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  • 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.

    by quickthrowman
  • 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.
    by kolbe
  • I guess the good news here is that I can just buy an expensive car and become part of the higher social class.
    by jppope
  • 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.
    by jdw64
  • 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.
    by kazinator
  • 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!

    by Tomte
  • "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).

    by bede
  • 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

    by raphman

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Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior · Birbla