Looking for empathy and support? You're more likely to get it from a poor person than you are from a rich one, according to new research published in Psychological Science.

In a series of experiments, the new study found that lower-class people were better at reading emotions on others' faces — one measure of what researchers call empathic accuracy — than people in the upper class. "A lot of what we see is a baseline orientation for the lower class to be more empathetic and the upper class to be less [so]," says Michael Kraus, a co-author of the study and a postdoctoral student at the University of California, San Francisco. (More on Time.com: Battle of the Bris: A Move to Outlaw Circumcision in San Francisco)

Why might that be? "Lower-class environments are much different from upper-class environments," explains Kraus. "Lower-class individuals have to respond chronically to a number of vulnerabilities and social threats. You really need to depend on others so they will tell you if a social threat or opportunity is coming and that makes you more perceptive of emotions."