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I want you to, for a moment,

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think about playing a game of Monopoly,

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except in this game, that combination

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of skill, talent, and luck

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that helped earn you success in games, as in life,

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has been rendered irrelevant,

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because this game's been rigged,

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and you've got the upper hand.

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You've got more money,

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more opportunities to move around the board,

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and more access to resources.

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And as you think about that experience,

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I want you to ask yourself,

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how might that experience of being

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a privileged player in a rigged game

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change the way that you think about yourself

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and regard that other player?

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So we ran a study on the UC-Berkeley campus

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to look at exactly that question.

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We brought in more than a hundred pairs

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of strangers into the lab,

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and with the flip of a coin

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randomly assigned one of the two

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to be a rich player in a rigged game.

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They got two times as much money.

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When they passed go,

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they collected twice the salary,

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and they got to roll both dice instead of one,

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so they got to move around the board a lot more.

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(Laughter)

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And over the course of 15 minutes,

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we watched through hidden
cameras what happened.

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And what I want to do today, for the first time,

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is show you a little bit of what we saw.

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You're going to have to pardon the sound quality,

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in some cases, because again,

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these were hidden cameras.

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So we've provided subtitles.

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Rich Player: How many 500s did you have?

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Poor Player: Just one.

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Rich Player: Are you serious.
Poor Player: Yeah.

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Rich Player: I have three. (Laughs)

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I don't know why they gave me so much.

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Paul Piff: Okay, so it was quickly apparent to players

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that something was up.

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One person clearly has a lot more money

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than the other person, and yet,

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as the game unfolded,

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we saw very notable differences

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and dramatic differences begin to emerge

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between the two players.

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The rich player

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started to move around the board louder,

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literally smacking the board with their piece

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as he went around.

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We were more likely to see signs of dominance

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and non-verbal signs of display,

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displays of power

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and celebration among the rich players.

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All right. We had a bowl of pretzels
positioned off to the side.

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It's on the bottom right corner there.

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That allowed us to watch
participants' consummatory behavior.

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So we're just tracking how
many pretzels participants eat.

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Rich Player: Are those pretzels a trick?

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Poor Player: I don't know.

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PP: Okay, so no surprises, people are onto us.

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They wonder what that bowl of pretzels

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is doing there in the first place.

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One even asks, like you just saw,

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is that bowl of pretzels there as a trick?

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And yet, despite that, the power of the situation

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seems to inevitably dominate,

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and those rich players start to eat more pretzels.

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Rich Player: I love pretzels.

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(Laughter)

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PP: And as the game went on,

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one of the really interesting and dramatic patterns

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that we observed begin to emerge

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was that the rich players actually

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started to become ruder toward the other person,

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less and less sensitive to the plight

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of those poor, poor players,

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and more and more demonstrative

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of their material success,

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more likely to showcase how well they're doing.

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Rich Player: I have money for everything.

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Poor Player: How much is that?

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Rich Player: You owe me... 24 dollars.

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You're going to lose all your money soon.

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I'll buy it! I have so much money.

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I have so much money, it takes me for ever.

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Rich Player 2: I'm going to buy out this whole board.

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Rich Player 3: You're going
to run out of money soon.

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I'm pretty much untouchable at this point.

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PP: Okay, and here's what I think

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was really, really interesting,

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is that at the end of the 15 minutes,

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we asked the players to talk about
their experience during the game.

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And when the rich players talked about

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why they had inevitably won

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in this rigged game of Monopoly

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—(Laughter)—

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they talked about what they'd done

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to buy those different properties

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and earn their success in the game,

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and they became far less attuned

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to all those different features of the situation,

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including that flip of a coin

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that had randomly gotten them into

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that privileged position in the first place.

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And that's a really, really incredible insight

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into how the mind makes sense of advantage.

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Now this game of Monopoly can be used

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as a metaphor for understanding society

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and its hierarchical structure, wherein some people

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have a lot of wealth and a lot of status,

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and a lot of people don't.

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They have a lot less wealth and a lot less status

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and a lot less access to valued resources.

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And what my colleagues and I for
the last seven years have been doing

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is studying the effects of these kinds of hierarchies.

