Slashdot Mirror
Rich People Pay Less Attention To Other People, Says Study (businessinsider.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: In a small recent study, researchers from New York University found that those who considered themselves in higher classes looked at people who walked past them less than those who said they were in a lower class did. The results were published in the journal of the Association for Psychological Science. According to Pia Dietze, a social psychology doctoral student at NYU and a lead author of the study, previous research has shown that people from different social classes vary in how they tend to behave towards other people. So, she wanted to shed some light on where such behaviors could have originated. The research was divided into three separate studies. For the first, Dietze and NYU psychology lab director Professor Eric Knowles asked 61 volunteers to walk along the street for one block while wearing Google Glass to record everything they looked at. These people were also asked to identify themselves as from a particular social class: either poor, working class, middle class, upper middle class, or upper class. An independent group watched the recordings and made note of the various people and things each Glass wearer looked at and for how long. The results showed that class identification, or what class each person said they belonged to, had an impact on how long they looked at the people who walked past them. During Study 2, participants viewed street scenes while the team tracked their eye movements. Again, higher class was associated with reduced attention to people in the images. For the third and final study, the results suggested that this difference could stem from the way the brain works, rather than being a deliberate decision. Close to 400 participants took part in an online test where they had to look at alternating pairs of images, each containing a different face and five objects. Whereas higher class participants took longer to notice when the face was different in the alternate image compared to lower classes, the amount of time it took to detect the change of objects did not differ between them. The team reached the conclusion that faces seem to be more effective in grabbing the attention of individuals who come from relatively lower class backgrounds.
Interesting. I had a fellow on the the train yesterday ask me for food. When I told him I didn't have any money (true), he said he didn't want money, just a loaf of bread. I had just spent nearly the last of the money in my bank account at the grocery shop (due to a banking stuff-up, payday was delayed a couple of days this month). I didn't have any bread, but I gave him one of the two bricks of cheese I'd just purchased and wished him luck in finding some bread to go with it.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The study only had two nominally "upper class" individuals in it, meaning the study has too few samples to say anything about "upper class". The only thing you might infer is that middle class people pay less attention than lower class people.
But the class assignment is based on self-reports. A lot of rich people consider themselves middle class, and some middle class people by income consider themselves upper class. So, the study really says that people who consider themselves to be of a higher class pay less attention.
But wait, that's still not right. What they actually measured is "dwell time". The differences in dwell time are small and they recorded only 1 minute of video or used images on monitors. In addition, they didn't control for other factors that vary with socioeconomic status, such as level of education and IQ.
So, the study says nothing about "rich people" and next to nothing about "upper class people". And what it says about lower vs middle class may have nothing to do with attention or class.
My mother also told me not to stare amongst the many etiquettes she tried to instill in me.
You sure? Are you sure you're not also biased, then? Should we just give up and embrace whatever personality/cargo/political cult gets us off?
A few quick searches to see if I was even close in my assumption.
The author of the businessweek text has a degree in zoology and 'science journalism'. ..and her twitter suggests a distinct political bias all of its own
http://www.businessinsider.com...
https://twitter.com/linzasaur
Pia Dietze has a major in psychology and focused on what? Yup. 'Class relations' etc.. To be fair, this looks like her phd thesis, at least based on this.. (scroll down or txt search for dietze)
https://psych.nyu.edu/programs... (note the reference to eric knowles in her bio)
https://psych.nyu.edu/knowles/
I think that pretty much sums him up in terms of his bias.
My bias was on the right track. More progressives looking to play with numbers to justfy whining about rich people
Steve Jobs once remarked that mediocre people focus on other people, while smart people focus on ideas.
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." - Eleanor Roosevelt.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Confidence gained from their private schooling.
I'm not a rich person, but some of the people in my social circle can certainly be classed as rich, while others should be classed as "middle class but working extremely hard to send their kids to private school", and others are normal middle class who send their kids to public school (I'm in the UK here). I have no kids of my own.
One thing you would immediately notice when interacting with the kids of this fairly diverse group is that those kids that go to private school have significantly more confidence in interaction and themselves than the kids that go to public school. They are taught in different ways, and they are individually fostered and curated by their school teachers and support assistance, and they have a lot of support when it comes to "soft skills" such as confidence and interaction.
Kids who go to private school are much more confident in themselves and their actions.
More progressives looking to play with numbers to justify whining about rich people
Your bias sees these studies as part of a political movement, mine sees them as part of the strangely recursive science of anthropology. From the moment we are born to the day we lose our mind, watching others is how we navigate the society we find ourselves in. Those at the top of the totem pole are no longer trying to navigate, they are either trying to steer or have anchored in a safe and pleasant harbour.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
> Bias is irrelevant. The methodology is either valid or invalid in relation to the hypothesis and the results. Are the findings supported by the evidence?
Bias can, and does, profoundly skew direct results and their interpretation. This is why double blind studies are so useful, to help avoid experimental bias. Thee was an excellent example of this in the 1970's, involving Jacques Benveniste, a supporter of homeopathic medicine in his immunological research. His positive results could not be replicated when the experiments were done by a review committee with better double blind methods.
The same can be seen in almost every business plan and employee evaluation.
"There are regional and generational differences"
Exactly!!! I live in Alabama and it's considered courteous to speak to total strangers. Good morning, good evening, thank you, you're welcome, and have a nice day are ALL spoken and heard every day here. Heck, we even hold doors open for strangers. We're a friendly bunch down here. Even rich people are friendly! It's nothing unusual to see a rich person sitting next to and conversing with a poor person at a football game. Y'all just need to learn some manners.
Proverbs 18:23 When the poor speak, they have to be polite, but when the rich answer, they are rude.
"Average" people are tired of the crap, period.
We are assaulted all day, every day, about how horrible we are. We are too greedy, we are destroying the world, we are racists because we want the existing written law enforced. It is a non-stop assault and people are just tired of it. This study is outright flawed just to run the current narrative that middle class workers in the US are horrible people, and the more successful they are the worse they are.
Meanwhile, you have a presidential candidate doubling down on this while TAKING BRIBES. She not only takes bribes, but bashes police officers, PAYS people to riot at her political opponent's rallys, and basically says the successful middle class are the ones to blame. She takes BRIBES while in office, and lies, and corrupts the FBI and DOJ and then says WE are the problem and you jump up and down agreeing with that sentiment.
Keep it up. The days of intimidating people into being silent by threatening to call them names is nearly over.
When did you become so anti-middle class?
... News at 11.
Quite. Only last night I was reading Joseph Conrad's "The Arrow of Gold" written 1919, where he describes two gawkers (Blunt and his mother, themselves middle=class) come to watch a high society painter (Henry Allègre) and his mistress on their morning ride in the Bois de Boulogne.
Mr. Blunt and his indiscreet mother .. had one more chance of a good stare. ... [Allègre and his mistress] came riding very slowly abreast of the Blunts. ...[The girl's] expression was serious and her eyes thoughtfully downcast. .. Mr. Blunt had never before seen Henry Allègre so close. .... Blunt was .... wondering if [Allegre would] take off his hat. But he did not. Perhaps he didn’t notice. Allègre was not a man of wandering glances.
Things have always been so.