The Rich Have Higher Level of Narcissism, Study Shows | TIME.com - 1 views
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The rich really are different — and, apparently more self-absorbed, according to the latest research.
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Recent studies show, for example, that wealthier people are more likely to cut people off in traffic and to behave unethically in simulated business and charity scenarios.
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Earlier this year, statistics on charitable giving revealed that while the wealthy donate about 1.3% of their income to charity, the poorest actually give more than twice as much as a proportion of their earnings — 3.2%.
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In five different experiments involving several hundred undergraduates and 100 adults recruited from online communities, the researchers found higher levels of both narcissism and entitlement among those of higher income and social class.
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when asked to visually depict themselves as circles, with size indicating relative importance, richer people picked larger circles for themselves and smaller ones for others. Another experiment found that they also looked in the mirror more frequently.
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The wealthier participants were also more likely to agree with statements like “I honestly feel I’m just more deserving than other people
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But which came first — did gaining wealth increase self-aggrandizement? Were self-infatuated people more likely to seek and then gain riches
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To explore that relationship further, the researchers also asked the college students in one experiment to report the educational attainment and annual income of their parents. Those with more highly educated and wealthier parents remained higher in their self-reported entitlement and narcissistic characteristics. “That would suggest that it’s not just [that] people who feel entitled are more likely to become wealthy,” says Piff. Wealth, in other words, may breed narcissistic tendencies — and wealthy people justify their excess by convincing themselves that they are more deserving of it
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“The strength of the study is that it uses multiple methods for measuring narcissism and entitlement and social class and multiple populations, and that can really increase our confidence in the results,”
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“This paper should not be read as saying that narcissists are more successful because we know from lots of other studies that that’s not true.
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“entitlement is a facet of narcissism,” says Twenge. “And [it’s the] one most associated with high social class. It’s the idea that you deserve special treatment and that things will come to you without working hard.”
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Manipulating the sense of entitlement, however, may provide a way to influence narcissism. In the final experiment in the paper, the researchers found that having participants who listed three benefits of seeing others as equals eliminated class differences in narcissism, while simply listing three daily activities did not.
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In the meantime, the connection between wealth and entitlement could have troubling social implications. “You have this bifurcation of rich and poor,” says Levine. “The rich are increasingly entitled, and since they set the cultural tone for advertising and all those kinds of things, I think there’s a pervasive sense of entitlement.”
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That could perpetuate a deepening lack of empathy that could fuel narcissistic tendencies. “You could imagine negative attitudes toward wealth redistribution as a result of entitlement,” says Piff. “The more severe inequality becomes, the more entitled people may feel and the less likely to share those resources they become.”