It seems that at least three groups tried to replicate the study and failed (i.e., found no or little actual effect)¹.
> In contrast, other research in economics and sociology has hypothesized and found a positive relationship between SES and prosocial and ethical behavior. We review the empirical evidence for these contradictory findings and conduct two direct, well-powered, and preregistered replications of the field studies by Piff and colleagues (2012) to test the relationship between SES and unethical/selfish behavior. Unlike the original findings, we find no evidence of a positive relationship between SES and unethical/selfish behavior in the two field replication studies.
> In the actual candy study, the participants were all students, status was manipulated in the lab by telling some students they were better than others, and "nearly twice" means 1 piece vs 2 pieces.
> oh and the researchers told participants they could take some candy. There was no stealing!
"As vehicles are reliable indicators of a person's social rank and wealth"
The wealthiest Europeans I know drive the cheapest vehicles. Modesty is wealth in many parts of the world, but perhaps not in California (the authors are affiliated with UC Berkeley).
I would have guessed vehicle as predicting ethics more than bank balance. Dumb Toyota and minivan more trustworthy than a Porsche, Dodge Charger, or Cyber Truck.
They can. It just gets reported to FinCEN, which might attract unwanted attention. The same applies to buying a $200k lambo with cash, which has to be reported to the IRS[1], on top of being registered with the state DMV.
There’s still a strong cultural bias though that is likely location dependent. I have lived in very wealthy towns for which there was not a single Ferrari or Bentley around (or any other luxury car for that matter). That ownership of an expensive car requires some degree of wealth is absolutely clear, but the inverse doesn’t follow —- average cars don’t indicate average income. It could be that the study finds that certain ethical biases are related to people who buy expensive cars, which is not the same as saying that certain ethical biases are related to wealthy people. Millionaires who drive Toyotas could simply exhibit different ethical standards than millionaires who drive Ferraris.
No, but sometimes they can finance a very (comparatively) expensive car for way too many years at an insane percentage just to appear wealthier than they are. And that stomps on the study just as much as millionaires driving a Camry IMO.
They dont drive flash vehicles but they still do not drive junk. Thier car might be 20+ years old, but it is still a great car. Someone driving a well-maintained 90s BMW gathers more respect than anyone driving the latest model.
Clarkson had a line about estate owners driving "ancestral transport", invariably a land rover as old as the trees it lives amongst.
A lot of ethical behavior is actually invented by the higher classes to imbue the lower classes with self-policing. It's a social pattern across pretty much all human civilizations that have been.
Upper class: often flawlessly ethical, never moral.
Working class: sometimes moral, often indifferent to formal ethics that they feel were set in place without their consent.
The social language of appearing to avoid conflicts of interest and self-dealing is one in which upper-middle and upper class people are fluent. In terms of morality (avoiding harm, rather than avoiding violations of semiformal social principles) there is a negative correlation to SES, but it’s very slight because it turns out there are also scoundrels at the bottom.
I agree with the sentiment but I would like to push back against this a little bit. I think that there is a common set of human needs / principles that we can all agree are good, such as the golden rule, etc, etc.
But here's what I think happens: people with more power can more easily hide their transgressions. So in practice its easier to enforce rules against people with less power.
Second, a known and agreed upon good is really useful when seeking to manipulate people and generate "thought terminating cliches". Certain organizations / groups have gotten really good at taking known good things, and weave in their agenda and propaganda, linking something obvious with something that seems to make sense but actually doesn't.
History is rittled with how a call to ethical behaviour has been abused by the rich and powerful to keep the lower classes down. In Europe the Church used this to extol the virtues of poverty to the poor while selling pardons to the rich.
In China, the richness of Confucian philosophy was distilled down to obey orders from above / filial piety above all else, etc etc.
The fact that bad actors have taken something good and done bad things with them does not take away the value that can be found, it just needs to be on our own terms, and not someone else's.
I think unethical behavior is necessary to have a certain amount of wealth, I’m not sure where the line is, but I do think it’s there.
Also, it seems that higher status/income people benefit a lot more from acting unethically than lower income people would, the more money at the table, the more beneficial it is to act unethically. I’m not saying it to excuse anyone’s behavior, just speculating out loud.
