Boyce, from the University of Manchester's School of Psychological Sciences, said: "We found that our personalities can and do change over time – something that was considered improbable until now – and that these personality changes are strongly related to changes in our wellbeing.

"Compared with external factors, such as a pay rise, getting married or finding employment, personality change is just as likely and contributes much more to improvements in our personal wellbeing."

Previous studies have shown that personality accounts for up to 35% of individual differences in life satisfaction, compared to just 4% for income, 4% for employment status and between 1% and 4% for marital status. However, because it was believed our personalities were fixed, policies to improve wellbeing have focused on these lower-impacting external factors.

Dr Boyce said: "Our research suggests that governments could measure 'national personality'; for example, whether the population is becoming more extroverted, conscientious, open to experience, and agreeable, and how this links to national events.

"Fostering the conditions where personality growth occurs – such as through positive schooling, communities, and parenting - may be a more effective way of improving national wellbeing than GDP growth."

Dr Boyce, with Manchester colleague Dr Alex Wood and the LSE's Dr Nick Powdthavee, used a large data set of 7,500 individuals from Australia who had answered questions on their life satisfaction and personality at two time points four years apart.

Personality was measured using a well-validated personality questionnaire assessing five broad dimensions which cover the breadth of a person's personality: openness-to-experiences, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. The researchers then looked at the extent to which personality changed and how these changes related to life satisfaction in comparison to external factors, such as changes to income, changes to employment and changes to marital status. They found that personality changes at least as much as these external factors and predicted about twice as much of changes to life satisfaction over the study period.

Dr Boyce added: "The focus of many wellbeing studies in economics is on how changes to our circumstances, such as a higher income, getting married or a different job might influence our wellbeing. The influence of our personality is often ignored in these types of studies in the belief that our personality can't or doesn't change. We show that personality can and does change and, not only is it more likely to change than an income increase, it contributes much more to changes in our wellbeing.

"Our research suggests that by focusing on who we are and how we relate to the world around us has the potential to unlock vast improvements in our wellbeing. The findings have implications for wellbeing policy – something the Prime Minister has talked about in the past – and how best to help individuals and nations improve their outlook on life."

http://www.zeitnews.org/social-and-behavioral-science-research/

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Op vrijdag 9 maart 2012 18:30 schreef BansheeBoy het volgende:

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Dan is dat maar zo. Maar ik wil mezelf wel in de spiegel kunnen blijven kijken.

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