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The Lower Your Social Class, the 'Wiser' You Are, Suggests New Study (sciencemag.org)
Wisdom -- the ability to take the perspectives of others into account and aim for compromise -- comes much more naturally to those who grow up poor or working class, according to a new study by social psychologist Igor Grossman at the University of Waterloo in Canada and his colleagues. Science Magazine reports: To conduct the study, Grossmann and his graduate student Justin Brienza embarked on a two-part experiment. First, they asked 2145 people throughout the United States to take an online survey. Participants were asked to remember a recent conflict they had with someone, such as an argument with a spouse or a fight with a friend. They then answered 20 questions applicable to that or any conflict, including: "Did you ever consider a third-party perspective?" "How much did you try to understand the other person's viewpoint?" and "Did you consider that you might be wrong?" Grossmann and Brienza crunched the data and assigned the participants both a "wise reasoning" score based on the conflict answers and a "social class" score, then plotted the two scores against one another. They found that people with the lowest social class scores -- those with less income, less education, and more worries about money -- scored about twice as high on the wise reasoning scale as those in the highest social class. The income and education levels ranged from working class to upper middle class; neither the very wealthy nor the very poor were well represented in the study.
In the second part of the experiment, the duo recruited 200 people in and around Ann Arbor, Michigan, to take a standard IQ test and read three letters to the Dear Abby advice column. One letter, for example, asked about choosing sides in an argument between mutual friends. Each participant then discussed with an interviewer how they thought the situations outlined in the letters would play out. A panel of judges scored their responses according to various measures of wise reasoning. In the example above, thinking about how an outsider might view the conflict would earn points toward wisdom, whereas relying only on one's own perspective would not. As with the first part of the experiment, those in lower social classes consistently had higher wise-reasoning scores than those in higher social classes, the researchers reported today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. IQ scores, however, weren't associated one way or another with wise reasoning.
In the second part of the experiment, the duo recruited 200 people in and around Ann Arbor, Michigan, to take a standard IQ test and read three letters to the Dear Abby advice column. One letter, for example, asked about choosing sides in an argument between mutual friends. Each participant then discussed with an interviewer how they thought the situations outlined in the letters would play out. A panel of judges scored their responses according to various measures of wise reasoning. In the example above, thinking about how an outsider might view the conflict would earn points toward wisdom, whereas relying only on one's own perspective would not. As with the first part of the experiment, those in lower social classes consistently had higher wise-reasoning scores than those in higher social classes, the researchers reported today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. IQ scores, however, weren't associated one way or another with wise reasoning.
Poor people are not spoiled rotten, nor are they accustomed to be able to make every problem "go away" by application of money. This gives them a whole lot more experience dealing with problems that involves having to deal with things and situations where you just can't in various ways brute force your way.
Also, see "Cake, why don't they eat".
By virtue of having been born on the wrong side of the tracks, I'm pretty much screwed. Stuck on a low level job I hate but hope it's still there next year. My Christmas presents are a pile of bills to pay. My best years have come and gone. I'd rather be a rich fool than a wise pauper.
You are excluding the possibility that many successful people succeed because of their lack of empathy, not despite it.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
It's an important skill, and obviously part of what we call wisdom, but I don't think it's the sine qua non.
I can offer an SSI benefit letter as supporting credentials.
Wisdom -- the ability to take the perspectives of others into account
What the author describes could be many things: diplomacy, empathy, humility even. But it is not wisdom. Though I can understand that people with less money (though that has little to do with "class" or entitlement - excpet possibly in the USA) will be forced to become more skilled in the art of compromise.
Wisdom, as we all know, is not putting tomatoes in a fruit salad.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The higher your class, the less the ability to compromise is developed after a lifetime of getting whatever you want because you have money. Seems about right.
I understand the sentiment, but are you sure about that?
Should my final report card, at the end of my life, be a record of my accumulated assets, or an archive of my virtues, achievements and reputation?
Which of these will touch my descendants?
Be careful what you wish for..
- A friend
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I would rather leave a pile of assets to my next gen, than a pile of virtue which will count for NOTHING in the grand scheme of things. Sure , don't leave a negative legacy behind you i.o.w. don't be a murderer, or a rapist, or a scammer, etc.... But virtue left to your kid/grand kid ? Pah. That sure as hell will warm their heart when the bill comes to be paid, or will help them scale social ladder.... not.
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Wisdom is compromise?
The study is absurd at the outset because they have a ridiculous definition of wisdom.
Making money by treating people like shit doesn't make you successful in my book. It just makes you an asshole.
I think this has a lot to do with it -- with less empathy you're less likely to question your own goals and methods. (*cough* Jobs *cough*)
If true (a big "if"), it would play to stereotypes that the poor view the rich as successful criminals, and the rich see the poor as weak and shiftless.
We have at least some confirmation of this in that a number of successful conservatives have changed from anti-LGBTQ to pro-LGBTQ when their daughter or son came out. Their empathy simply doesn't extend beyond their close associations, while "bleeding heart liberals" empathize with people in far away countries whom they've never met, and possibly never heard of until recently.
It's a well-known phenomenon known as "Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in 3 generations."
"THE Chinese have a saying, “Fu bu guo san dai,” or “Wealth never survives three generations.” America has its own version of this saying: “From shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.” As with most old proverbs, there is a grain of truth to this—and the new rich are searching for ways to avoid history's curse." -- The Economist (likely paywalled)
It's hilarious that you brought up Trump as an example of moneyed parents creating useless children...
He's the president of the United States... You fucking imbecile.
Sorry, but no. First, there's generally no such thing as a solution that is 'optimal' all on its own. Instead, a solution to a problem is optimal for certain selected variables, i.e. if you value X, Y, and Z over all other variables, then you have a shot at finding a solution that is optimal for X, Y, and Z. But in doing so, that solution will be suboptimal for (probably many) other variables. And guess what? Not everyone agrees on which variables are most important.
And this mentality that you're describing is precisely the problem of today's society (at least here in the US). And the core of that problem is the premise of "if person A is right, and person B is wrong".
FWIW, I *do* believe that there is such a thing as right and wrong, but that doesn't mean that every question or issue has a right side and a wrong side. In fact, relatively few societal decisions boil down to choosing between an option that is right and an option that is wrong. Most of the time, the debates arise over different approaches to solving a problem or a question of competing priorities (which turn into questions of resource allocation, etc.).
In these situations, compromise is absolutely *essential*, and yet the problem is that nowadays too many people latch onto their position as being indisputably right. From there they conclude that the other side is undeniably wrong. And then from there they often slide into demonizing the other side for holding onto their wrong view.
And then in the few cases where it is between right and wrong, compromise is often your best shot at maintaining peace - in theory buying everyone time to continue to debate and to try to get people on the wrong side to come around. The alternative is to immediately rip apart the society or relationship, which is often pretty suboptimal.
While there might be times when it does make sense to immediately sever ties and kill the society/relationship, they are pretty rare. There are times when you should literally fight, but they too are rare. And in the rare case when you are in fact facing a right vs wrong scenario, trying to force your 'rightness' on people will almost certainly backfire. In all these cases, compromise is in fact a tool of the wise.
Isn't it strange how, ever since Trump was elected, bigoted classism is now socially acceptable? Modded up to +5. Leftists insist that poor whites who voted for Trump are racist and sexist. The classist bigotry of the Left, which would have been unthinkable for leftists back in the 1930s, is never acknowledged. Moreover, although leftists insist we ought not to stereotype people, leftists are doing it constantly with Trump voters.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!