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Upper class people are more likely to snatch from a children’s supply of candy [IG nobel economics prize 2026] (improbable.com)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by to c/science@lemmy.world
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IG NOBEL ECONOMICS PRIZE 2026 [USA, MEXICO, CANADA] Paul Piff, Daniel Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner, for amassing evidence that upper class people are more likely to snatch from a children’s supply of candy, and engage in other kinds of unethical behavior.

REFERENCE: “Higher Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior,” Paul K. Piff, Daniel M. Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 109, no. 11, 2012, pp. 4086-4091. <doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118373109> WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Paul Piff

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[–] 120 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I think it might be more apt to conclude that increased unethical behaviour leads to higher social class. They got there by figuratively stealing the food out of children's mouths, so why would literally doing that bother them?

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  • [–] 104 points 3 days ago (4 children)

    My first reaction was to think the same, but this kinda assumes class mobility. Which is rare.

    I think it's more likely that upper class kids are more likely to be entitled and grow up to become entitled adults.

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  • [–] 41 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    Or the social norm of the wealthier class is to steal from the poorer/weaker class. They are constantly rewarded by their peers for displaying this behavior. Children are inherently poorer and weaker than they are.

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  • [–] 15 points 3 days ago* (1 child)

    It's both, in a cyclical feedback loop. The wealthy teach their kids to be entitled, greedy, selfish, sociopaths... and extreme wealth and power corrupts the vast majority of humans — being surrounded by employees, fanboys, and other yes men who worship you 24/7 — is likely to create entitled, greedy, selfish, sociopathic behaviors; extreme wealth and power create the mental illness of narcissism, and that mental illness is passed to their children.

    Couple that with an economic system that explicitly rewards narcissistic behavior with wealth and power, and you end up in a civilization crippled by a mental illness epidemic, actively spread by the propaganda of the richest mentally ill.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    I think there's a big third factor in that feedback loop, which is that weath directly affects how people behave. Research has found that priming people to feel powerful makes them less conscientious or generous. And when people are given unfair advantages, they attribute it to themselves.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 days ago* (1 child)

    yep. my sister threw up in a house with a income of about 20-30K a year, she now has about 50 million in net worth.

    her main preoccupation in life how how evil the government is because it wants to tax her and give her month to poor people, who grew up like her and how awful and terrible that is. she has a psychological block now, because in her mind now it's that she was always deserving of this and it's everyone else who is undeserving.

    she also has a victim-complex and talks the way many people here talk, it's just she blames the poor people and minorities, the way lemmy posters blame billionaires. the rhetoric is exactly the same though, she thinks we need to eliminate the poor people/socialism, lemmy things you need to eliminate the billionaires/capitalism.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago

    "she thinks" "lemmy thinks" What do you think? What is the solution?

    Also, lemmy is not a singular hivemind monolith... Maybe try blocking .ml. Doing so was a quality of life improvement for my experience.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    It is the same thing, the callous entitlement to maintain wealth when it does obvious harm to others is the same asocial ability needed to accumulate it.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago* (2 children)

    Opposite mechanisms - are they rich because they are entitled or are they entitled because they are rich.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 days ago

    They are distinct, entitlement is lack of emotional empathy, a mental disorder in an individual which allows the accumulation of wealth far beyond their needs while making them oblivious to any ramifications to the society from which it was drawn.

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  • [–] -2 points 3 days ago*

    both, or neither.

    everyone has different circumstances.

    there are rich people who live modest middle class lives, but lemmy thinks those people don't exist. it's that all moderately rich people are sociopathic monsters or something...

    and plenty of poor folks are sociopaths. almost as if money isn't exactly a determining factor in any of this...

    not to mention an influencing factor isn't necessarily determining factor... but hey that's too subtle for the fediverse genius who think we're all noble savages and it's society that corrupts us..

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  • [–] 6 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    It's also not necessarily conscious evil. Someone who is poor is more likely to recognize the effort required to acquire treats that are trivial for the wealthy. To the wealthy, the candy has essentially zero value, so they don't recognize the harm caused by taking it from others.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago

    I agree, and I think we've seen the same perspective blindness at a much bigger scale. Early in the covid lockdown, there was a proposal floating around to let people that had already been sick go back to working in regular contact with the public, because they would have good immunity.

    It wasn't until it made it out to public discussion that someone not rich finally pointed out that means telling people living paycheck to paycheck "Go get sick, then you can go back to providing for your family". To people with surplus money, "stay home unless you are immune" is hardly a sacrifice at all, so there's no motivation to put yourself in danger just to avoid that. The rich can live without going out to buy lattes for a few months, we'll all tough it out together.

    Meanwhile, the person making those lattes doesn't have a financial safety net big enough to last a thousand years, and those same few months will be catastrophic.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 days ago* (1 child)

    it isn't though.

    it's that when you accumulate power and privileged... you tend to be more likely to exercise it indiscriminately, because temptation to do so is strong and the consequences lesser.

    i know people who grew up poor and became rich... it was only after they were rich... for awhile, after their hedonistic treadmill had readjusted, that they became greedier and greedier and more sociopathic.

    it's a basic facet of human psychology you have backwards. when you don't have power over others... you can't abuse them. when you do have power over others, you can.

    that doesn't mean the powerless are good, it just means they have less opportunity to be evil. and there are plenty of powerful folks who aren't evil.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    I think it's simpler then that. Humans are social animals. We keep each other accountable. If individuals reach a point where they have no peers who will shame them for being antisocial shitheads they'll escalate. But that's a double edged sword. Being social animals means when the rich surround themselves with sycophantic ass kissers they don't get the socialization they need. It's why they are all miserable lonely cunts.

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  • [–] -2 points 3 days ago*

    I'm not sure what world you live in, but nobody gets held accountable who can avoid being held accountable. And that's... true for everyone. Everyone is trying to avoid accountability all the time. People who seek accountability are rare.

    Like, have you ever had a job or been in a school? Everyone blames somebody else for their issues. Very few folks say 'it was my fault I failed the test/project'.

    Hell most of our social structures are specifically design to avoid accountability.

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