Rich People

Rich people in cars never look at people on the street. Poor ones always do.

― Lucia Berlin

 

The rich can't empathize, according to a new study appearing in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Researchers at New York University and the University of California, Irvine asked subjects from various economic classes to examine photos of other people and describe the others' emotional states. The poor scored much higher than the rich in the test.

The researchers concluded that, while poor folks can read others' emotions accurately, the rich lack empathy. 

"Lower-class individuals—owing to their greater levels of cultural interdependence—may appraise other human beings as more relevant to their goals and well-being than do higher-class individuals,” the researchers wrote. 

In other words, the rich have little use for the poor—so objectify them—while the poor folks are "people who need people."

Another new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that the rich often deny class privilege "by increasing their claims of personal hardships and hard work." 

The rich "cover privilege in a veneer of meritocracy,” the researchers wrote, because "evidence of privilege threatens recipients’ self-regard by calling into question whether they deserve their successes."