Thursday, 14 January 2021
Being rich makes you less empathetic (even when it’s just Monopoly money)
Today I’m going to talk about the work of social psychologist Paul Piff, whose research interests revolve around social hierarchies, economic inequality, altruism and co-operation. I learned about Piff while working on a French-language documentary inspired by the book Capital in the 21st Century, by French economist Thomas Piketty. In this documentary, Piff explains an experiment in which people playing the board game Monopoly showed disturbing changes in behaviour when they won repeatedly because the researchers had rigged the rules in their favour (more money to begin with, more dice to roll to pass Go more often, etc.)—in other words, had given them more power. I have touched on this same subject in an earlier blog post, about Dacher Keltner’s research on how wealth alienates the wealthy from their humanity. And it turns out to be no accident that these two authors’ findings are so consistent: as I just discovered this morning, they have published many articles together! (more…)
Emotions and the Brain | Comments Closed
Monday, 8 July 2019
Power Weakens Cognitive Abilities To Bond with Other People
This week I’d like to tell you about an article that appeared in The Atlantic in August 2017 and that I’d never gotten around to telling you about before. It was called “Power Causes Brain Damage”, with the subtitle “How leaders lose mental capacities—most notably for reading other people—that were essential to their rise”. The article cites UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner, whose past work has included studies showing that rich people are more inconsiderate in various situations, such as taking turns with their vehicles at 4-way stops. Apparently, personal wealth provides a feeling of unlimited power that causes rich people to become detached from reality. This finding raises serious questions about the state of mind of the many wealthy people who are elected to represent the people as a whole. (more…)
Mental Disorders | No comments
Thursday, 20 April 2017
Learning Empathy
The existence of empathy and altruistic behaviour among various species of animals has been amply demonstrated. Among elephants, examples include comforting members of the herd who are frightened, rescuing others when they get get stuck in mud holes, and adopting orphaned babies. Chimpanzees and bonobos display sophisticated altruistic behaviours in dealing with weak or disabled members of their troops, trying to help them stand, bringing them food, and covering them with vegetation after confirming that they have died.
The human species is no exception. We human beings depend so much on one another and our societies are so complex that our ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, to feel what they are feeling and to act accordingly, is quite obvious. Ethologists and evolutionary biologists agree that in species that form complex societies in which cooperation and mutual assistance constitute an advantage for the entire group, empathy developed naturally. (more…)
Pleasure and Pain | No comments
Tuesday, 14 May 2013
Humans Have No Monopoly on Empathy
One rat springs another rat from prison, then shares some chocolate with him. Sounds like a Saturday-morning cartoon, but that’s what actually happened in a laboratory experiment showing that real live rats can display empathetic behaviour.
These findings, published in the December 7, 2011 issue of the journal Science by Peggy Mason and her colleagues, got a huge amount of media play, because this was the first time that scientists had shown that an animal other than a primate can take action to relieve the distress of a member of its own species. And this suggested the possibility that empathy, previously regarded as unique to human beings and some of the great apes, might instead have far older origins in the animal kingdom. (more…)
Emotions and the Brain | Comments Closed
