The rich are different from you and me

http://www.economist.com/node/16690659

by bootload • 16 years ago

69 67 16 years ago

swombat3• 16 years ago

Counterpoints:

* Correlation is not causation.

* Poor people may often remain poor because they are not rational. Charity may not be a rational activity. So perhaps what they were measuring was not selfishness, but rationality.

* Being born in a rich family is correlated with a better education, so the point made in the article's last paragraph may be incorrect.

* I'm (currently) poor, but I don't think much of most organised charitable activities, or to giving money to homeless people. I think most charities are an utter waste, and giving money to homeless people only gets them buying alcohol and cigarettes. I'll happily give my sandwich to a homeless person on the street though. My suggested figure for "% of salary to donate to charity" is 0%, and will remain 0% for the rest of my life. However, once rich (assuming I get there), I'd be quite happy to devote years of my life to helping people directly (which may involve leveraging financial resources, but not donating money to charities).

* Average figures tell us little. What was the distribution? Did 90% of rich people suggest 0% and 10% of them suggested 50%? How did they get to the 2.1% figure?

* What kind of social pressure was there when asking people how much they would donate (of their credits, or of their salary)? Social pressure is a huge influence. Here on HN, an open-minded, thoughtful environment, I explain my views on charities above (even though I know I'll get some passionate replies). Sitting in a circle of people I don't know, I might still express these views (because I'm like that..) but most people probably would be wiser and keep those views quiet.

* What kind of social pressure was there before? What kind of social pressure did they expect after? Did people give an answer to please the examiner?

A lot of holes in this article, I think. Surprising, coming from a quality publication like the Economist.

robryan• 16 years ago

I agree with the in general 0% donation, unless of course I was actually involved directly as you mention in using the charitable funds. I just don't trust a random charity or even empathise with many of the charitable plights plastered in front of us with advertising (which is a questionable use of donations). I think I would in general have to have a personal involvement to consider giving.

orborde• 16 years ago

You could read the paper itself.

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=pd...

It's probably behind a paywall for you, though.

c1sc0• 16 years ago

"I think most charities are an utter waste" ... More or less of a waste than how our taxes are spent? While there are some awful charities out there, there are plenty who offer detailed oversight of how donations are spent. Those tend to call themselves NGOs however, and whether you support them or not is often a matter of political alignment.

swombat3• 16 years ago

I also think taxes are mostly wasted. :-)

I don't mind the idea of paying taxes, mind you - I have nothing against the idea of contributing a large portion of one's income to improving the country that one lives in, I just think most government schemes are ridiculously inefficient.

barrkel• 16 years ago

There are a lot of holes in almost every article in mass media publications, as they must necessarily summarize. Whether you notice the holes or not probably depends on how well the article confirms or contradicts your biases, giving you an emotional payoff to finding the holes - or avoiding finding them.

tomjen3• 16 years ago

I don't disagree with you that most charities are a waste, but that is because they focus on what I call eat a fish assistance, such as providing food, vaccinations, etc which only temporarily improve the conditions for those they are trying to help.

On the other hand there are a few charities that do work to permanently improve the conditions for those they were supposed to help (teach fishing charities) these are most certainly not a waste of time or money to support (alot of Amnestys work would fall into this catagory).

scotty792• 16 years ago

> In this case the change intended was to that of a higher or lower social class than the individual perceived he normally belonged to. The researchers then asked participants to indicate what percentage of a person’s income should be spent on charitable donations. They found that both real lower-class participants and those temporarily induced to rank themselves as lower class felt that a greater share of a person’s salary should be used to support charity.

Perhaps this paragraph can plug first few of your perceived holes.

joshuacc2• 16 years ago

"Charity may not be a rational activity. So perhaps what they were measuring was not selfishness, but rationality."

What grounds do you have for thinking that charity (and presumably altruism in general) is irrational? Are you assuming that only self-interested actions can be rational?

dminor• 16 years ago

> Are you assuming that only self-interested actions can be rational?

