Does Money Make You Mean?

This post's title is taken from a Ted Talk by social psychologist Paul Piff. Before I make some comments, watch the video (16:35).

Does money you make mean? Yes, it does.

Social psychologist Paul Piff describes how wealth changes behavior and how almost anyone's behavior can change when they're made to feel rich...

His studies include running rigged games of Monopoly, tracking how those who drive expensive cars behave behind the wheel, and even determining that rich people are more likely to take candy from children than the less well-off.

He writes, "I have been finding that increased wealth and status in society lead to increased self-focus and, in turn, decreased compassion, altruism, and ethical behavior."

I'm sure you noticed the obligatory hope which starts at the 13:15 mark when Piff asks "what do we do?" about his depressing research results. Piff says that laboratory experiments show that small nudges in the right direction (toward compassion, generosity and empathy) can reverse the unconscious effects he has documented.

Is the solution really that simple?

Of course not. First, I hope we can agree that rich people becoming "meaner" is the outcome of an unconscious process in the brain. When Piff subtly reminds people who feel entitled that the world is full of suffering and poor people, another more powerful unconscious process kicks in—humans generally need to maintain a positive self-image. I mentioned this bias in the original Flatland essay (look at Dan Ariely's work).

To the extent that feeling entitled is incompatible with a positive self-image—this will vary from person to person—rich people will make temporary adjustments in their behavior. That is not much to pin our hopes on. Piff asserts that his small correctives suggest that the behaviors in question "are not innate or categorical, but are so malleable that slight changes in people's values ..." can spur rich people to do the right thing.

Bullshit. Look at the world and what happens there. The mind is not a blank slate. Piff contradicts himself. Well, it was a Ted Talk, right?

Piff is sensitive to the fact that his positive results were created in the laboratory, implying that those results are artificial, mere artifacts of the experiments themselves. At that point, he points to 1% equity movements outside the lab and, before that, quotes the formerly ruthless but now charitable Bill Gates on the problem of inequality. Oh, my! (Watch the unintentionally hilarious bonus video.)

It is nice that some number of very wealthy people (like Gates) have developed a sense of nobless oblige even as we note that they did so long after they were so rich that it didn't affect their self-interest. It is nice, but it is also inconsequential for larger outcomes. Charity will not save the world.

Many people have noted that the United States is a uniquely fucked up place, and therefore can ascribe heightened self-interest and entitlement in America (taken as a whole) to cultural differences (not human nature). However, for a long time now, the United States has been the richest, most powerful nation on Earth. Writ large, the same behaviors Piff has observed in individuals can be ascribed to the United States as a whole (i.e., to the mean, self-entitled elites who run it).

I believe Piff's research explains the astonishing meanness and stupidity of the United States in a very satisfactory way.