Study shows that money corrupts even the most honest

THEY say money can corrupt even the most honest of people. Now one social psychologist has revealed a series of experiments that shows this adage to be true.

Instead of transforming people into charitable benefactors, Professor Paul Piff believes money causes people to break the rules at the expense of others.

“It makes you more attuned to your own interests, your own desires, your own welfare,” the University of California researcher told Lucy Hooker at the BBC.

“It isolates you in certain ways from other people psychologically and materially. You prioritise your own needs and your own goals and become less attuned to those around you. In one experiment, Piff spent an afternoon going back and forth over a pedestrian crossing in Los Angeles.

He found that none of the least expensive cars broke the law, while almost 50 percent of the most expensive car drivers sped across the pedestrian crossing.

In another study, Piff brought in more than 100 pairs of strangers into the lab, and flipped a coin to assign one of them to be a rich player in a rigged Monopoly game. The rich players collected twice the salary when they passed Go, and were able to roll both dice instead of one, so they got to move around the board more.

Hidden cameras revealed that rich players became ruder toward the other person, less sensitive to the plight of the poor players, and more demonstrative of their material success. – Daily Mail