That's pretty much the definition of "rational" as it is applied in Economics. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory

johnswamps• 16 years ago

I don't think swombat was trying to argue that. It seemed to me like he was just using it as an example of another plausible, though not necessarily true, explanation for the data. The article says that "Statistics show X, obviously Y is the cause" and swombot is saying "Not so fast, there could be many explanations for X. Z would result with the same statistics"

swombat3• 16 years ago

My argument (which you may not believe in) is that charities, like governments, are very inefficient at spending the money donated to them effectively.

electronvolt• 16 years ago

Even a correlation between higher incomes and lower rates of altruism is interesting.

The whole rationality/lack thereof may actually be the case (at least from my personal experiences working in lower end jobs, where the people were either older and, frankly, not particularly smart, or younger, smarter, and temporary). Does the fact that it could be considered irrational invalidate any value of the altruism?

I was most interested in the last part, where they were seeing if people would help another person who was right in front of them. It shows something more about simple compassion, which I consider different from altruism. It also helps address your point about organized charitable activities: it was an opportunity to give what would have been perceived as help someone more in the here and now and less in the airy "well, this seems like a good percentage of my income to donate to charity...".

tallanvor• 16 years ago

No, correlation is not causation.

However, the article noted that when a participant was lead to believe they were higher or lower on the social ladder, that changed the amounts they gave or believed was right to give. --This doesn't prove causation of course, but it does suggest with some strength that a higher perceived social position does affect your decisions when it comes to charity.

One last thought... You may consider yourself poor, but you don't know the scales they used in the experiment. It's possible that you aren't as poor as you think.

Gormo• 16 years ago

Also, poorer people are probably more likely to imagine themselves as recipients of charity rather than its providers, in which case the exact same self-interest motivation would move the answers of rich and poor in opposite directions.

timwiseman• 16 years ago

I think that depends on your definition of poor, which is sadly left vague in this article. If by poor you mean paupers and the truly destitute that are homeless or avoiding that fate only by government handouts/charity then I suspect you are certainly right.

If by poor you mean what some refer to as the "working poor" or people only slighly above the working poor on the economic ladder, then my admittedly limited and admittedly anecdotal experience would contradict it. They tend to be hard working, generous with what little they have, and would be insulted by most suggestions of charity (though I have known a couple to take loans from friends to be paid back when they were able...) In short, my limited and anecdotal experience tends to support the concept in the article that the lower and working classes tend to be generous and helpful.

jbooth7• 16 years ago

"giving money to homeless people only gets them buying alcohol and cigarettes"

So what were you going to spend that .50 cents on?

tkahn6• 16 years ago

Am I understanding this correctly? The study gave each participant 10 credits and then said they could keep them or give them away and at the end, those credits would be converted into real money.

Uh, why would anyone give away credits? It's a totally zero-sum game. The only way you can 'win' if is someone else is foolish enough to give you their credits.

derefr• 16 years ago

There's definitely something missing from the description of the experiment. It sounds like the first half of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game. The second half—informing the player that their hypothetical "anonymous partner" would get to decide whether both, or neither, of them got the money—provides the incentive for the player to cooperate. Selfishness could then be gauged by how often players still choose "unfair" splits despite the chance of rejection.

If this is what the experiment was, though, I would question their methodology a bit; an important part of the Ultimatum game is that both partners have to think of one another as human—and therefore capable of irrationality. The partner anonymity in their experimental set-up creates (mental) distance between the partners, which encourages a more rational cost-benefit analysis, vs. the immediate "I should punish you for giving me such a bad deal" reaction you have to a real person. If the players realize this, they will benefit by acting more selfishly, because they can rely on their partner to not see them as "human enough" to be worth punishing.

gyardley2• 16 years ago

This is a related but different experiment called the Dictator Game.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictator_game

pwim• 16 years ago

I think that was the point - to simulate donations to charity, where likewise you don't get anything for giving them away.

TGJ2• 16 years ago

You also 'win' if you give away your money and realize that you never had anything to begin with and help other people instead of lining your own pockets. You win emotional value instead of physical value.

Tycho• 16 years ago

Yeah they are... They give away much more money through taxation (which the article/study doesn't seem to consider. For instance, asking 'If you earned $500 000 a year and lost 40% of it through tax, how much additional wealth should you give away voluntarily,' is different from asking 'what percentage of your income should you keep/lose?' Perhaps one believes all people should keep the same portion of their income, and answered that lower income people should give more to charity in order to compensate for their lower taxation. The study misses this and the article concludes 'rich people think poor people should give more.' It's also an easy explanation for why even when hypothetically adopting a different income bracket, their attitudes 'changed').

dmoney• 16 years ago

This revealed that whether high status was inherited or earned made no difference--so the idea that it is the self-made who are especially selfish does not work.

