How you lie is tied to social class

I went over to Kellogg School of Management’s blog just now because I know they do a whole Super Bowl ad thing each year and I wanted to check out if they had any plans for tomorrow night. I didn’t find anything about that — although I did find about the 19th business school in America to start calling their website “Insights” — but I did come across an interesting article about the context of how (in what situations, and for whom) people lie.

Here’s the basic takeaway: if you’re rich, you probably lie to protect your own interests. If you’re not-as-rich, you probably lie to protect your friends.

You can read about all the various experiments at the link above, and see who’s involved with it — looks like one Kellogg professor, one Columbia professor, and one former Kellogg grad student turned professor — but here’s the essential quote you need to take away from it all:

“Why does this happen?” Rucker asks. “Those high is social class, by definition, have more wealth and resources. They feel more empowered, and this psychological sense of empowerment leads them down the path of cheating to help themselves. Those who are low in social class do not feel empowered. They feel more communal and more dependent on others, which produces a willingness to help others, even when it involves behaving unethically.”