IG NOBEL ECONOMICS PRIZE 2026 [USA, MEXICO, CANADA] Paul Piff, Daniel Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner, for amassing evidence that upper class people are more likely to snatch from a children’s supply of candy, and engage in other kinds of unethical behavior.
REFERENCE: “Higher Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior,” Paul K. Piff, Daniel M. Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 109, no. 11, 2012, pp. 4086-4091. <doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118373109> WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Paul Piff
People from all economic classes can feel those below them don’t deserve more than they have. Even between to objectively poor people.
WOOSH
yep, and they all see the class above them as ‘rich’ and themselves as ‘working-class/normal/struggling’.
i remember my own parents going on about ‘poor’ and ‘rich’ in our town, and the income differential was like, maybe a factor of 4-6x. the poor people made 20k, we made 30k and the ‘rich’ people made like 50k. but this was in a rural area where we had no exposure to people making 100K+ let alone millions.
people don’t get how the psychology of wealth is all relativistic. where i live now people making 300K+ think they are ‘poor’ because they compare themselves to people making millions. and the people making millions think they are poor because they compare themselves to people making 10s of millions.
my sister makes 500K a year, lives in a 5million dollar house, and endless talks about the people living in 10 or 20 million dollar homes and how she is ‘just a normal working person’, and she thinks those are the ‘rich’ and she is the ‘poor’. the place she lives the ‘poor’ people make like 150-200K, and well people making under 100K just don’t exist.