WEBVTT

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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 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
a privileged player in a rigged game

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change the way 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 100 pairs
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
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,
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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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'll to have to pardon
the sound quality,

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because again, these were hidden cameras.

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So we've provided subtitles.

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[Video] Rich Player: How many
500s did you have?

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Poor Player: Just one.

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RP: Are you serious?
PP: Yeah.

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RP: I have three. (Laughs)
I don't know why they gave me so much.

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Paul Piff: So it was quickly apparent
to players that something was up.

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One person clearly has
a lot more money than the other person,

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and yet, as the game unfolded,

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we saw very notable differences,
dramatic differences begin to emerge

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between the two players.

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The rich player started to move
around the board louder,

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literally smacking the board
with the piece as he went around.

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(Game piece smacks board)

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We were more likely
to see signs of dominance

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and nonverbal signs, displays of power

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and celebration among the rich players.

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

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It's on the bottom right corner.

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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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[Video] RP: Are those pretzels a trick?

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PP: I don't know.

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Paul Piff: OK, so no surprises,
people are on to us.

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They wonder what that bowl of pretzels
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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(Laughter)

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[Video] RP: I love pretzels.

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(Laughter)

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Paul Piff: 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 started to become ruder

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toward the other person --

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less and less sensitive to the plight
of those poor, poor players,

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and more and more demonstrative
of their material success,

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more likely to showcase
how well they're doing.

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[Video] RP: I have money ...

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(Laughs) I have money for everything.

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PP: How much is that?

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RP: 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 forever.

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

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RP 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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(Laughter)

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Paul Piff: And here's what I think
was really, really interesting:

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it's 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 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
to buy those different properties

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and earn their success in the game.

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(Laughter)

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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 that privileged position

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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
and its hierarchical structure,

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wherein some people
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 increase.

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In surveys, we've found

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that it's actually wealthier individuals
who are more likely to moralize

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greed being good,

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and that the pursuit of self-interest
is favorable and moral.

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Now, what I want to do today
is talk about some of the implications

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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 "pro-social behavior."

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And we were really interested

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in who's more likely
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,

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we bring rich and poor 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 they could keep
these 10 dollars for themselves,

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or they could share
a portion of it, if they wanted to,

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with a stranger, who's totally anonymous.

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They'll never meet that stranger;
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 25,000,
sometimes under 15,000 dollars a year,

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gave 44 percent more
of their money to the stranger

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than did individuals making
150,000, 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
were impossible --

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You couldn't get above 12
in this game, and yet ...

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the richer you were, 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

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where we looked at whether 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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I'm not kidding -- I know it sounds
like I'm making a joke.

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We explicitly told participants:

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"This candy is for children participating
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
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,

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we looked at 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,
posing as a pedestrian.

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He approaches as the red truck
successfully stops.

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In typical California fashion,

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it's overtaken 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,
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 as the expensiveness
of a car increased ...

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(Laughter)

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the drivers' tendencies
to break the law 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
in our most expensive vehicle category

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broke the law.

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We've run other studies,

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finding that 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
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
above the interests of other people.

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And that's understandable,

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because the American dream is an idea

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in which we all have an equal opportunity
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 the wealthier you are,

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the more likely you are 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,

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the differences between the different
quintiles of the population,

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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
of economic inequality.

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What that means is that wealth is not only
becoming increasingly concentrated

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in the hands of a select group
of individuals,

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but the American dream
is becoming 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
that those patterns will change.

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In fact, there's every reason
to think that they'll only get worse,

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and that's what it would look like
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 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
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
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 are outcomes
not just experienced by a few,

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but that resound
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
in our own laboratory research

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that small psychological interventions,

00:13:31.695 --> 00:13:34.714
small changes to people's values,

00:13:34.831 --> 00:13:38.188
small nudges in certain directions,

00:13:38.212 --> 00:13:41.346
can restore levels
of egalitarianism and empathy.

