Today's longread is a look at recent neuroscientific studies about how money affects behavior. Much of this research seems to indicate that people with more wealth have less empathy, but there are many remaining questions about the validity of this data as well as the underlying explanations for why this might be true. For example, there is a chicken-egg question -- are people with less empathy more likely to become wealthy? Or does the process of obtaining wealth change how someone will relate to others? These are fascinating issues that are extremely relevant to this week's topic of the rich and how the unequal distribution of wealth affects our society.
"The Money-Empathy Gap" by Lisa Miller
Published in New York Magazine, July 1, 2012
http://nymag.com/news/features/money-brain-2012-7/?mid=longreads
Eric
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