“Social Status and Unethical Behavior: Two Replications of the Field Studies in Et Al 2012”, 2023-01-05 ():
Prominent social psychologists and major media outlets have put forward the notion that people of high socioeconomic status (SES) are more selfish and behave more unethically than people of low SES.
In contrast, other research in economics and sociology has hypothesized and found a positive relationship between SES and prosocial and ethical behavior.
We review the empirical evidence for these contradictory findings and conduct two direct, well-powered, and preregistered replications of the field studies by et al 2012 to test the relationship between SES and unethical/selfish behavior.
Unlike the original findings, we find no evidence of a positive relationship between SES and unethical/selfish behavior in the two field replication studies.
[Keywords: social class, socioeconomic status, prosocial behavior, ethical behavior, replication]
…However, other articles report the opposite pattern, whereby people of higher social status behave more prosocially than those of lower social status (for example, et al 2021; 2006; 2011; 2008; 2007; et al 2015; 2007; Rajan et al 200915ya; Ramirez-2006; 2001; et al 2019; et al 2015; von 2019). Moreover, direct replications of laboratory studies in et al 2012 (Studies 5 & 7) do not find evidence for the negative relationship between social status and prosocial behavior ( et al 2017a, 2017b; Clerke et al 2018).
…It should be noted, however, that direct replications of laboratory Studies 5 & 7 in et al 2012 failed to corroborate the original findings ( et al 2017a, 2017b; et al 2018). For instance, SES is positively related to self-reported greed, but in 3⁄4 studies, no relationship between SES and unethical behavior was observed ( et al 2017b). A meta-analysis of their findings shows no moderating effect of greed on the relationship between SES and unethical behavior, as hypothesized and reported by Piff et al 201212ya. et al 2018 reported a positive relationship between SES and self-reported greed in one of their two studies but found no association between SES and the propensity to lie in a hypothetical salary negotiation. Even if the original hypothesis were true, it is unlikely for all 7 studies in et al 2012 to have yielded statistically-significant results, given the low power of the studies (2012).
Using the World Values Survey across 27 countries, 2014 found that income is positively correlated with the approval of unethical behavior. Specifically, individuals who reported belonging to a higher income decile were more likely to approve of claiming unentitled government benefits, avoid paying for public transport, to cheat on taxes, and accept a bribe than individuals from lower income deciles. Individuals with higher incomes are more likely to misreport their income in IRS data from 2001 (2010). Moreover, the probability of hiding assets offshore rose sharply and statistically-significantly with wealth ( et al 2019). Upper SES individuals cheat more than lower SES individuals when cheating was beneficial to them ( et al 2015). But the opposite—lower SES individuals cheating more than upper SES individuals—was found when cheating benefited another person, suggesting that the relationship between SES and unethical behavior is context-dependent.
In a series of laboratory and online experiments, et al 2010 documented higher SES participants to be less likely to allocate money to others in hypothetical economic games and to be less willing to help a confederate than low-SES participants. Two recent preregistered and highly powered replications of Studies 1 & 2 in Piff et al 201014ya, however, failed to corroborate these findings ( et al 2020).