I guess a handful of shoddy studies that are both terrible at isolating ethics and terrible at identifying social class are move persuasive than homicide, assault, and property crime statistics.
I can agree that poor people break the law more often. Not "are convicted of" but the acts.
I think the reasons are obvious and unrelated to the point of the study. Desperation, culture (broken window theory) which is critically related to average wealth, lack of opportunity, and legal veracity explains the statistics sufficiently.
Yes this is common knowledge. Most of us live within a given social hierarchy, and this effect is part of being a participant by default. We understand it intuitively.
"Rules for thee but not for me."
"There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
Senators build their wealth by millions while "working" for the public, and nobody bats an eye. We all know how it works.
It's why some celebrities are so loved when they don't fit the mold. People give up their seat on the subway every day, but when Keanu Reeves does it, he is venerated. Most people don't have any care for the people who run charities, but Dolly Parton is practically sainted for hers. All high-status people need to do is not be wicked and we are awed by it.
I think it's a matter of reach. Most ordinary people's good deeds have a small audience—the 'N' in a 1:N spread is limited. But the bigger the fame, the larger the audience becomes. From that perspective, when Keanu Reeves does something good, the number of people influenced by that act is much larger. I believe humans are creatures shaped by their environment—and they are influenced by it. So it's socially acknowledged that piling up these good actions is beneficial, and the greater the influence of such actions, the larger the impact they have. Of course, this is just my hypothesis.
It seems that at least three groups tried to replicate the study and failed (i.e., found no or little actual effect)¹.
> In contrast, other research in economics and sociology has hypothesized and found a positive relationship between SES and prosocial and ethical behavior. We review the empirical evidence for these contradictory findings and conduct two direct, well-powered, and preregistered replications of the field studies by Piff and colleagues (2012) to test the relationship between SES and unethical/selfish behavior. Unlike the original findings, we find no evidence of a positive relationship between SES and unethical/selfish behavior in the two field replication studies.
¹) https://pubpeer.com/publications/7363E2E1B57AC42EF166E0D0266... ²) https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2023-34988-001?doi=1
Richard McElreath: https://bsky.app/profile/rmcelreath.bsky.social/post/3muofvc...
> In the actual candy study, the participants were all students, status was manipulated in the lab by telling some students they were better than others, and "nearly twice" means 1 piece vs 2 pieces.
> oh and the researchers told participants they could take some candy. There was no stealing!
"As vehicles are reliable indicators of a person's social rank and wealth"
The wealthiest Europeans I know drive the cheapest vehicles. Modesty is wealth in many parts of the world, but perhaps not in California (the authors are affiliated with UC Berkeley).
This really does seem to call into question the credibility of this study.
I would have guessed vehicle as predicting ethics more than bank balance. Dumb Toyota and minivan more trustworthy than a Porsche, Dodge Charger, or Cyber Truck.
criminals can’t deposit their money into a bank, but they can buy a $200,000 Lambo.
>criminals can’t deposit their money into a bank
They can. It just gets reported to FinCEN, which might attract unwanted attention. The same applies to buying a $200k lambo with cash, which has to be reported to the IRS[1], on top of being registered with the state DMV.
[1] https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...
[delayed]
Poor people aren't buying Ferraris and Bentleys, and yet plenty of them sell, so I think you're taking anecdote as data.
5-10 year old used Bentleys are ~50-60K well within the realm of a normal middle class individual.
The opposite of modesty is not "buying a Ferrari". Anyone at any level of wealth can be immodest.
Not saying I agree with GP, but your point doesn't hold up.
There’s still a strong cultural bias though that is likely location dependent. I have lived in very wealthy towns for which there was not a single Ferrari or Bentley around (or any other luxury car for that matter). That ownership of an expensive car requires some degree of wealth is absolutely clear, but the inverse doesn’t follow —- average cars don’t indicate average income. It could be that the study finds that certain ethical biases are related to people who buy expensive cars, which is not the same as saying that certain ethical biases are related to wealthy people. Millionaires who drive Toyotas could simply exhibit different ethical standards than millionaires who drive Ferraris.
