*promote
My lack of google-fu didn't find me the actual study. If anyone finds it could you please leave a link.

Self promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Thursday, July 11th, 2013 3:23pm PDT - promote requested by original submitter eric3579.

Here you go:
http://www.pnas.org/content/109/11/4086.short

..and, the assumption that students at Berkeley, or even young faculty at Berkeley, are 'Berkeley types', is flawed.
Oh, and PNAS is not an "obscure journal".

Haha, I might have taken a candy, but who the fuck starts stashing them away in their pocket. Good lord.

Thought this was an onion post at first.

I doubt you can prove anything about morality scientifically, but what you can do is look at how unfair a system is that is supposed to represent the people. Look at who the people are who mostly gets their way. It's the rich every time. So the system needs to change, not the rich. The system isn't democratic, we can change that.

They have it backwards. It is being an asshole, stealing candy, cheating at dice etc. type of behaviour that gets these people rich. They are not nasty because they're rich, they're rich because they can be nasty.

I really thought this was an Onion video.

So if rich do well and "overestimate" their skills, then what do all those self-help books really teach? How much was truly in their control and how much was simply luck.

But in that case, their monopoly example where the 'rich' participant is chosen at random wouldn't show the same result.

I've always ascribed it in my head to a lack of empathy by the rich, due to increasingly less contact with the lower classes of wealth the richer they get (think gated communities, exclusive private schools) but that compounds my assumption too as it seems merely being designated rich appears to have some (immediate) psychological effect.

Taking opportunities whenever possible almost always leads to an advantage. When you're motivated to gain more / do better than those around you, you do it well and you do it often.

This is not a utopia, people.

When you don't have access to resources, you rely more on others and pay more into social systems.

You can't prove anything scientifically.

i think a more basic explanation is that humanity at this stage of our evolution is generally very self interested. and given the opportunity, humans gravitate towards self-interest.
it's really just another example of our present stage of evolution which, on a planetary timeline, is still in it's infancy.

On a grand scale, our overall tendency towards self-interest and our complete lack of species awareness is causing the rapid consumption of our ecosystem.

A more evolved understanding of species behavior suggest that cooperative behavior, rather than competitive, is much more beneficial to all, including the individual.

Everything good in our lives has come through a process of sharing, not competition. Whether it is language, art, science or mathematics. We are products of a communal effort, yet we continue to glorify the more primitive instinct -- competition.

Ethics are defined by a group or social system or codified. Individuals can be evaluated scientifically as following or breaking those standards or codes of behavior.

This study is interesting, but I think it applies the term unethically somewhat broadly.

and the reason people do stupid things when put in a competitive situation is because competition caters to stupid.

If we were to evaluate two base instincts in the human psyche - competition and cooperation....

competition to it's furthest extreme produces division, war, and suffering.

cooperation at it's best produces peace, understanding, creation, and invention.

We have all assumed the most ridiculous of notions, -- that competition is "healthy" and good. We have even gone so far as to base our entire economic system on it, and the product is an ever increasing wealth divide, hardship for the majority, and an elitist class completely out of touch with reality. A complete lack of perspective.

The problem isn't on the surface, it's a BASIC, FUNDAMENTAL FALSE ASSUMPTION that is burned into the psyche. So basic, that no one realizes it.

If u are a competitive schmuck, you will never be happy. you will never be satisfied. that is the nature of competition. and that is the nature of stupidity.

To be fair, SOME people do work hard honestly to become rich. SOME people are merely lucky, right place right time. But as more and more people simply inherit their wealth, or get their wealth through dishonest means, it stacks the deck against the honest and the lucky to the point where hard work is the exception, not the rule. Which is where we're at now.

I also got a kick out of the difference in monopoly money, where the "rich" player got 2K and the "poor" person only got 1K. If you want to make that more realistic, the "rich" player should have received something like 50K or 100K.

If rich people merely had double what the average person had..and SOME perks, I doubt that people would be complaining as much. I think most people accept that there is always someone more well off. so the issue isn't envy as some of the pundits like to point out. The issue is not that they have more, but that they have EXPONENTIALLY more, and on top of that, they appear to be exempt from certain rules the rest of us have to follow. Justice seems to be in favor of a rich person and their expensive lawyers vs the poor person and their public defender.

We don't have lower/middle/upper class anymore, it's more like lower/middle/upper/very upper/extremely upper/obscenely upper where even the well off are paupers by comparison.

Well duh. How do you think they got so rich?

The current system is stacked toward unethical behavior. It's so rare wealthy people get caught cheating, and when they do the penalties are often nonexistent, or worse, they're fined less than the amount swindled in the first place.

Steal a loaf of bread to feed your family, you go to prison.

Steal a half-billion from retirees, pension plans, poor people, the government and if you get caught you'll probably have to give some of it back.

Hehehe, PNAS.

Nothing, those type of books are part of the get-rich-quick scheme. THEIR get rich scheme. Not yours.

I could get behind psychology studies like this. Hooray for statistical significance.

I am tired of all these FMRI bullshit studies that make way too many assumptions about what's going on in the brain.

Huh?

Did no one watch this video to the end????

The truly mind blowing human behavior shown statistically is that when actual rich people are put in the play "poor" position, their empathy goes up. And that actual poor people act entitled when they play the "rich" position.

Human evolution put us in this place. How can we use our ability to reason and plan to help foster empathy?