Rich People Aren’t Evil

When you think of someone rich, you think of some heartless bastard which probably puts out cigarettes rolled with $100 bills on the backs of the working poor.

However:

in a recent experiment with a group of 50 wealth-driven college students in an intro economics course at Loyola University, mostly business majors, 78 percent displayed a willingness to stop and lend assistance to someone in trouble regardless of whether they were in a hurry.

Of the respondents, “72 percent said accumulating wealth was a top life priority.”

And it goes a level deeper, involving religion:

Whether the subject was intrinsically motivated by religion did predict helping behavior: those with intrinsic religious motivation (those who viewed religion as an end in itself rather than a means to an end) were 13 times more likely to help compared to a subject without intrinsic motivation (like those who viewed religion as a means to an end, motivated by social status or peer approval).

“The source of intrinsic motivation arises from following religious tradition, which calls for altruism and self-sacrifice,” writes author Michael Babula, a senior lecturer in quantitative techniques at the University of Greenwich. “The significant finding offers an upbeat note that wealth-driven individuals in this sample may possess the Samaritan-like mindset.”

So it goes to show: the religious wealthy would be most likely to help out others in need.

Remember…these are also the individuals who pay the most in taxes.

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