It's likely that their parents or grandparents were "self-made" and also passed on their selfishness.

alexandros2• 16 years ago

If I may venture into armchair evolutionary psychology territory, this seems to verifiy that humans evolved and use altruism as a survival strategy. A person of lower status would have more to gain by investing in relationships through altruism than a person who is already of high status or wealthy.

harscoat2• 16 years ago

I don't understand (or I am scared to understand?;). Do you mean we all evolved towards altruism? then this is contradictory, if we evolved (over 1000s of years) towards altruism then one can not modify instantaneously his evolved behavior depending contingently on if one belongs to the high or the low class. Or do you mean that the altruism "gene"(or whatever) is expressed only when one is in lower class? and that Altruism behavior is only expressed when survival is necessary, and is not a standard/general human behavior.

alexandros2• 16 years ago

I don't see where the problem is with evolving context-specific altruism. We have numerous strategies that we evolved and use in specific contexts. Screaming, or crying or laughing for instance. Altruism could be another.

pradocchia• 16 years ago

Perhaps the inherited altruistic behavior is only exhibited within ones tribe. So the rich will help each other, the poor will help each other, but the rich will only help the poor when they feel some sort of commonality. Since we only recognize altruism as charity when the recipient is poor, it follows that the poor are more charitable.

scotty792• 16 years ago

I read some time ago about tribe which members are extremely generous, friendly and selfless. In research turned out that this tribe had in the past many violent neighbors so close cooperation of tribe members was absolutely necessary for survival. Tough environmental factors probably lead to increased cooperation as well.

gaius2• 16 years ago

That tribe is called the Swedish :-)

Well, not so much neighbours but harsh weather conditions. That is why socialism works in Sweden; people do their bit rather than trying to game the system.

stcredzero• 16 years ago

Old Japanese aphorism: "It's through suffering that we learn the true value of kindness."

TGJ2• 16 years ago

"Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering. Some suffer too much, others too little."

(Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta, the founder of Buddhism, 563-483 B.C)

lee2• 16 years ago

Growing up relatively poor (at least for Western standards), it feels that I can empathize with the poor a lot more than those who did not grow up similarly.

You can read about poverty, imagine it, and have knowledge about it. But unless you've experienced it first hand, you cannot truly understand what it's like.

I think that understanding can lead people to be more altruistic.

yardie• 16 years ago

I agree completely. A poster above was saying how giving to charities is a waste and giving to the poor just means them getting drunk. I can assure you the homeless drunk needs to eat at some point if he doesn't want to be dead in a ditch. And the easiest way to do it is spare change.

I've met far too many people trying to do the noble thing by buying a sandwich or milk. Completely oblivious to that persons dietary requirements. It would have been far easier to give a dollar, let the poor guy figure out what he wants to eat. If he buys alcohol he'll only get thirstier and hungrier.

gaius2• 16 years ago

It's quite normal to be asked for money to something to eat, but in 20 years of saying, I'll buy you whatever you want to eat from this store, I've never been taken up on the offer.

Another thing (in London anyway) is to be asked for money to stay in a shelter overnight. Well the shelters are free, paid for by the local councils, and always have spare beds.

I think if anyone did ever say, I need the money to get high, I'd probably give it them, just because they'd be the first honest one...

roc3• 16 years ago

Does it lead them to being legitimately altruistic? Or simply more charitable toward problems they understand and people they empathize with?

Social programs to help the unemployed are, economically speaking, little different from something like TARP. Would you say that your increased altruism extends to supporting assistance given to rich/corporations?

lee2• 16 years ago

I think it does lead to what you call "legitimate altruism", because the scope of poverty encompasses many things: hunger, increased illness, increased suffering, etc...

Being poor means you experience all of these burdens, more so than those who are not poor, and so you can understand the plight of those who experience it.

>> "more charitable toward problems they understand and people they empathize with?"

Can you be charitable to problems that you don't understand? I don't think so. If you gave your money away to anyone who asked, that's not charity.

