In the literary works, the rich have a stereotyped image that is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people: the unscrupulous, self-serving Eugene Grace. In our daily chats, money is often associated with moral corruption and is seen as a corrosive force. The elite who have achieved great success in personal wealth is also the hope of a gentleman. Related psychological research even portrays the rich as a group of cold-blooded selfish people: in experiments, high-income individuals tend to take more sugar from their children, have less sympathy for cancer patients, and are unwilling Help people who are in trouble, etc. This is what the saying goes, for the rich, not the benevolence.
However, is this really the case?
Researchers at the University of Toronto, Stéphane Côté, Julian House, and Robb Willer of Stanford University, have found through empirical research that high-income individuals are only at economic heights. Equal in the region is better than the poor. In other words, where the economy is more equal, the rich are more generous than the poor. The results were published in the December 2015 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Researchers believe that the extent of economic inequality, or the extent to which wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small group of people, is a key macro factor that affects whether the rich are more generous or more awkward. To test this idea, researchers conducted a survey of 1,498 residents across the United States to compare the generosity of different income groups in different regions.
Researchers use Gini coefficients to measure the extent of income inequality. A Gini coefficient of 0 means absolute equality, that is, everyone has the same income. When the Gini coefficient is 1, it means absolute inequality, that is, all income is earned by one person, and others are zero income.
The measure of the generosity of the respondents is based on a behavioral test: the dictator game. The people who participated in the survey were told that they would be randomly assigned as the decider and get ten lottery tickets, each of which would win $10 or $500 (two lottery tickets each in the total lottery). As determinants, they may decide to transfer a portion of the lottery ticket to the next participant, who does not have any lottery tickets. The deciding person knows that the next participant may come from any place in the country, and it is decided that people cannot meet the object of charity and get a return. Therefore, their charity will damage their own interests and reduce the possibility of winning. At the same time, the lottery pool is fixed, which means that the total prize money that people can get in the game is fixed. Determining people's charity will not bring them other benefits.
But is the "dictator game" really effective? After all, the testees are in a lab environment that is very different from the environment in which they make decisions in real life; the lotteries they allocate are not their own hard-earned income, so they may be more willing to donate; they are also likely to have the psychology of wooing researchers ( Experimenter demand effect, which tends to donate more of your own lottery tickets. Matthias Benz, a researcher at the University of Zurich, and Stephan Meier, an economist at the Boston Research Center in the Federal Reserve, compared the two scholarships of the University’s freshmen at the time of enrollment and their hypothetical donations in the lab. In the experimental situation, people's donations were consistent. This experiment shows that dictator games can reflect people's actual donation wishes.
The researchers performed a linear regression analysis of donations in the dictator's game and the income of all individuals. The results showed that there was no overall correlation between donations and income. This means that high-income individuals are not necessarily more embarrassed than low-income individuals.
Figure 1: The vertical axis represents the number of lottery votes donated by the participants. The blue dotted line represents the relationship between individual household income and generosity in a more economically viable state (Wyoming). The grey dotted line represents the relationship between individual household income and generosity in the region with average economic equality. The red line represents the relationship between individual household income and generosity in the most unequal regions of the economy (District of Columbia).
However, if the factors of economic inequality are also taken into account, the linear relationship between generosity and income is immediately revealed. As shown in Figure 1, in areas with the most unequal economics, income levels are negatively correlated with generosity; in areas where the economy is most equal, income levels are positively correlated with generosity. At the same time, according to the estimation of the regression curve, when the Gini coefficient is higher than 0.485, a negative correlation occurs. When the Gini coefficient is lower than 0.454, the positive correlation is significant.
To test the stability of this result, the researchers controlled individual factors related to income, such as age, gender, ethnicity, education, employment status, marital status, religious beliefs, political inclinations, and the total amount of bonuses; It also controls social factors related to inequality, such as median income, population, urban population ratio, age distribution, ethnic distribution, and gender distribution. Subsequent test results show that the relationship between income and economic inequality is still significant.
It should be noted that this survey does not give cause and effect. For example, there may be a selection effect, that is, those with high incomes and generosity have moved to states with more equal economic levels, because the more equal social income distribution in these places is consistent with their public interest. To prove the causality of economic inequality and generosity, the researchers did an experiment.
The researchers recruited 704 subjects from Amazon Mechanical Turk Workers. Subjects were randomized into two groups (which means that there was no statistical difference in the membership characteristics of the two experimental groups), and each watched a pie chart describing the gap between the rich and the poor in their own state. The first group sees the statistics of the gap between the rich and the poor, and the second group sees the gap between the rich and the poor. In other words, the two groups of participants did not see the actual gap between the rich and the poor in their region. After watching, participants will describe the gap between the rich and the poor in their area. On the surface of the experiment, those who saw the gap between the rich and the poor have generally described the gap between the rich and the poor in their own locations. The other group is the opposite. Subsequently, as in previous research, participants participated in the “dictator game” and considered how many lottery tickets they would give to the next subject.
Figure 2: The vertical axis represents the number of lottery votes donated by the participants. The red line indicates the relationship between the income and generosity of the individual family whose economy is described as unequal. The blue line indicates the relationship between the income and generosity of the individual family that the economy is described as equal.
As shown in Figure 2, in an experimental group where economic inequality was described relatively higher, high-income individuals were more embarrassed than low-income individuals. In the experimental group where economic inequality was described relatively low, there was no significant correlation between income levels and generosity.
That is to say, the generosity of high-income individuals varies with their perception of the disparity between the rich and the poor. If they believe that they live in a more equal place, they will be more generous. There are no statistical differences in the 704 subjects here. They have different generosity tendencies because of their knowledge of the gap between the rich and the poor in their own places. Therefore, through this experiment, we have further confirmed that it is the gap between the rich and the poor in a society that has led to changes in people's generosity.
Why does this happen? Currently, researchers have only one guess.
It is likely that in areas where wealth is unevenly distributed, the rich tend to think that they are superior to the general public. When people begin to compare with others in a condescending manner, they will naturally think that they are more important, and more wealth is what they deserve. In addition, in areas of economic inequality, the lives of the poor are significantly more miserable, and the pain without economic status is even more dazzling, so the rich will refuse to share their resources because of fear of losing their privileged status. At the same time, when the rich live in areas where the gap between the rich and the poor is wide, they tend to justify their economic advantages. Especially in areas with severe economic inequalities in the United States, high-income individuals are more inclined to believe that only hard work is the legitimate source of wealth. These people are likely to refuse to donate their resources.
If this conclusion is valid, the unequal economic status actually reduces the incentives for the rich to be charitable. Therefore, correcting the inequality between the rich and the poor cannot follow the traditional view and rely on the charity of the rich to be more effective. A diverse strategy.