If you sometimes feel overlooked or ignored in the presence of significantly more affluent people, perhaps it is not just an impression created by your own low self-esteem.

Research by psychologists related to the opening of the scissors of social inequality shows that people with higher social status pay little attention to the less fortunate. Observing the interviews of two unknown people, the researchers found that those with a higher social status toward their discussion partners were sending less attention signals such as laughter or gentle nodding. In addition, they were more prone to expressing indifference and abruptly interrupting a call, or looking so-called through their partner. Moreover, this behavior was not only manifested by the rich or super rich towards, say, the middle class, but continued within the social pyramid below. Similarly, people with an average salary tended to ignore low income earners.

Study

In 2008, scientists from the University of Amsterdam and California studied a few unknowns describing each other's severe life crises such as divorce or death of a partner, illness, etc. It turned out that the more affluent and powerful people relieved the suffering of the poorer and showed less compassion. In another study, psychologists at the University of New York let 61 volunteers walk the streets of Manhattan. They watched Google Glass smart glasses that recorded exactly what their wearers were paying attention to while walking. All participants were told that they were testing new technology. After this walk, they were asked to write a questionnaire assessing their social status. From the resulting recordings, the researchers found that people who labeled themselves as more affluent simply ignored those they thought were members of the lower classes. Similar results were also obtained in a subsequent study using eye tracking technology in a group of students. They were shown photos taken from Google Street View on the screen. On average, richer participants spent much less time watching people than their poorer colleagues.

Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of Berkeley, explains that people focus on what they value more. Materially and socially higher-ranking people have the opportunity to pay for the services they need and generally rely more on themselves, so they do not pay as much attention to other people. On the other hand, the socially disadvantaged value their social assets more, ie people around them, who can, for example, apply for free babysitting until they return from work and the like. Large differences in income will eventually result in significant differences in behavior.

Richer people often express less attention to others

While poorer people maintain intense interpersonal relationships predominantly within their social strata, richer people generally pay less attention to others, giving them the least of those at the bottom of the social ladder. These facts are not only an explanation why, for example, a neighbor does not heal you, but they can also have serious socio-political consequences. Due to lack of empathy, better-positioned political elites can easily push for socially unsustainable measures such as raising taxes, reducing unemployment benefits, etc. In addition, there are some social bubbles where wealthy people move to protected neighborhoods or urban outskirts where happy at all need not meet. Then, without the necessary confrontation, it is even easier to put the other social groups in unfavorable light. On the other hand, close personal contact can help to overcome many prejudices across the social spectrum.

From the end of 70. In the years of the West, the income inequality of the population, which arrived in the countries of the Eastern Bloc only with the fall of the Iron Curtain, is growing rapidly. Now, at the end of the second decade, according to experts, it has reached the highest values ​​for a century. While the unequal distribution of property in society is currently the subject of debate primarily by economists, its solution may be based on a completely different area, the unequal distribution of solidarity and empathy.