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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 4 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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[–] 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 3 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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