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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.
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
Wisdom is compromise?
The study is absurd at the outset because they have a ridiculous definition of wisdom.
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)