According to a new study, people with less money are more likely to share their wealth than rich people

• A new study suggests that people can contribute more to society when they have less wealth themselves.
• People who "earn" more wealth, rather than being randomly assigned, are the least likely to give
• Even though it has nothing to do with the level of income. Empathy, the researchers said
• that this could be due to the fact that less wealthy people have more to gain from the contribution of all others.

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More money may be less likely to share their wealth than those who earn less. This is according to a new study from the Queen Mary University of London, published in the journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology.

The researchers conducted a social experiment where people were recruited to play real money games. People were assigned as "lower status" or "higher status", which determined how much money they were getting at the beginning, which meant wealth.

Participants asked participants to decide how much money they wanted to keep and how much they wanted to donate to a chat group, which would be shared by all.

Sometimes the wealth of people was determined by chance, other times it was based on their effort

. than those of higher status. And those who have earned their "high status" would contribute even less than when they received wealth by chance.

"For high-status individuals, the way in which wealth was achieved, whether by chance or effort, seemed to be the key factor determining the level of cooperation observed," said Ma Gda Osman, a professor at the University of Toronto. 39; Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences and lead author of the study

"This was not the case for individuals with low status. How they got their lower status made no difference to their behavior in the game. "

If you gain high status by effort rather than chance, she said, you are more If your wealth is limited, you have more incentive to cooperate. "

" The point here being that even if one acts in cooperation, it does not. There is no reason to think that it is purely for altruistic reasons, "she said.On the contrary, you hope that by contributing more, others will do it too, and finally you will benefit from it.

Even so, there is no guarantee that everyone in the game would do the same thing as you – in other words, you are taking a bigger risk by contributing more as a lower person, because you have no idea if others will reciprocate.

"The other concludes Surprising usion is that empathy has virtually no impact on promoting pro-social behavior, in other words contributing money to the group pot, "Osman said. "This is of importance because there are many claims that empathy is the glue that forces people to act socially. money is important, empathy plays virtually no role in improving prosocial behaviors. "

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