Does wealth corrupt?

Last week NPR’s News Hour ran a segment called Why Those Who Feel They Have Less Give More. The segment is based upon the controversial study, Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior by Paul Piff.

Apparently the study has created a bit of an uproar with people saying this is about class warfare, but I thought it was interesting.  My Liberal friends shouldn’t get too smug about this study because it paints quite a hypocritical picture.  A consistent finding in all seven studies Piff ran was that social progressives or “Liberals” were just as likely to act unethically / immorally as their social conservative counterparts; meaning your political persuasion didn’t impact your behavior.

I’m not a sociologist so I didn’t bother to read the study that I link to in this post, but it does beg the question, does wealth corrupt? In study after study even those who came from a poorer background – when in simulated tests where they were made to feel “wealthy” – exhibited the same exact unethical decision-making tendencies. Below is the NPR segment that spurred the post.