Last week Bloomberg published this interesting article about a study that showed that wealthier people are more likely to cheat and lie. About a dozen people forwarded it to me in the same day, which means I must be doing something right. I read it with great interest, but no surprise. In my life I have found that the wealthier and more successful you are in material terms, the harder it is to care about things like character, family, and following the rules. I have also found that the more successful you are in material terms, the more desperate you are for more success.
Thinking about my childhood, I grew up in a comfortably upper middle class family in a wealthy suburb of New York City. The happiest people I knew belonged to a family that was relatively poor. Not poor by real standards, but in comparison to many others in my world. The mom was a teacher, the dad a carpenter. They lived in a two family home with three children. They spent more time together, and were more content, than anyone I knew. I loved being at their house as a child, where everyone was usually home for dinner and laughed and had fun in the simplest ways. Those people would never cheat; they didn’t feel like they needed to; there was nothing to gain that they didn’t already have.
In comparison, I have found as a professor that most cases of academic misconduct that I have had in my classroom involved very strong students. So far, it has never been the “C” student that has cheated, but almost always the student desperate for an A-, that would at worst get a B+. The more successful the student, the more desperate for success they become. In fact, many students feel that they are entitled to an A, so they will do almost anything to get one.
Of course I am generalizing; most of my students are honest regardless of success. But is an interesting phenomenon that the study notes. My explanation at this point comes from the values that we are instilling in most children in America, and perhaps worldwide. Success is measured by financial success, titles, and material wealth. No one tells their kids that they should grow up and be a very content carpenter. Our grading system contributes to this, of course. Outside of writing letters of recommendation, I never get to applaud my B student’s integrity, enthusiasm, and work ethic. I just get to give that student a B. This is a frustration of my job, but I am not sure I can change it.
What do you think? Why are the wealthy more likely to cheat and lie? Or is the study flawed?
15 Comments
Ryan Gee posted on March 5, 2012 at 1:41 pm
There is a key sentence in this article that I believe is an underlying problem, in some cases. The quote states, “Previous research has shown that students who take economics classes are more likely to describe greed as good.” This is a little disconcerting because those who believe in this tend to engage in unethical behavior, as the study and the article show. However, different people regard ethics in different ways, so what exactly is unethical? As we learned in class, there are many approaches to making ethical decisions. I believe that the fact of the matter is that wealthier people tend to engage in legal, “unethical” activities in order for self gain. But this does not mean wealthier people are “unethical” because essentially ethics are in the eyes of the beholder.
Jinfeng Cai posted on March 5, 2012 at 1:54 pm
This is a very complicated but also common phenomena in contemporary society. I personally would argue that why so many wealthy people intend to cheat or lie is because people always want to obtain more though they already have very a lot. Personally, I believe an individual’s happiness does not necessarry relates to how materially wealthy he or she is, but depends on how rich he or she is inside.
Julia Poon posted on March 5, 2012 at 3:35 pm
This is a very interesting article. I think that wealthier people tend to lose sight of morality when greed sets in. Because of the standards we have set in our culture, people always want more. The self focus over powers integrity, and people make selfish decisions. Although this sounds terrible, I believe there is good in everyone and that people just loose sight of their morals when there is an award at the end.
Ting Ting Yang posted on March 5, 2012 at 4:37 pm
Personally I’ve always believed that the more opulent people would adhere to an honorable code of conduct and be as ethical as the not as fortunate ones. This study brings out an interesting point- is self-interest really why the wealthy conduct more unethical actions? From a study like this, there are statistics and facts, but I don’t think we can necessarily assume that the wealthy cheat and lie more just purely out of self-interest. I think in today’s society, we give ourselves so much pressure to succeed. As a Sophomore in SMG, I’ve noticed my ambitious peers already lining up internships for the Summer. I feel like it is rather the innate need to compete and the succeed, to be somehow better than each other that fuels this sort of behavior, not necessarily self-interest. I remember watching “Inside Job” a few years back, and there was an interesting scene where they talked about how Wall Street bankers turned everything into a competition. One Private Jet Plane wasn’t enough, they had to have as much as 5, even though it wasn’t practical at all.
James Choi posted on March 6, 2012 at 12:27 pm
I feel as if the wealthy always drown themselves in the material possessions and in order to satisfy themselves they need to constantly replace old material goods for new ones and always be up to date because they can. I feel like money and material goods, although some necessary and some not, can infect us like a disease always seeking for more blindly and forgetting to put other things in front of us like family, friends, and just our life in general.
Reading your excerpt about your friend and their family, it gives me a chance to just remember the times I had with a friend of mine like that as well. It was always more cheery and brought me to a good mood.
It was interesting reading this because it brings us back to reality of how our world can be!
Yuchen Qin posted on March 6, 2012 at 5:42 pm
I agree with most people’s comments. I would argue for the wealthy that saying poor people are happier and more ethical than wealthy people is too generalized. It is not possibly true that poor people will behave more ethically and live more happily; maybe they simply treasure more the success and happiness that they have already achieved. Fame and Labels make successful people more easily lose themselves, and that’s why some successful people still eagerly want more fame and success to prove their value of being, regardless of whatever means they use.