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What we've been finding across dozens of studies

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and thousands of participants across this country

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is that as a person's levels of wealth increase,

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their feelings of compassion and empathy go down,

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and their feelings of entitlement, of deservingness,

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and their ideology of self-interest increases.

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In surveys, we found that it's actually

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wealthier individuals who are more likely

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to moralize greed being good,

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and that the pursuit of self-interest

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is favorable and moral.

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Now what I want to do today is talk about

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some of the implications
of this ideology self-interest,

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talk about why we should
care about those implications,

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and end with what might be done.

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Some of the first studies that we ran in this area

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looked at helping behavior,

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something social psychologists call

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pro-social behavior.

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And we were really interested in who's more likely

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to offer help to another person,

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someone who's rich or someone who's poor.

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In one of the studies, we bring in rich and poor

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members of the community into the lab

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and give each of them the equivalent of 10 dollars.

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We told the participants

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that they could keep these 10 dollars for themselves,

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or they could share a portion of it,

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if they wanted to, with a stranger

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who is totally anonymous.

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They'll never meet that stranger and
the stranger will never meet them.

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And we just monitor how much people give.

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Individuals who made 25, sometimes

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under 15,000 dollars a year,

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gave 44 percent more of their money

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to this stranger

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than did individuals making 150,

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200,000 dollars a year.

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We've had people play games

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to see who's more or less likely to cheat

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to increase their chances of winning a prize.

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In one of the games, we actually rigged a computer

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so that die rolls over a certain score

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were impossible.

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You couldn't get above 12 in this game,

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and yet, the richer you were,

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the more likely you were to cheat in this game

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to earn credits toward a $50 cash prize,

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sometimes by three to four times as much.

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We ran another study where we looked at whether

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people would be inclined to take candy

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from a jar of candy that we explicitly identified

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as being reserved for children

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—(Laughter)—

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participating, I'm not kidding,

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I know it sounds like I'm making a joke,

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we explicitly told participants

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this jar of candy's for children participating

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in a developmental lab nearby.

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They're in studies. This is for them.

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And we just monitored how
much candy participants took.

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Participants who felt rich

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took two times as much candy

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as participants who felt poor.

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We've even studied cars,

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not just any cars,

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but whether drivers of different kinds of cars

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are more or less inclined to break the law.

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In one of these studies, we looked at

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whether drivers would stop for a pedestrian

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that we had posed waiting to cross at a crosswalk.

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Now in California, as you all know,

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because I'm sure we all do this,

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it's the law to stop for a pedestrian
who's waiting to cross.

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So here's an example of how we did it.

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That's our confederate off to the left

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posing as a pedestrian.

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He approaches as the red truck successfully stops.

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In typical California fashion, it's overtaken

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by the bus who almost runs our pedestrian over.

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(Laughter)

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Now here's an example of a more expensive car,

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a Prius, driving through,

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and a BMW doing the same.

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So we did this for hundreds of vehicles

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on several days,

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just tracking who stops and who doesn't.

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What we found was that as the expensiveness

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of a car increased,

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the driver's tendencies to break the law

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increased as well.

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None of the cars, none of the cars

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in our least expensive car category

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broke the law.

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Close to 50 percent of the cars

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in our most expensive vehicle category

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broke the law.

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We've run other studies finding that

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wealthier individuals are more
likely to lie in negotiations,

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to endorse unethical behavior at work

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like stealing cash from the cash register,

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taking bribes, lying to customers.

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Now I don't mean to suggest

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that it's only wealthy people

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who show these patterns of behavior.

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Not at all. In fact, I think that we all,

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in our day-to-day, minute-by-minute lives,

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struggle with these competing motivations

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of when, or if, to put our own interests

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above the interests of other people.

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And that's understandable because

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the American dream is an idea

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in which we all have an equal opportunity

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to succeed and prosper,

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as long as we apply ourselves and work hard,

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and a piece of that means that sometimes,

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you need to put your own interests

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above the interests and well-being
of other people around you.

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But what we're finding is that,

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the wealthier you are, the more likely you are

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to pursue a vision of personal success,

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of achievement and accomplishment,

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to the detriment of others around you.

