Rich People Just Care Less

[Newsjock]

Source: New York Times
By Daniel Goleman

... A growing body of recent research shows that people with the most social power pay scant attention to those with little such power. This tuning out has been observed, for instance, with strangers in a mere five-minute get-acquainted session, where the more powerful person shows fewer signals of paying attention, like nodding or laughing. Higher-status people are also more likely to express disregard, through facial expressions, and are more likely to take over the conversation and interrupt or look past the other speaker.

Bringing the micropolitics of interpersonal attention to the understanding of social power, researchers are suggesting, has implications for public policy.

... In politics, readily dismissing inconvenient people can easily extend to dismissing inconvenient truths about them. The insistence by some House Republicans in Congress on cutting financing for food stamps and impeding the implementation of Obamacare, which would allow patients, including those with pre-existing health conditions, to obtain and pay for insurance coverage, may stem in part from the empathy gap. As political scientists have noted, redistricting and gerrymandering have led to the creation of more and more safe districts, in which elected officials don’t even have to encounter many voters from the rival party, much less empathize with them.

... Since the 1970s, the gap between the rich and everyone else has skyrocketed. Income inequality is at its highest level in a century. This widening gulf between the haves and have-less troubles me, but not for the obvious reasons. Apart from the financial inequities, I fear the expansion of an entirely different gap, caused by the inability to see oneself in a less advantaged person’s shoes. Reducing the economic gap may be impossible without also addressing the gap in empathy.

Daniel Goleman, a psychologist, is the author of “Emotional Intelligence” and, most recently, “Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence.”

Read more: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/05/rich-people-just-care-less/?hp&_r=0

[leveymg]

1. In Goleman's terms, the rich and powerful generally have less emotional intelligence.

Power is always dangerous, particularly in the hands of people who couldn't care less. That's why all institutions need to be leveled, because it's largely impossible to educate the powerful to be feel responsible for others. That used to be the function of a good education, but somehow the wealthy today seem to have largely escaped its benefits.

[DonCoquixote]

2. Ayn Rand

did a lot to encourage the rich to see selfishness as a virtue.

[BKH70041]

3. Time Is Money

[MrMickeysMom]

4. I'm convinced it's because they don't have to care more... so they couldn't care less...

The way I see it, a person can't truly start thinking differently until the lesson is ingrained into the neural pathways. This doesn't happened easily unless a thought process is challenged to a new level... some internal pushing of the envelope, with a stressor... a normal stimulus and having to work for the response. There's no empathy.

There is far less to stress the 1% daily needs. Many have never had to face what it's like to be frustrated in satisfying the rungs int the hierarchy of needs. No pain, no gain... No critical thinking process to pull yourself into reality. Why get real when you can get away for the weekend on a whim and your money is there to cover your back?