Photographed by Ruby Yeh.Turns out, Hall & Oates were right when they penned "Rich Girl" — having money really can make you a total PITA. According to a study by UC Berkeley post-doctoral researcher Paul Piff, wealth can truly affect the way individuals treat each other. Piff and his fellow researchers have conducted several studies that all reveal bad behavior on the part of people with material wealth, whether they earned that wealth or inherited it.
In a TEDx Talk, Piff noted: “As a person’s levels of wealth increase, their feelings of compassion and empathy go down, and their feelings of entitlement, of deservingness, and their ideology of self-interest increases." That's right: The richer you get, the more unpleasant your personality can become.
In one study, Piff's team set up rigged games of Monopoly between two strangers, where one player received twice as much money to start and extra dice to roll. (Oh, and there's a bowl of pretzels in the mix, too.) In every instance, both players recognized that the game was rigged, but the "winning" player began to talk more loudly, eat more, and generally become more obnoxious over the course of the game.
Other studies conducted by Piff and his colleagues revealed that individuals in the most expensive cars are less likely to stop for pedestrians at crosswalks, and that those with more money are less likely to share it with others. The short story? There might more benefit to being broke than you might have thought. (At least, in the metaphorical sense.)
(International Business Times)
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