Inside the mind of the rich…. maybe not such a pleasant place.

Dangerous thinking. Apparently thats what I am engaged in. It makes a change I suppose. This charge arose in a twitter discussion on my proposal to tax the bejazuz out of the hyper wealthy, the billionaires.  Keith, a member of Renua, is agin this. Fair enough, but his charge and concern is that I am unfairly casting the billionaires as cold hearted and grasping. But… they may well be.  Lets look at some evidence on the psychological aspects of wealth. 

Its a sunday evening so I am not going to spend a whole heap of time on long arguments. I have just started The Long Earth by the late great Pratchett and the thankfully still here  Baxter and its more interesting than I had thought.  So what do we know about the wealthy?

• They are actually quite cold in demeanour and are unable to empathise with the problems of the poor.The price of wealth.  Scientist. 4/21/2012, Vol. 214 Issue 2861, p52-55. 4p.
• They are generally consumed with anxiety, about their money and their kids. “my daughter! my ducats! ” The Fortunate Ones. Atlantic. Apr2011, Vol. 307 Issue 3, p72-80. 7p. 1
• Getting rich makes you more likely to support rightwing policies and makes you less egalitarian http://www.voxeu.org/article/money-makes-people-right-wing-and-inegalitarian
• They are aloof. The higher the social class the lower the number of  international  friendships. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886915004973
• The rich adhere to Geckoism – they see greed as good . http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/28/why-the-rich-are-less-ethical-they-see-greed-as-good/ 
• As wealth grows compassion and empathy declines. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-wealth-reduces-compassion/
• The wealthy give less, proportionally, than the poor, to charity. Piff, P. K., Kraus, M. W., Côté, S., Cheng, B. H., & Keltner, D. (2010). Having less, giving more: The influence of social class on prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 771–784. doi:10.1037/a0020092 but this has recently been challenged http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0133193
• The findings of higher income = less charitable is perhaps a function of perceived and actual inequality, with this finding stronger in more unequal areas. Greater inequality is associated with lower generosity  by the wealthy
• The wealthy in general are less compassionate across a range of behaviors. Class and compassion: Socioeconomic factors predict responses to suffering.
  Stellar, Jennifer E.; Manzo, Vida M.; Kraus, Michael W.; Keltner, Dacher
  Emotion, Vol 12(3), Jun 2012, 449-459. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0026508
• The wealthy are more likely to show narcissistic tendencies. http://psp.sagepub.com/content/40/1/34.short
• Higher social class is associated with both an increased self reporting of empathy and a decreased neurological expression of empathy. The wealthy literally are wired differently. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40167-015-0031-2
• complementing this, greater aultuism and greater biological resilience and flexibility is found amongst less wealthy children. http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/05/22/0956797615578476.abstract
• The wealthier the college network of people the more economically conservative they become. https://www.princeton.edu/csdp/events/MendelbergMcCabeThal10092014/MendelbergMcCabeThal10092014.pdf 
• Higher social class is associated with more instances of unethical behavior. https://repositories.tdl.org/utswmed-ir/handle/2152.5/1303
• The Devil does wear Prada. And Faberge. And Gucci.  The mere act of consuming luxury goods reduces generosity and reduces self control. http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/175364/Wang_umn_0130E_16089.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Enough said. There is a decent amount of decent scientific literature emerging that social class and wealth are related to the empathic and compassionate traits. The higher the lower it seems.