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Here I've plotted for you the mean household income

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received by each fifth and top
five percent of the population

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over the last 20 years.

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In 1993, the differences between the different

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quintiles of the population, in terms of income,

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are fairly egregious.

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It's not difficult to discern that there are differences.

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But over the last 20 years, that significant difference

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has become a grand canyon of sorts

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between those at the top and everyone else.

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In fact, the top 20 percent of our population

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own close to 90 percent of the
total wealth in this country.

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We're at unprecedented levels

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of economic inequality.

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What that means is that wealth is not only becoming

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increasingly concentrated in the hands
of a select group of individuals,

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but the American dream is becoming

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increasingly unattainable

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for an increasing majority of us.

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And if it's the case, as we've been finding,

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that the wealthier you are,

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the more entitled you feel to that wealth,

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and the more likely you are
to prioritize your own interests

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above the interests of other people,

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and be willing to do things to serve that self-interest,

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well then there's no reason to think

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that those patterns will change.

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In fact, there's every reason to think

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that they'll only get worse,

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and that's what it would look like

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if things just stayed the same,

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at the same linear rate, over the next 20 years.

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Now, inequality, economic inequality,

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is something we should all be concerned about,

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and not just because of those at the bottom

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of the social hierarchy,

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but because individuals and groups

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with lots of economic inequality do worse,

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not just the people at the bottom, everyone.

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There's a lot of really compelling research

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coming out from top labs all over the world

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showcasing the range of things

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that are undermined

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as economic inequality gets worse.

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Social mobility, things we really care about,

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physical health, social trust,

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all go down as inequality goes up.

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Similarly, negative things

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in social collectives and societies,

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things like obesity, and violence,

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imprisonment, and punishment,

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are exacerbated as economic inequality increases.

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Again, these our outcomes not just experienced

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by a few, but that resound

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across all strata of society.

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Even people at the top experience these outcomes.

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So what do we do?

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This cascade of self-perpetuating,

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pernicious, negative effects

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could seem like something that's spun out of control,

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and there's nothing we can do about it,

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certainly nothing we as individuals could do.

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But in fact, we've been finding

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in our own laboratory research

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that small, small psychological interventions,

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small changes to people's values,

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small nudges in certain directions,

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can restore levels of egalitarianism and empathy.

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For instance, reminding people

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of the benefits of cooperation,

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or the advantages of community,

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cause wealthier individuals to be just as egalitarian

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as poor people.

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In one study, we had people watch a brief video,

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just 46 seconds long, about childhood poverty

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that served as a reminder of the needs of others

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in the world around them,

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and after watching that,

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we looked at how willing people were

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to offer up their own time to a stranger

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presented to them in the lab who was in distress.

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After watching this video, an hour later,

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rich people became just as generous

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of their own time to help out this other person,

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a stranger, as someone who's poor,

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suggesting that these differences are not

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innate or categorical,

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but are so malleable

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to slight changes in people's values,

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and little nudges of compassion

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and bumps of empathy.

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And beyond the walls of our lab, we're even

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beginning to see signs of change in society.

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Bill Gates, one of our nation's wealthiest individuals,

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in his Harvard commencement speech,

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talked about the problem facing society

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of inequality as being the most daunting challenge,

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and talked about what must be done to combat it,

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saying, "Humanity's greatest advances

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are not in its discoveries,

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but in how those discoveries are applied

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to reduce inequity."

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And there's the Giving Pledge,

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in which more than a hundred of our nation's

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wealthiest individuals

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are pledging half of their fortunes to charity.

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And there's the emergence

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of dozens of grassroots movements,

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like We Are The One Percent,

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the Resource Generation,

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or Wealth For Common Good,

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in which the most privileged

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members of the population,

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members of the one percent and elsewhere,

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people who are wealthy,

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are using their own economic resources,

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adults and youth alike, that's
what's most striking to me,

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leveraging their own privilege,

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their own economic resources,

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to combat inequality

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by advocating for social policies,

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changes in social values,

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and changes in people's behavior,

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that work against their own economic interests

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but that may ultimately restore the American dream.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)