In addition, this investigation was carried out only in the scope of America. If we broaden our sight to the whole globe, to some less developed countries, this rule may not work anymore. In some part of the world, stealing, theft, and rubbery often happen on the poorest class of the society, because they feel it hard even to make a living. In my home country, China, often those who cheat in exams are student who cannot even pass the exams, because they fear to fail. Students with good grades usually also have integrity and discipline themselves well.
Chih-Yi Kao (Jessica) posted on March 7, 2012 at 1:08 pm
I found this blog post very interesting. I really can connect to your childhood story because I also found myself sometimes being jealous of the kids who had a simple, happy family. I think there are different ways to achieve happiness. People can be happy by simply spending time with their family or spending money without worrying about it. However, the reason why students thrive for better grades is that we believe better grades can lead to a successful and wealthy life in the future. I think there is too much uncertainty about how our family style is going to turn out in the future; therefore, at this point, our grades are what we can control to have better chance to reach success and, at the same time, wishing that happiness might come along.
Nayara Silva posted on March 8, 2012 at 5:09 pm
This study is very interesting and it connects to what I have learned in my past economic classes. In many studies they show how people in poor countries are able to increase their happiness with simple things such as food and water, whereas people in developed countries need to increase their income dramatically to be just as happy. This can be tied to the fact that wealthy people usually grow up receiving most of the things they want whereas poor do not. Hence, many wealthy people being brought up like that will not accept a “no”. It may not be because they are bad people but it is just an unusual thing for them to not get what want, as a result they turn to other methods such as cheating. Poor people on the other hand, are used to not receiving what they want so they are less likely to cheat because they are able to cope better with a situation where things do not go as planned, though there are still many poor people who will cheat and lie to get to the top.
Katerina Papatheodorou posted on March 12, 2012 at 9:58 pm
I also agree with most people’s comments, and especially with Julia’s first sentence. I also believe that people are not born cheaters and liars, but become that when they feel that their future success is being threatened. And people who live their lives waiting for that moment, for that opportunity that will make them successful and rich, will indeed do anything to protect it if they feel they are moving away.
I guess is no coincidence that business people (always according to a study) share the same 3 characteristics called the “dark triad” with sociopaths!!
Hope Blalock posted on March 20, 2012 at 9:39 pm
I obviously don’t know the nitty gritty details of this study or others like it, but it seems to me that it could be flawed in a major way. Isn’t it possible that this selfishness and greediness is what caused the wealthy to make it to the top? Regardless of what occupation one wishes to pursue, I think it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there and more often than not, the ones who really have the ambition and drive to make it to the top are willing to cut corners to get themselves there. Based on my opinion, I think it is also likely that these negative attributes mentioned in the study were present before the individuals gained their wealth and power.
Hope Blalock posted on March 20, 2012 at 9:40 pm
That being said, I don’t think being unethical is the only way to be successful, but it is certainly a method that some use to “make it to the top,” so to speak.
Renee Chen posted on March 30, 2012 at 5:33 pm
I think the wealthy may be more likely to cheat sometimes because they have the pressure to keep up a certain image of themselves. Since they don’t want to fall out of their social standing, they may resort to more unethical ways to help themselves be successful in the eyes of others.
Carolyn Le posted on April 7, 2012 at 2:15 pm
This reminds me of this article that I had recently read. There was this teenage girl of a very wealthy family. She said that she felt the need to steal something from the local convenience store at least once every week because she liked adding to her collection of stuff. She also revealed that she thought that maybe she did this because she secretly wanted to get caught to catch the attention of those around her.
Sarah Hu posted on April 23, 2012 at 1:54 pm
During many of the “most ethical companies” Q&A sessions, I had a thought that relates a lot to this article.
When questions were brought up such as layoffs of employees, and with Toms the question of not actually donating as customers were footing the bill, presenting teams are quick to respond, defending the “business nature” of the company, that cutting costs are good for a company, it’s not a non-profit so being greedy is expected.
I think I completely share this viewpoint, bred into business students, that profit is good, and layoffs are just this concept that occurs during recessions, not visualizing the actual people who are now unemployed and struggle to meet ends. If a friend relates to me about someone close to their home (parent) being fired I am extremely sympathetic, but when I see figures disclosed about thousands laid off by a big corporation, I can see myself defending its actions, citing interests of shareholders, that the blame is not on the corporation (economy/market downturn), etc.
Perhaps the wealthier are taught (I hesitate to say indoctrined) by academia (economics, business, etc.) these macro principles and defense of these questionable actions are extrapolated to everyday life. I also agree with many of the other points touched upon.
I can see that people who are wealthy had to go above and beyond to get to that point, that this is something that is valuable to them (perhaps high on their list of principles) and other concepts, such as ethical considerations, come afterwards.
Scott Pheifer posted on September 12, 2012 at 10:31 am
Fredric Nietzsche master mentality vs slave mentality i think sums this up. people with a master mentality create their own virtues of what is right and wrong and usually they are people who are successful. slave mentality on the other hand would be like following a religion or helping the poor makes you a virtuous person. Both have there merits, but when it comes down to it i would like to believe I help the poor and pay my taxes because I chosen that its the right thing to do, not to have society dictate to me what makes me a “good” person.