New Study Finds Rich People Lack Empathy

Originally posted by Wildbob77
I'm calling BS on this one.

I know many people who are well off. These are people that volunteer at the local soup kitchens providing meals to the homeless. They don't have to work for a living any longer so they spend their time helping various charities.

This is blatant class warfare in action.

Look at Bill Gates. He and his wife started a foundation to improve health and learning around the globe.

Here is a LINK to the top 10 philanthropists

Who wrote this?

BTW I'm far from wealthy but I do support a number of social causes that I believe in.

Again, you can only provide anecdotal evidence. Just because you know someone doesn't mean it represents the average of everyone.

Also, Bill Gates is working with Monsanto to push GMO's on poor countrys. Yeah, he's a great guy.

www.naturalnews.com...

reply to post by hypervalentiodine


Any legitimate study will present at a minimum some information regarding how the study was conducted and to the extent that they don't no reputable scientific journal would publish it.

How about this, I take a few friends, a couple with Phds who work in a university and we perform a study and here are the results:

"WHITES EXPERIENCE SIGNIFICANTLY MORE PHYSIOLOGICAL CHANGE WHILE GAMBLING THAN NON-WHITES

Ground breaking study proves quantitatively that when gambling, whites have a far greater response to gambling than non-whites, suggesting a higher degree of risk taking and a lack of impluse control on whites."

80% of white test subjects had elevated blood pressure and heart rate when gambling as compared to 10% of non-whites. bla, bla bla

Now for the methodology

We take 100 folks, with the exact demographic breakdown found in society. We put them in front of a slot machine and measure their heart rate and blood pressure and have them play slots for 1/2 hour and record the results which are as described above.

However, all non-whites we selected were both blind and deaf, unable to see the machine, hear the sounds and merely pushed a button for 30 minutes, obviously unable to understand what they were doing or whether or not they won. The whites we selected had no sensory problems.

The study as reported in the headline is accurate, no?

I think most people around the world today lack empathy. its the root of our wars and suffering.

Interesting stuff, guys. Thanks for the article delineation hyper....

As a social worker (Master's level), I find this article interesting. I wonder, though, if they're not putting the cart before the horse...
perhaps it's people who lack the ability to READ and RELATE to others' emotions (empathy) who are most likely to become wealthy, because they have no qualms about TAKING ADVANTAGE of others/opportunities. If everyone cared about how their fellow men and women feel, no one would be quite so selfish and greedy.

Likewise, the big kahuna - the "man" - would not WANT to know how the maid feels, or the dishwasher. The "Not my problem" syndrome.

Maybe the next theory they should "study" is "does lack of empathy lead to wealth?"
I would venture to say in general, yes. (With, of course, exceptions.)
Lack of empathy -- or the inability to read others -- is, however, also a hallmark of psychopathy and sociopaths/narcissists in general.

Not everyone who accumulates wealth lacks a capacity for empathy, but it sure does help! If you don't give a rat's ass about anyone else, and you don't bother to "know" them, then it's a lot easier to dupe, con, pillage, and inflict pain and misery.

Also, it's pecking order just like in any herd or swarm or flock -- there are those who are top-of-the-heap, and there are those who grovel and submit. If you have a pack of dogs in your house, or a herd of horses (both of which I have lots of experience with) you can watch the mammalian instincts quite clearly. The subservient or younger tuck tail, lower ears, roll over, and the big dogs or the alpha mares MIGHT give them a break or a sniff rather than a snarl and nip or a kick to the keester.

People are also mammals...

This is what get's me about climbing the latter at co's for more earnings. My experience with a lot of top salesmen and managers/owners has often been a sense of coldness, and it is a shame that these type of personalities are the ones that thrive in upper positions. It is almost as if it is required and I feel it is not only a shame, but indicative of a neurotic system that rewards the psychopathic personalities. The lack of empathy makes it easier for some to be cut throat in their efforts. I can understand keeping empathy in check sometimes, but to just be pure cold and inconsiderate of others often leads to dishonesty and contrive.
I recall the psychologists at Nuremburg describing the nazis as having complete lack of empathy, hence being evil by definition. It seems to go hand in hand with power obtainment.
I do appreciate a balance too, and some detachment can be of value, but when it shapes your entire personality, within and without, it could spell trouble.

Peace,
spec

Originally posted by v1rtu0s0
Also, Bill Gates is working with Monsanto to push GMO's on poor countrys. Yeah, he's a great guy.

Which would help feed them and fight disease. You have a problem with that?

Edit: Also yeah, like the poster on the last page said there's no way to measure or quantify empathy. This "study" is nothing but blatant class warfare.

I agree that some of these people are rich simply because they lack these qualities. They are quick to take advantage of other people for their own gain. It is sickening really, but that is the American Dream right?