00:13:41.759 --> 00:13:46.032
For instance, reminding people
of the benefits of cooperation

00:13:46.056 --> 00:13:47.951
or the advantages of community,

00:13:48.961 --> 00:13:52.773
cause wealthier individuals
to be just as egalitarian

00:13:52.797 --> 00:13:54.122
as poor people.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:55.369 --> 00:14:00.894
In one study, we had people watch
a brief video, just 46 seconds long,

00:14:00.918 --> 00:14:02.336
about childhood poverty

00:14:03.144 --> 00:14:07.345
that served as a reminder of the needs
of others in the world around them.

00:14:08.257 --> 00:14:10.152
And after watching that,

00:14:10.176 --> 00:14:13.632
we looked at how willing people
were to offer up their own time

00:14:14.242 --> 00:14:18.273
to a stranger presented to them
in the lab, who was in distress.

00:14:19.026 --> 00:14:22.246
After watching this video, an hour later,

00:14:22.270 --> 00:14:25.650
rich people became
just as generous of their own time

00:14:25.674 --> 00:14:27.820
to help out this other person, a stranger,

00:14:27.844 --> 00:14:29.289
as someone who's poor,

00:14:29.313 --> 00:14:33.571
suggesting that these differences
are not innate or categorical,

00:14:33.595 --> 00:14:37.351
but are so malleable
to slight changes in people's values,

00:14:37.375 --> 00:14:40.783
and little nudges of compassion
and bumps of empathy.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:41.172 --> 00:14:42.749
And beyond the walls of our lab,

00:14:42.773 --> 00:14:46.052
we're even beginning to see
signs of change in society.

00:14:46.893 --> 00:14:50.041
Bill Gates, one of our nation's
wealthiest individuals,

00:14:50.065 --> 00:14:51.993
in his Harvard commencement speech,

00:14:52.017 --> 00:14:54.878
talked about the problem
of inequality facing society

00:14:54.902 --> 00:14:57.565
as being the most daunting challenge,

00:14:57.589 --> 00:15:00.423
and talked about what must
be done to combat it,

00:15:00.447 --> 00:15:05.465
saying, "Humanity's greatest advances
are not in its discoveries --

00:15:05.489 --> 00:15:08.521
but in how those discoveries are applied

00:15:08.545 --> 00:15:10.333
to reduce inequity."

00:15:11.356 --> 00:15:13.285
And there's the Giving Pledge,

00:15:13.309 --> 00:15:17.236
in which more than 100
of our nation's wealthiest individuals

00:15:18.077 --> 00:15:21.259
are pledging half
of their fortunes to charity.

00:15:21.886 --> 00:15:26.358
And there's the emergence of dozens
of grassroots movements,

00:15:27.136 --> 00:15:28.889
like "We are the 1 percent,"

00:15:29.508 --> 00:15:30.991
"Resource Generation,"

00:15:31.556 --> 00:15:33.445
or "Wealth for Common Good,"

00:15:33.469 --> 00:15:37.808
in which the most privileged
members of the population,

00:15:37.832 --> 00:15:40.776
members of the one percent and elsewhere,

00:15:40.800 --> 00:15:42.539
people who are wealthy,

00:15:42.662 --> 00:15:46.115
are using their own economic resources,

00:15:46.139 --> 00:15:50.372
adults and youth alike --
that's what's most striking to me --

00:15:50.396 --> 00:15:53.957
leveraging their own privilege,
their own economic resources,

00:15:53.981 --> 00:15:56.822
to combat inequality

00:15:56.846 --> 00:15:59.288
by advocating for social policies,

00:15:59.866 --> 00:16:01.724
changes in social values

00:16:01.748 --> 00:16:04.006
and changes in people's behavior

00:16:04.143 --> 00:16:07.183
that work against
their own economic interests,

00:16:07.207 --> 00:16:10.385
but that may ultimately
restore the American dream.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:11.420 --> 00:16:12.640
Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:12.664 --> 00:16:17.999
(Applause)