富人比穷人更抠！

People who earn more money may be less likely to share their wealth than those who earn less. That's according to a new study from Queen Mary University of London, published in the journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology.

根据伦敦大学玛丽女王学院发表在《基础与应用社会心理学》杂志上一项新研究表明：挣钱多的人比挣钱少的人更不愿意分享财富。

Researchers conducted a social experiment where people were recruited to play games for real money.

研究人员进行了一项社会学实验。他们招募了一些研究对象，让他们玩金钱游戏。

People were assigned as "lower status" or "higher status", which determined how much money they were given at the beginning – signifying wealth.

人们被分为两组：“低地位组”和“高地位组”，两者的区别在于游戏刚开始时获得的金钱数目——这象征着财富。

The games involved the participants deciding how much money they wanted to keep and how much they wanted to donate to a group kitty, which would be shared out between everyone.

在游戏过程中，他们需要决定自己保留多少钱、捐出去多少钱，捐出去的钱最终将被平均分配给所有群体成员。

Sometimes people's wealth was determined by chance, other times it was based on their effort.

有时候，初始财富是随机分配的;有时候，它是凭借个人努力获得的。

Overall, lower status participants would contribute more to the group pot than higher status ones. And those who earned their "high status" labels would contribute even less than when they received the wealth through chance.

整体而言，“低地位组”捐献出去的钱多于“高地位组”。此外，凭借个人努力获得“高地位”的人比凭借运气获得“高地位”的人更不愿意捐钱。

"For the high status individuals, the way in which wealth was achieved, whether through chance or effort, appeared to be the key factor determining the level of cooperation observed," said Magda Osman, a professor at Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences and lead author of the study.

生物化学院的教授、本研究的主要作者Magda Osman表示：

对于高地位组而言，获得财富的方式——凭借运气还是努力——似乎是合作程度的重要决定因素。

"This wasn't the case for the low status individuals. How they got to their low status made no difference to their behaviour in the game."

但对低地位组而言，情况并非如此。他们获得低地位的方式对他们在游戏里的行为没有产生影响。

If you gain a high status through effort rather than chance, she said, you are more likely to want to keep what you earned. When your wealth is limited, you have more of an incentive to cooperate.

当你凭借努力、而非运气获得高地位时，你更有可能希望保留自己挣到的钱。当财富有限时，你更有合作的动机。

"The point here being that even if one is acting cooperatively, there is no reason to think that this is purely for altruistic reasons," she said.

这里的重点在于：即便人们表现出合作行为，我们也没有理由认为这纯粹是出于利他原因。

Rather, you hope that by contributing more, others will do so too, and ultimately you will profit from it.

相反，你在捐献更多钱时，心里希望的是别人也能够捐献更多钱，最终从中获益。

Even so, there is no guarantee everyone else in the game would do the same as you. In other words, you take a bigger risk in contributing more as a lower status person, because you have no idea if others will reciprocate.

然而，你不能保证人人都像你这样做。换句话说，在处于低地位时，你反而冒了更大的风险，因为你不知道其他人是否会做出同样的举动。

"The other surprising finding is that empathy has next to no impact on promoting pro-social behaviour, in other words contributing money to the group pot," said Osman.

此外，研究人员还有一个惊人的发现：共情心对促进这种“亲社会行为”(即捐钱给群体)几乎没有影响。

"This matters because there are a lot of claims that empathy is the glue that binds people to act socially. What we show is that when money matters, empathy plays virtually no role in improving pro-social behaviours."

这个发现很重要，因为许多人认为，共情心是促使人们表现出亲社会行为的粘合剂。但这项研究却表明，在金钱的影响下，共情心几乎不起作用。