y building task where they could develop friendships with a group of their peers, only lower class participants jumped at the opportunity.
The fourth experiment had 135 students unscramble similar words into sentences and then report on how much they agreed with such statements as "Money is the only thing I can really count on" and "Time spent not making money is time wasted." When made to feel as if the world was chaotic, upper class participants consistently agreed more strongly with these statements.
In the fifth experiment, 115 students were given a hypothetical scenario in which an employer offered them a new job for a higher salary, with the caveat that they would need to move, and potentially lose touch with their current network of family, friends and colleagues. Again, when primed with feelings that the world was uncertain and chaotic, upper class participants were more amenable to cutting ties and taking the job, whereas lower class participants opted to stay close to their support networks.
"Given the very different forms of coping that we observe among the upper and lower classes, our research suggests that in times of economic uncertainty and social instability, disparities between the haves and the have-nots could grow ever wider," Piff said.
Other coauthors of the study are UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner; Daniel Stancato, a psychologist in Seattle, Wash.; Andres Martinez of George Mason University and Michael Kraus of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The research was funded in part by the National Science Foundation.