High-status individuals are held to higher ethical standards

Stefan t. Trautmann; Xianghong Wang; Yijie Wang; Yilong Xu

doi:10.1038/s41598-023-42204-z

High-status individuals are held to higher ethical standards

Stefan t. Trautmann
, Xianghong Wang
, Yijie Wang
, Yilong Xu

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Although there is evidence for the generosity of high-status individuals, there seems to be a strong perception that the elites are selfish and contribute little to others’ welfare, and even less so than poorer people. We argue that this perception may derive from a gap between normative and empirical expectations regarding the behavior of the elites. Using large-scale survey experiments, we show that high-status individuals are held to higher ethical standards in both the US and China, and that there is a strong income gradient in normatively expected generosity. We also present evidence for a gap between people’s normative expectations of how the rich should behave, and their empirical expectations of how they actually do: empirical expectations are generally lower than both normative expectations and actual giving.

Original language	English
Article number	15111
Pages (from-to)	1-12
Journal	Scientific Reports
Volume	13
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-42204-z
Publication status	Published - 13 Sept 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, Springer Nature Limited.

Funding

We are grateful for helpful comments by Antonio Cabrales, as well as audiences at the ESA world meeting, the iCare Conference Perm, the University of Cologne, NTU Singapore, Radboud University, the University of Alicante and HSG Sankt Gallen. Financial support of the Natural National Science Foundation of China (Grant #71673282) is gratefully acknowledged. For the publication fee we acknowledge financial support by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft within the funding programme “Open Access Publikationskosten” as well as by Heidelberg University. The article was written while Stefan Trautmann benefitted from a Marsilius-Kolleg Fellowship, fellow class of 2021/22. We are grateful for helpful comments by Antonio Cabrales, as well as audiences at the ESA world meeting, the iCare Conference Perm, the University of Cologne, NTU Singapore, Radboud University, the University of Alicante and HSG Sankt Gallen. Financial support of the Natural National Science Foundation of China (Grant #71673282) is gratefully acknowledged. For the publication fee we acknowledge financial support by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft within the funding programme “Open Access Publikationskosten” as well as by Heidelberg University. The article was written while Stefan Trautmann benefitted from a Marsilius-Kolleg Fellowship, fellow class of 2021/22.

Funders	Funder number
Universidad de Alicante
European Space Agency
Nanyang Technological University
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Universität Heidelberg	2021/22
National Natural Science Foundation of China	71673282
Radboud Universitair Medisch Centrum
Universität zu Köln

Keywords

China
Humans
Income

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10.1038/s41598-023-42204-zLicence: CC BY

s41598-023-42204-zFinal published version, 1.19 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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High-status individuals are held to higher ethical standards

Abstract

Bibliographical note

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Keywords

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