The age of entitlement: how wealth breeds narcissism

As people get richer, they are more likely to feel entitled, to exploit others,
and to cheat. That extends to politics too
Wealth cultivates attitudes that are against redistribution and for
privilege.'
Call it the asshole effect. That is the term coined by US psychologist Paul
Piff after he did some stunning new research into the effects of wealth and
inequality on peoples attitudes.
As we ponder Joe Hockeys budget and his division of the world into
"leaners" and "lifters", as we learn from Oxfam that the richest 1% of
Australians now own the same wealth as the bottom 60%, we would do
well to consider the implications of Piffs studies. He found that as people
grow wealthier, they are more likely to feel entitled, to become meaner
and be more likely to exploit others, even to cheat.
Piff conducted a series of revealing experiments. One was remarkably
simple. Researchers positioned themselves at crossroads. They watched
out for aggressive, selfish behaviour among drivers, and recorded the
make and model of the car. Piff found drivers of expensive, high-status
vehicles behave worse than those sputtering along in battered Toyota
Corollas.
They were four times more likely to cut off drivers with lower status
vehicles. As a pedestrian looking carefully left and right before using a
crossing, you should pay attention to the kind of car bearing down on you.
Drivers of high-status vehicles were three times as likely to fail to yield at
pedestrian crossings. In contrast, all the drivers of the least expensive
type of car gave way to pedestrians.
Fascinated by these results, Piff and his colleagues then looked at what
created these impulses to bad behaviour. In their laboratory, the richest
students were more likely to consider "stealing or benefiting from things to
which they were not entitled" than those from a middle-class or lowerclass background. Even people simply primed to feel rich helped
themselves to more sweets meant for children in a lab next door than
those primed to feel disadvantaged.
The reason, it turns out, is that even thoughts of being wealthy can create
a feeling of increased entitlement you start to feel superior to everyone
else and thus more deserving: something at the centre of narcissism. They
found this was true of people who were, in real life, better off. Wealthier
people were more likely to agree with statements like "I honestly feel Im
just more deserving than other people" and place themselves higher on a
self-assessed "class ladder" that indicated increasing levels of income,

education and job prestige. This had straightforward and clearly

measurable effects on behaviour.
For example, when told that they would have their photograph taken, welloff people were more likely to rush to the mirror to check themselves out
and adjust their appearance. Asked to draw symbols, like circles, to
represent how they saw themselves and others, more affluent people drew
much larger circles for themselves and smaller ones for the rest of
humankind. If you think of yourself as larger than life, larger and more
important than other people, it is hardly surprising that your behaviour
would become oriented towards getting what you think you deserve.
As Piff says, this goes way beyond the individual, to noxious social
attitudes like being punitive towards the poor while living the "because
Im worth it" lifestyle. As a society becomes wealthier, it can get more
narcissistic, less empathetic and unwilling to look after the vulnerable. A
majority of Republicans in a recent poll said they thought the poor in
America had it easy. Greater feelings of entitlement might also lead to a
tax revolt by the upper classes. It is the logic of "Ive earned it", "Its
mine", and, "Why should I have to use my hard-earned cash for those
inferior scroungers, the poor?"
Wealth cultivates attitudes that are against redistribution and for privilege,
Piff said:
The more severe inequality becomes, the more entitled people may feel
and less likely to share resources they become. The wealthier [that]
segments of society become then, the more vulnerable communities may
be to selfish tendencies and the less charity the least among us can
expect.
This is just what happened with Joe Hockeys budget. According to John
Hewson, the disposable income of lower income and single income groups
were cut by 12-15%, while those on higher incomes only suffered a
temporary cut of less than 1%.
It would be reasonable to object here, and point to famous and inspiring
examples of philanthropy by wealthy individuals like Bill Gates. Yet Piff
found such generosity from the wealthy was by no means the norm. In
another arresting and counterintuitive finding, he discovered the richer the
meaner despite having more to give, wealthier people were less likely to
be generous and give to charity.
Well-off people were less likely to help a person who entered the
laboratory in distress, unless they had just watched a video about child
poverty. In a series of controlled experiments, lower-income people and
those who identified themselves as being on a relatively low social rung

were consistently more generous with limited goods than upper-class

participants were.
"Theres this idea that the more you have, the less entitled and more
grateful you feel; and the less you have, the more you feel you deserve.
Thats not what we find," Piff said. "This seems to be the opposite of
noblesse oblige."
Outside the lab, Piff found that the rich donated a smaller percentage of
their wealth than poorer people. In 2011, the wealthiest Americans, those
with earnings in the top 20%, contributed 1.3% of their income to charity,
while those in the bottom 20% donated 3.2% of their income. The trend to
meanness was worst in plush suburbs where everyone had a high income,
and never laid eyes on a poor person. Insulation from people in need, Piff
concluded, dampened charitable impulses.
Poorer people were also more likely to give to those charities servicing the
genuinely needy. The rich gave to high-status institutions such as already
well-endowed art galleries, museums and universities, while Feeding
America, which deals with the nations poorest, got nothing.
These qualities are not set in concrete. "Were not suggesting rich people
are bad at all," said Piff, "but rather that psychological effects of wealth
have these natural effects. It is, he said, a function of greater prosperity,
rather than innate qualities of rich people.
Piff found that when shown images of children in poverty, the wealthy
could behave more empathetically. Like the long campaign for the NDIS,
which sensitised people to the plight of those with a disability or those
caring for them, people can respond to good political leadership which
primes them for generosity rather than meanness.
However, as our society gets wealthier, we need to pay attention to his
sober observation:
While having money doesnt necessarily make anybody anything, the rich
are way more likely to prioritise their own self-interests above the interests
of other people. They are more likely to exhibit characteristics we would
stereotypically associate with, say, assholes.
As inequality mounts and the policies entrenching it remain, as politicians
are increasingly drawn from the top 10% or even 1%, we need to pay heed
to this research.

The whole idea of "leaners" and "lifters" is the central teaching of the right
wing ideologue, Ayn Rand, who penned books like The Virtue of
Selfishness. Its a self-serving crock. Rand found out the hard way. After a
lifetime proselytising on behalf of the "producers" and denouncing anyone
needing government assistance as "parasites," when Rand became old
and sick, she discovered that even a bestselling author could not afford
health care in the neoliberal US. She availed herself of Medicare and
ended her life on what she had despised social security. Maybe Joe
Hockey will learn in old age that leaning comes to all of us.
This is an edited extract from Anne Manne's new book, The Life of I: the
new culture of narcissism, published by Melbourne University Press