At first blush, it sounds like one of those stereotypes that’s easy to disprove: the Grey-Poupon crowd gets a bad rap not because they actually look down their noses at the rest of us, but because we feel like they do, right? Well, not according to a new study from psychologists at UC Berkeley, who found that there may be a sets of nonverbal cues used in conversation which wealthy people use differently than their economic subordinates.
The study paired off participants and told them to conduct job-interview-style interviews of one another. They were videotaped, and researchers combed through the tapes counting the number of “engagement cues” displayed by each interviewer. (These include behaviors like nodding encouragingly, looking interested, laughing politely at appropriate moments, etc, when another person is talking.) They also looked for disengagement cues (AKA “rudeness”) like avoiding eye contact, fidgeting, interrupting and checking one’s watch. Tallying the results, the study found overwhelmingly that socioeconomic status profoundly affects the way people engage with others: perhaps not surprisingly, a significantly higher percentage of wealthy participants exhibited disengagement cues, whereas less-wealthy participants were more likely to engage.
The researchers draw a simple, almost Darwinian conclusion: the wealthy don’t engage as readily as the less-wealthy because they have less to gain from being liked. Another way of expressing this: the wealthy and powerful are less dependent on others, so if they act a bit like they could take you or leave you, it’s because, well, they could.
Of course, this isn’t universally true of everyone, and I’m sure all of us know people who cut against the grain of this study’s finding (or at least seem to). But I’m interested — overall, do you find the study’s results to be true? Do we engage differently depending on our socioeconomic status?
Story via Scientific American.
Comments (16)
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They should have done the study before AND after the recession to see if individuals’ behaviour changed much.
posted by Allie on 2-11-2009 at 9:10 am
I’m curious about the entire spectrum of wealth. Are middle soci-economic groups the most engaging with a disengagement trend towards the poles? Or do engagement and socioeconomic status have a negative correlation? Also, does it depend on what “group” they were raised in versus belong to as adults?
posted by Bri on 2-11-2009 at 9:42 am
I’m with Bri on this one. I went to a private university that was mostly thoroughly middle class people and everyone was (seemed?) super friendly.
I was surprised the report didn’t go more in depth on the socio-economic stats of the people in the study.
posted by nutmeag on 2-11-2009 at 10:16 am
Like most original studies this one will encourage other researchers to take their own tangents. I think the topics mentioned in the previous posts will show up in a study in the next 2 years. Myself, I would like to see a study of the privately educated versus those that attended public/state schools. I think the results do point at a very real behavioral pattern that is worth investigating further.
posted by Adam on 2-11-2009 at 11:04 am
I think an interesting study would be how people who grew up wealthy vs. people who became wealthy as adults, either through a windfall or work.
My own assumption would be that people who grew up wealthy would be perceived as looking down on others. Adults who become wealthy through hard work, or even maybe a lottery win, would probably be more engaging than disengaging because they remember where they came from. Just a guess.
posted by Shelly on 2-11-2009 at 11:52 am
I use to work at a retail drug store near the University of Washington, where the store was close the affluent area. The majority of rich people who shopped there were indeed rude, especially when they picked up their prescriptions. They thought since they had the big bucks, they should be able to be first in line and all others should be behind them. I transferred stores when I saw how some of them were treating there elderly parents. I just can’t tolerate rudeness from the rich.
posted by Kat on 2-11-2009 at 12:06 pm
Should do a study on severely obese people. They are quite rude and can be very narrowminded.
posted by Dianna on 2-11-2009 at 12:21 pm
I assume you’re obese yourself then, Dianna?
posted by Katie on 2-11-2009 at 12:28 pm
I would agree with Bri on this one. I work for a state agency and I find the very poor to be EXTREMELY rude. It’s also all relative: I consider yelling and stinking in public to be much ruder than fidgeting or looking at one’s watch.
posted by Dave on 2-11-2009 at 1:00 pm
I did a fundraising event for a local community theatre. There are plenty of very wealthy people in this area (Charlottesville, VA) The Kluge’s alone could buy and sell Peru a couple of times over. And it was obvious the rudness was abound. Some of the guests were very nice. Most didn’t even look at us. Even the actors who were supposed to be hob nobbing with the guests as a joke were being blown off. I was playing Don Corleone for heaven’s sake and was being snubbed by more than half the guest list. (It was a Godfather themed party). It was an interesting social experiment.
posted by Nathan on 2-11-2009 at 1:29 pm
I think another aspect to consider may be apprehension or fear based upon interactions with people. Wealthier folks not only have less to gain through their interactions, but also more to lose. Money often breads paranoia as people work to protect what they have.
posted by Jesse on 2-11-2009 at 2:18 pm
I worked for a retail video store chain for about 2 years, and during that period I worked at stores in both wealthy and lower middle class areas. I found the customers in the welathier part of town to be more demanding and rude, especially when it came to things like waiting their turn in line and having access to movies that were in high demand. They seemed to think these rules did not apply to them.
Conversely, in the store in the lower middle class area, people were much nicer, but we had a much bigger shoplifting problem.
Personally, I’d take shoplifters over rude jerks any day.
posted by Jess on 2-11-2009 at 2:57 pm
I worked in a woman’s retail clothing store for several years and we were located in a fairly affluent area, though we did have a fair share of middle class customers too. I definitely had some wonderful customers, but I have to say the ones that had more money had a tendency to be more rude. It certainly wasn’t all of them though the the levels of rudeness varied greatly. I had one customer who insisted on being dressed! Others insisted on staying past store closing so that they could “shop in peace”. They apparently expected there to be paparazzi outside waiting for them or something. Sure, I had terrible middle class customers too, but it tended to be a different sort of “brand” of rudeness.
posted by Jen on 2-11-2009 at 3:10 pm
I’m surprised at all the people with bad retail experience in wealthy neighborhoods. During my college/retail days I worked for the same chain in do different location, one significantly wealthier than the other. I found the customers in the wealthier neighborhood to be more patient, more friendly, more polite and far more pleasant in general.
posted by Jen B on 2-11-2009 at 4:49 pm
Thought of this paragraph, written by Tom Robbins, right away. From “Jitterbug Perfume”
The rich are the most discriminated-against minority in the world. Openly or covertly, everybody hates the rich because, openly or covertly, everybody envies the rich. Me, I love the rich. Somebody has to love them. Sure, a lot o’ rich people are assholes, but believe me, a lot o’ poor people are assholes, too, and an asshole with money can at least pay for his own drinks.”
Makes me laugh.
posted by Kelsea on 2-11-2009 at 7:02 pm
Hmm, really depends on circumstances, doesn’t it? We all tend to be a bit “disengaged” from people we don’t need anything from. As for being downright rude or not, I’ve experienced rudeness and gracious behaviour from people of all socio-economic backgrounds.
posted by Pam on 2-11-2009 at 8:44 pm