A Plutocracy Ruled by Self-Centered Jerks?
http://billmoyers.com/2013/08/27/a-plutocracy-ruled-by-self-centered-jerks/
In the first study, published in the current Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Paul Piff of UC Berkeley conducted five experiments which demonstrated that higher social class is associated with increased entitlement and narcissism. Given the opportunity, Piff also found that they were more likely to check themselves out in a mirror than were those of lesser means. Piff looked at how participants scored on a standard scale of psychological entitlement, and found that those of a high social class based on income levels, education and occupational prestige were more likely to say I honestly feel Im just more deserving than others, while people further down the social ladder were likelier to respond, I do not necessarily deserve special treatment.
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These findings may appear to represent a bit of psychological trivia, but a study to be published in Political Science Quarterly by Thomas Hayes, a scholar at Trinity University, finds that U.S. senators respond almost exclusively to the interests of their wealthiest constituents those more likely to be unethical and less sensitive to the suffering of others, according to Piff.
Hayes took data from the Annenberg Election Survey a massive database of public opinion representing the views of 90,000 voters and compared them with their senators voting records from 2001 through 2010. From 2007 through 2010, U.S. senators were somewhat responsive to the interests of the middle class, but hadnt been for the first 6 years Hayes studied. The views of the poor didnt factor into legislators voting tendencies at all.
As Eric Dolan noted for The Raw Story, The neglect of lower income groups was a bipartisan affair. Democrats were not any more responsive to the poor than Republicans. Hayes wrote that his analysis suggests oligarchic tendencies in the American system, a finding echoed in other research.
Emphasis mine.