>>> "Social programs to help the unemployed are, economically speaking, little different from something like TARP."

I disagree with that statement. The TARP is a calculated move by the government to prevent economic collapse. The motivation for it was self-preservation, not altruism.

mrperfect• 16 years ago

Counterpoints:

* Correlation is not causation. Tell that to al gore!

njharman• 16 years ago

I noticed this very strongly when I lived in SF re beggers.

I always assumed it was empathetic based, poor being relatively close to and could easily be knocked down a rung to homeless/destitute. Were as rich fairly far removed from homeless/destitute experience and could not relate.

Also to the rich money is status, valuable, something you work hard and sacrifice for. To the poor money is something they just don't have.

Also poor receive (and need) more charity than the rich and may feel obliged to "give back" when they can. They at the very least are more likely to know how much a little charity can help.

mrvir• 16 years ago

One counterpoint for super rich:

http://givingpledge.org/

hnal943• 16 years ago

The article defines "charity" in an incomplete way; simply giving your money away is only half of the equation. The other half of donating money is finding the organization that will leverage it to the most good.

You could simply give away your money by dropping dollar bills out of a hot air balloon, but most people wouldn't consider that as charitable as donating the same money to cancer research.

Perhaps the article truly is pointing out that the rich see charity as an investment where poor people see it simply as "giving extra money away."

gyardley2• 16 years ago

A caveat: the findings of Piff's research are applicable only to his research subjects, who are likely Berkeley undergraduates at the Social Interaction Lab. Findings in psychological experiments don't carry across cultures. See 'The Weirdest People in the World?' for more:

http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/WeirdPeople.pdf

That said, other researchers conducting Ultimatum Game and Dictator Game experiments have found that higher-status individuals offer less to their counterparts, even when the 'status' is entirely make-believe (for instance, being told that they scored higher than their counterpart on a previously-conducted test of skill - even though they were in fact randomly assigned to their roles.) Researchers have also found that in Ultimatum Game experiments, lower-status individuals were willing to accept less, even when the low status was similarly make-believe.

In other words, Piff is making a somewhat politicized argument about wealth and 'the rich', when he should be talking about status. I'd argue that all this experiment shows is that American college undergraduates have internalized that high status is deserved, and therefore it's fair for high status people to retain a greater proportion of the benefits of status.

roc3• 16 years ago

My own pet theory is that people simply have a harder time justifying the giving of help/charity to people they do not know and/or understand.

e.g. It's easy to hate "the other" because you don't know them, you don't live next door to them, you've never lived through what they've lived through, etc. And this is amplified by those who benefit from the hate, and who slander with strawmen and push for rules that maintain the separations and distinctions. (DADT, segregation, most suburban zoning laws in the US, Arizona's new immigration laws, etc)

Similarly, it's harder for rich people in the suburbs to support social programs than even similarly rich people who simply live where they have more contact with people of more economic classes. Even if neither set of rich people had been personally poor.

Likewise, poor people --while more likely to give charity to other people who are in situations they understand-- are still very skeptical of charity given to "the other" (e.g. TARP)

Truly, some people have a strong philosophical belief and act accordingly. But mostly, people are just skeptical of "the other" and act accordingly.

anamax• 16 years ago

Humans find it very easy to hate people who they know.

See the middle east for an example.

roc3• 16 years ago

know ?

Last I checked Israelis and Palestinians weren't generally living in the same neighborhoods, subject to equal treatment under the same laws, shopping at the same markets, etc.

endtime• 16 years ago

>Upper-class participants said 2.1% of incomes should be donated. Lower-class individuals felt that 5.6% was the appropriate slice. Upper-class participants who were induced to believe they were lower class suggested 3.1%. And lower-class individuals who had been “psychologically promoted” thought 3.3% was about right.

What's with the assumption that charity should scale linearly with income? With the numbers they give, people making 250k wanted to give $5250 and people making 25k wanted to give $1400.

notahacker• 16 years ago

Theoretically at least, people making 250k are far less likely to notice the missing $5250 or even the missing $14k if they scale linearly: they'll consume a much smaller proportion of income in the present and are much less likely to encounter problems resulting from lack of savings in the future.

The rich are different from you and me

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