Rich People Can’t Feel Your Pain or Anything Else

by Liz Colville

New research helps explain why rich people fail to understand what the rest of us are going through, not just financially but in terms of, you know, subway commutes and things.

Says The Body Odd, an MSNBC blog:

In a series of studies, more than 300 upper- and lower-class people were asked the interpret the emotions of people in photos and of strangers during mock job interviews.

In both cases, those with more education, money and self-defined social status weren’t nearly as adept at figuring out if a person was angry, happy, anxious or upset as their lower class colleagues.

Why is this the case? This is a quiz.

a. Rich people don’t have to “rely on others,” so they don’t ever have to be attuned to how other people are feeling.
b. Rich people are paid not to feel.
c. Rich people keep their feelings locked up in a safe inside a safe inside a safe, with their money in the outermost safe and their jewelry and timepieces in the second one. If they were going to try to understand what the face models in the study were thinking they would have to go into the safe(s). It would just take a long time and they don’t actually know the codes; there is a person who normally does this but they’re off today.
d. Rich people can look at the stock market to see how people all around the world are feeling, and also to figure out how they should feel on any given day/minute of that day.
e. Rich people have their dogs to entertain them with silly faces, all of which, including “I’m dying, but I have no words to tell you,” are silly.

Answer: Well, technically a.

Bonus question: THEN WHY DOES OPRAH CRY SO WELL/OFTEN?

Photo by Mark Hirschey via Wikipedia