By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm:
On the 170th Christmas after the publication of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, we finally have a diagnosis: Ebenezer Scrooge suffered from “affluenza.” That condition has surfaced most recently in the case of a well-off Fort Worth teenager who received probation and treatment, instead of a prison sentence for causing the deaths of four people in a drunk driving incident. A psychologist testified that the teen suffered from psychological problems that can accompany wealth and privilege: “affluenza.” Scrooge must have been a longtime sufferer of that same malady, his wealth serving as a barrier that kept him from understanding the consequences of his actions and appreciating the suffering of the Cratchits and the Tiny Tims of the world. Before his three-ghost conversion at least, he held to a worldview in which his own place was self-justifying. And that is where the story fits with the social science. Research shows that the perception of one’s own social class does indeed dilute the milk of human kindness. A recent series of four studies (Kraus & Keltner, 2013) showed that those who believe themselves to occupy the loftier perches of social class are also more punitive in their orientation.
This provides another cue to analyzing one’s audience. We have always suspected that, as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it, “The rich are not like you and me,” but the research allows us to put a finer point on that difference. The points at which social class leads to different evaluations end up matching many of the kinds of judgments that are required in trial. That means an appreciation of class can help you understand how and why the Scrooges are apt to be a bit less plaintiff-friendly than the Cratchits. This post takes a more specific look at the four studies reported in this recent article, and shares some thoughts on the litigation implications of each of these several symptoms of ‘affluenza.’
The research (Kraus & Keltner, 2013) appears in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and focuses on the causal attributions we make that vary depending on social class. Rather than being content to stick to objective measures of class, like income, they looked at an individual’s perception of where they stand in the pecking order. They conducted four studies to focus on the effects of that perceived higher rank. All point in the same direction: Belief in one’s own higher status tends to make us more Scrooge-like. But let’s take a look at each of the studies, along with the implications for litigators.
Study One: Upper Classes Endorse Essentialist Theories of Social Class
The first study measured online participants’ objective and subjective perception of social class ranking (interestingly, the two are only moderately correlated) and compared those to a belief in “essentialist” theories. As summarized by the authors, those beliefs center on a number of common assumptions: “that people belong to the same social category because they share a specific feature in common; that category membership is unchangeable; that categories provide a great deal of accurate information about the individual; and that members of the same category share similar biological characteristics in their physiological profiles and genetically based tendencies.” In other words, the belief is that there is some kind of “essence,” as opposed to happy circumstance, that earns one a place in the upper classes. Consistent with their hypothesis, the authors found that those with a higher class ranking were more likely to endorse these essential class views, while those in the lower ranks were more likely to see class as a social construction.
Implication: Check your assumptions. While I know it isn’t the case that all lawyers are upper class, or fancy themselves to be so, there is still likely enough of a class difference between the average lawyer and the average juror that litigators can fall victim to some of these essentializing assumptions when looking at their panel. No matter what venue you are in, don’t adopt the view that your panel represents a “different kind” of person, separated from you by anything more than experience.
Study Two: Upper Classes Are More Likely to Believe in a “Just World”
The idea that people basically end up getting what they deserve, known as the “just world hypothesis,” leads people to think that the fortunate earned their good fortune and the victims, to at least some extent, had it coming. It seems only natural that this view would be more common in those who end up with the better end of the stick. And that is what the authors demonstrated in the second study. In the same manner as study one, they looked at objective and subjective social class ranking and correlated that ranking with a belief in essentialist class differences. In this case, though, they took a step further and also measured participants’ global beliefs about social fairness. The conclusion? “Possessing higher levels of material resources is associated with a greater tendency to believe that society is fair and just.”
Implication. Just world beliefs can be very important to a jury’s evaluation of just about any case. When someone has suffered some kind of harm, evaluators with a greater commitment to the just world hypothesis will be more motivated to focus on what the perceived victim could have done to have avoided the harm. The belief that people could have protected themselves, but didn’t, is an attractive belief because it allows individuals to retain their view that the world is basically just. Knowing that this attitude varies by class gives us one more piece of information to factor into the evaluation.
Study Three: Upper Classes Are More Likely to Support Punitive Justice
Justice can be viewed in at least two ways. It can take a punitive focus (Right the scales: “An eye for an eye”) or a restorative focus (remove the danger and rehabilitate the wrongdoer). In this third study, the authors sought to determine how a preference for these two versions of justice would vary by social class. For this analysis, the participants received scenarios involving academic cheating, and then selected from a number of solutions including the punitive (expel the cheater) and the restorative (monitor to make cheating less likely). The study found that those upper class members who held essentialist beliefs about social class were more likely to prefer punitive solutions and less likely to support restorative ones.
Implication: I have long believed that supplemental juror questionnaires, filled out as part of the voir dire process, should make greater use of the many available psychological scales that correlate with attitudes relevant to litigation. This tendency to treat justice as punitive or restorative presents another example. In many civil and criminal trial settings, these individuals with a high commitment to essentialist attitudes and a correspondingly high commitment to punitive solutions, are good candidates for a strike or, with an open-minded judge, even a challenge for cause.
Study Four: Those Made to Feel Upper Class Are More Likely to Support Punitive Justice
As a final check, the researchers wanted to find out if these effects were inherent in the individuals who possessed the relevant class-based attitudes, or to the circumstances of those attitudes being salient in a given situation. To test that, they manipulated participants’ relative perceptions of their own social rank by asking them to imagine, during the test, that they were interacting with another individual either above or below them on social class ranking. Even that simple step of making people momentarily feel either “higher” or “lower” in pecking order had a significant effect on their views on the essentialism of class characteristics, as well as their views on justice. Those manipulated to feel upper class were more likely to endorse essentialist views and more likely to support a punitive version of justice.
Implication: This finding provides a good reminder to not only look at the absolute social class of your likely jurors, but also the social class relative to the person who is being evaluated. Whether the jury perceives themselves to be above or below the defendant or plaintiff whose conduct they’re evaluating makes a difference to how punitive or how restorative their outlook is likely to be.
There is one additional difference in classes that might be a surprising one. That relates to generosity: As a percentage of their incomes, the bottom 20 percent give more than twice as much to charity as the top 20 percent give. Those who are closer to deprivation, it seems, are more attuned to it. But if Scrooge can be rehabilitated in just one night, perhaps there is a chance for everyone. Merry Christmas.
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Other Posts on Wealth and Class:
- View Your Case Through a Rich/Poor Lens
- Beware of Jurors Who Feel Downgraded
- Assess Your Juror’s Economic Security: A Vulnerable Juror Can Make for a Vulnerable Defense (Part One)
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Kraus, M. W., & Keltner, D. (2013). Social Class Rank, Essentialism, and Punitive Judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 105(2), Aug 2013, 247-261. doi: 10.1037/a0032895
Photo Credit: HowardLake, Flickr Creative Commons (Ebenezer Scrooge’s gravestone, Shrewsbury, England)