From the article.
The research indicates that valuing greed leads to unethical behavior, not necessarily that income class causes bad behavior, McGinley said, adding, “greediness seems like a much more substantial predictor than income.”
Originally Posted by WTF
It's not the most well-written synopsis of academic research I've ever encountered. It's difficult to tell exactly what, if anything, this study figured out based solely on reading this article. T'would have been nice of the author to include a link to the academic journal which initially published the findings. Oh well...que sera sera...
But, the quote WTF grabbed* (which comes almost at the end of the article, thus the title of this post) seems to be the heart of it. To which I can only respond....
Greedy people are more likely to break the rules??? Shocking...does everybody know about this??
It's in trying to assess the - seemingly logical - implication that people are rich because they're greedy rather than greedy because they're rich where things get messy. Social Science research is a BITCH to do well. Even when done well, it can prove to be - ultimately - unsatisfying in that it can only establish correlation. It can never establish causality.
Eh...maybe there is a discussion on the repercussions of the implication...if the implication is accurate. However, the validity of the premise for such a discussion is up for grabs. You'd have to go back to the actual study - and all of the studies sited as a foundation - to see how well the experiments were set up & how they crunched the numbers just to establish the likelihood that that the implication is true. Lol...who has the energy...let alone the intellectual curiosity to do that???
The study builds on previous research that has shown wealthy people are worse at recognizing how others feel and are more likely to be disengaged during social interactions, the authors wrote.
Originally Posted by WTF
LOL...queue up the Snoop D-O-double-G, "With my mind on my money & my money on my mind..."
That might be a bit more interesting to contemplate if the characterization of the previous research is accurate. Same cavaets apply, though. Perhaps, it's actually greedy people - rich or poor - that are more likely to exhibit this behavior as well. I'm not convinced the author of the newspaper article understands much of anything.
It's interesting stuff, though! I probably should get off my lazy ass at some point & go find all of this "previous research" being referred to....but I probably won't.
* BTW, not sure where the "income" hyperlink was supposed to take the curious. It be broke.