I believe the results of this particular study because what would the testers gain by skewing the results? While I often take surveys with a grain of salt because they are usually flawed and made up, the results of the rich lacking empathy is self evident in society. After all, how can you have empathy when you feel that everything is about you? The saying that good guys finish last didn't come from no where. The most definitive proof proving the rich are diabolically apathetic is when Jesus states in the Bible "And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." The rich according to the Bible seem to be inherently evil, where as the poor are good. I didn't need this study to confirm this fact with the Bible and reality in front of me. After all the love of money is the root of all evil.

Rich people arent rich because they were dumb or lazy unless maybe they are a dirty south rapper or something. when they look at Africa they see a country that is generally poor, filled with disease and yet every year the population is continuing to grow. How can you care about other people when you see sickly thin diseased women in Africa walking around with 8 kids in tow - those 8 kids will create many more kids and the number of children living in that hellish environment will continue to grow and grow. Or just the little things like they can barely afford to eat and then buy cellphones.

You want empathy from the rich you have to show them someone who deserves it.

reply to post by ApprehensionPerception



The problem is most of the poor in the first world nowadays also have a love of money.

reply to post by v1rtu0s0


Lol and water is wet. I mean duh, these guys are millenia behind. This has been known since the idea of "wealth" came into being. A new study of already known things... what a waste of time and money.

reply to post by ldyserenity


Hmmm...having been a waiter for a number of years I have to totally disagree with you. I always got better tips from poor people, and was treated better by poor people. The ones with the money always wanted "good service" and always treated me like crap. Nothing like slaving around at some jerk's feet for 3 hours just to be stiffed and/or not have the credit card signed, making me pay for the whole meal.

reply to post by circuitsports


No, they're rich for the most part, because they inherited it. So they can be lazy or not, irrelevent.

reply to post by 547000


The love of money is like an infectious disease that was forced upon the poor. Media campaigns and government laws demonized caring about others, but glorified the gratification of oneself. That is what the love of money boils down to, the belief that the world revolves around you and that you are god. This is why the family structure had to be destroyed, and the glorification of oneself be uplifted as the norm. The poor were deceived to believe that gross sums of money will bring them happiness, and this is the only goal in life. How long can a system stand where you see everyone around you as a tool to obtain money? No where in nature can we observe a species with the behavior as the typical rich. Balance in this world is dependent upon the flow of energy from one object/organism to another. This is not the case of the rich whom wants it all, while never giving anything back therefor disrupting the flow of energy in nature. A system where the energy flow is choked cannot sustain itself. Empathy=exchange, apathy= void. The gluttonous appetite for the love of money can never be satisfied, and eventually results in the chocking of the organism.

Originally posted by Nosred

Originally posted by v1rtu0s0
Also, Bill Gates is working with Monsanto to push GMO's on poor countrys. Yeah, he's a great guy.

Which would help feed them and fight disease. You have a problem with that?

Edit: Also yeah, like the poster on the last page said there's no way to measure or quantify empathy. This "study" is nothing but blatant class warfare.

edit on 10-8-2011 by Nosred because: (no reason given)

That would be great if it weren't for the fact that GMO's cause disease and also destroy native crop species, allowing Monsanto to takeover....

Originally posted by KrazyJethro
A few points

1) I have serious misgivings about these kinds of "studies". Empathy isn't something that can be measured or even quantified or qualified.

Sure, but this study looked at empathic accuracy. Slightly different, much easier to observe and to get subjects to quantify.

2) I don't really understand the problem, even if it is true. Empathy is not something most people have a lot of unless they have actually had a shared or tangential experience to spur the feelings. This really doesn't have to be said for most wealthy people since they don't know what it's like more often than not.

This wasn't specifically empathy as it was the ability for a participant to detect and decode another person's emotions. What they found was that higher income and higher subjective social class participants were not able to do this as well.

Originally posted by Wildbob77
I'm calling BS on this one.

I know many people who are well off. These are people that volunteer at the local soup kitchens providing meals to the homeless. They don't have to work for a living any longer so they spend their time helping various charities.

Believe it or not, this is completely irrelevant to what the study posed. Secondly, anecdotal evidence is proof of nothing.

This is blatant class warfare in action.

No, it's not. They were not saying that those of higher social-class were bad or lacked 'empathy for the poor' as many seem to have interpreted. This is simply a study.

Look at Bill Gates. He and his wife started a foundation to improve health and learning around the globe.

Here is a LINK to the top 10 philanthropists

Who wrote this?

As I stated to another person, the study looked at how much people donated to charity as a percentage of their income. And as a percentage of their income, higher social class individuals donate less.