> Poor people aren't buying Ferraris and Bentleys
No, but sometimes they can finance a very (comparatively) expensive car for way too many years at an insane percentage just to appear wealthier than they are. And that stomps on the study just as much as millionaires driving a Camry IMO.
They dont drive flash vehicles but they still do not drive junk. Thier car might be 20+ years old, but it is still a great car. Someone driving a well-maintained 90s BMW gathers more respect than anyone driving the latest model.
Clarkson had a line about estate owners driving "ancestral transport", invariably a land rover as old as the trees it lives amongst.
Ultimate statement about european land owners driving ancient vehicles: https://youtu.be/R8-9oIq1hxw?si=Ogg7C5MjFRoDdC9R
A lot of ethical behavior is actually invented by the higher classes to imbue the lower classes with self-policing. It's a social pattern across pretty much all human civilizations that have been.
Upper class: often flawlessly ethical, never moral.
Working class: sometimes moral, often indifferent to formal ethics that they feel were set in place without their consent.
The social language of appearing to avoid conflicts of interest and self-dealing is one in which upper-middle and upper class people are fluent. In terms of morality (avoiding harm, rather than avoiding violations of semiformal social principles) there is a negative correlation to SES, but it’s very slight because it turns out there are also scoundrels at the bottom.
I agree with the sentiment but I would like to push back against this a little bit. I think that there is a common set of human needs / principles that we can all agree are good, such as the golden rule, etc, etc.
But here's what I think happens: people with more power can more easily hide their transgressions. So in practice its easier to enforce rules against people with less power.
Second, a known and agreed upon good is really useful when seeking to manipulate people and generate "thought terminating cliches". Certain organizations / groups have gotten really good at taking known good things, and weave in their agenda and propaganda, linking something obvious with something that seems to make sense but actually doesn't.
History is rittled with how a call to ethical behaviour has been abused by the rich and powerful to keep the lower classes down. In Europe the Church used this to extol the virtues of poverty to the poor while selling pardons to the rich.
In China, the richness of Confucian philosophy was distilled down to obey orders from above / filial piety above all else, etc etc.
The fact that bad actors have taken something good and done bad things with them does not take away the value that can be found, it just needs to be on our own terms, and not someone else's.
Yes, those yacht upgrades are quite restrained and are a good example for us all.
The cynic in me wants to agree with this but im not so sure, ive seen all sorts of behaviour from all sorts of people.
Written laws are like spiders' webs; they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor, but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.
I think unethical behavior is necessary to have a certain amount of wealth, I’m not sure where the line is, but I do think it’s there.
Also, it seems that higher status/income people benefit a lot more from acting unethically than lower income people would, the more money at the table, the more beneficial it is to act unethically. I’m not saying it to excuse anyone’s behavior, just speculating out loud.
I guess a handful of shoddy studies that are both terrible at isolating ethics and terrible at identifying social class are move persuasive than homicide, assault, and property crime statistics.
I can agree that poor people break the law more often. Not "are convicted of" but the acts.
I think the reasons are obvious and unrelated to the point of the study. Desperation, culture (broken window theory) which is critically related to average wealth, lack of opportunity, and legal veracity explains the statistics sufficiently.
Other than "I don't like what this implies", what were your specific complaints? Because I don't believe you actually read any of the studies.
Yes this is common knowledge. Most of us live within a given social hierarchy, and this effect is part of being a participant by default. We understand it intuitively.
"Rules for thee but not for me."
"There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
Senators build their wealth by millions while "working" for the public, and nobody bats an eye. We all know how it works.
It's why some celebrities are so loved when they don't fit the mold. People give up their seat on the subway every day, but when Keanu Reeves does it, he is venerated. Most people don't have any care for the people who run charities, but Dolly Parton is practically sainted for hers. All high-status people need to do is not be wicked and we are awed by it.
I think it's a matter of reach. Most ordinary people's good deeds have a small audience—the 'N' in a 1:N spread is limited. But the bigger the fame, the larger the audience becomes. From that perspective, when Keanu Reeves does something good, the number of people influenced by that act is much larger. I believe humans are creatures shaped by their environment—and they are influenced by it. So it's socially acknowledged that piling up these good actions is beneficial, and the greater the influence of such actions, the larger the impact they have. Of course, this is just my hypothesis.