Originally posted by dolphinfan
reply to post by hypervalentiodine

 

Any legitimate study will present at a minimum some information regarding how the study was conducted and to the extent that they don't no reputable scientific journal would publish it.

Read my summary again, please. I am sick of repeating myself. It was a theoretical study. The results the got were from experiments performed in other works and a few from the works of their colleagues. Just because you can't read it, doesn't mean that they didn't state it.

How about this, I take a few friends, a couple with Phds who work in a university and we perform a study and here are the results:

"WHITES EXPERIENCE SIGNIFICANTLY MORE PHYSIOLOGICAL CHANGE WHILE GAMBLING THAN NON-WHITES

Ground breaking study proves quantitatively that when gambling, whites have a far greater response to gambling than non-whites, suggesting a higher degree of risk taking and a lack of impluse control on whites."

80% of white test subjects had elevated blood pressure and heart rate when gambling as compared to 10% of non-whites. bla, bla bla

Now for the methodology

We take 100 folks, with the exact demographic breakdown found in society. We put them in front of a slot machine and measure their heart rate and blood pressure and have them play slots for 1/2 hour and record the results which are as described above.


However, all non-whites we selected were both blind and deaf, unable to see the machine, hear the sounds and merely pushed a button for 30 minutes, obviously unable to understand what they were doing or whether or not they won. The whites we selected had no sensory problems.

The study as reported in the headline is accurate, no?

edit on 10-8-2011 by dolphinfan because: (no reason given)

This is totally irrelevant. Well done, you came up with an analogy of blatant bias. All of the studies used in this particular work are in peer reviewed journals. If they had of done that, it wouldn't have been published.

What do you find so controversial about this paper, anyway?

I am sick of repeating myself. So a few points about the article for those who didn't read the summary on page 3:

1. This is not a study on how the rich lack empathy specifically for the poor . It was a theoretical study that showed that people of higher social-class tend to have a lower empathic accuracy (i.e. ability to decode the emotions of others), which is quite different.

2. Just because your rich friend or uncle or whatever is a philanthropist who spends his life tending to sick refugees does not mean the findings of this study are moot. Anecdotal evidence does not a proof make. It's analogous to taking 500 individuals of a species of mice, 499 of which have blue eyes, one of which has red eyes and saying that the theory of these mice having blue eyes cannot be true because you found one with red eyes - in other words, ridiculous.

3. The statistics state that lower income earners donate a higher proportion of their incomes to charity, not a higher amount (that would be silly).

4. Just because you might not have free access to the paper does not make it a cover up and does not mean that their experiments were not scientifically valid. Almost all papers published in journals come at a price. Being in university, I have free access to essentially any scientific paper I want by virtue of the fact that my university pays for a subscription. Ignoring that, you can't very well call it a cover up when you can actually access it, be it for a price or otherwise.

Originally posted by wildtimes
Interesting stuff, guys. Thanks for the article delineation hyper....

As a social worker (Master's level), I find this article interesting. I wonder, though, if they're not putting the cart before the horse...
perhaps it's people who lack the ability to READ and RELATE to others' emotions (empathy) who are most likely to become wealthy, because they have no qualms about TAKING ADVANTAGE of others/opportunities. If everyone cared about how their fellow men and women feel, no one would be quite so selfish and greedy.

Interestingly, they ran an experiment that manipulated a person's perception of their social class and found that people who imagined themselves being a higher class would donate less to charity than those who imagined they were a lower class. Also, using the same methods, they made some participants lower their perceived social class and tested their empathic accuracy. They found that by doing that, their accuracy increased. So it seems to be an expected trait of those of a higher social class.

Originally posted by knightsofcydonia
I think most people around the world today lack empathy. its the root of our wars and suffering.

My thoughts exactly. Those running the planet love WAR and they are also

filthy rich. But it's not just the money, it has to do with how they were raised,

and just how Narcissicistic they are. I've worked in a homeless shelter and

i've seen rude people, but you know what most of them were really nice and

greatful they had people there to help that truly cared about their well being.

I also know rich people, some are snobs and self righteous, but again they

were born into money. And yet still there are wealthy people who help people,

and wealthy people who only help people when they know they'll get some kind

of Recognition for it. So what i'm saying is that you can't shove the rich into one

box and the poor into another and yet the middle classed into another and then

stamp a lable on them. That would be like trying to fit a circle into a box, it just

wouldn't work would it. The Media, and Socially Acceptible Attitudes are also

what is another reason people are showing Lack of Empathy. Narcissists are

created at a young age, and it's beginning to show at a disturbing rate. A lack

of love from a parent towards a child, will create this. Just look at the Queen

she doesnt show physical affection at all towards her own, this is just one example.