On Topic Research

Scholarly Sources

Osman, Magda, et al. “Can Empathy Promote Cooperation When Status and Money Matter?” Basic & Applied Social Psychology, vol. 40, no. 4, July 2018, pp. 201–218. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/01973533.2018.1463225.

• The source listed here is a psychological study that experiments on its participants to answer the question in its aforementioned title.
• It is fascinating to have scientific data applied to this question. Most of the other research, and my own experimental research has been anecdotal and pseudo freudian in its execution. Here is mathematical and valid research to verify this question. Their conclusion is that status and money lower one’s desire to cooperate with teammates. Those with fewer resources will be more cooperative. This perspective does answer the question that I am asking, and does so mathematically, even though its conclusion is bleak. 

Bond, Michael. “The Price of Wealth.” New Scientist, vol. 214, no. 2861, Apr. 2012, p. 52. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/S0262-4079(12)61037-9.

•  This article dissects how self awareness for richer people may make them more empathetic.
• It also interetsingly works in tandem with an experiential research observation of mine: that richer people tend to selfishly vote more conservative. It teaches that wealthy people often try to prove that they deserve their income which is quite fascinating. This showcases the natural human condition called “self defence”. Monetarily successful people will try to not hold themselves responsible for what they have the ability to fix.

Non-Scholarly Sources

Washington Post – Kindness and Wealth

• This is a Washington Post article regarding how often poorer people are kinder than their wealthier counterparts.
• This article, alongside being an interesting source, is also a good example of a feature story. The use of anecdotal evidence supports her point at the beginning, but then using verified research later on in the article helps to solidify her premise. I think that I learned about formatting from this article, even more than the topic itself. That being said, I like how her perspective is from the other side of the spectrum. In my article, I have been focusing more on how to get the unempathetic to learn empathy. Her article’s perspective is from the less wealthy yet more empathetic, opening up a lot of perspective to add to my own story. 

Jordan Belfort Biography

• This is an in depth biography of Jordan Belfort.
• In my article I want to use the story of Belfort as an extreme example of how a once kind yet poor man took his ‘more is never enough’ ambition to the stock market. During his time in that field Belfort went from young stock boy to ‘million dollar a week’ stock broker, ripping off nearly all of his clients, cheating on his wife and being an all around awful person. While I would have liked to cite ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ film, having his non-fictional biography will prove much more professional.

Cultural Sources

Money – Pink Floyd

• A great song by Pink Floyd, written in a satirical fashion from the perspective of the British upper class.
• In this song Waters and Gilmour utilize satire, as well as brilliant sound editing to convey the selfish nature of the rich. “Keep your hands off my stack” and “Share it fairly but don’t take a slice of my pie” showcase the selfishness of people who are constantly seeking out more. By doing so they in turn (and years before his time) take jabs at Jordan Belfort, mocking the “more is never enough” philosophy that led to Belfort making his millions.

Experiential Research

Noticing value sets, wealth and voting patterns

• This research will be quite anecdotal and with little verifiable statistics.
• In general, I have noticed that richer people tend to vote conservative, whereas poorer people tend to vote Green/NDP/Liberal. Less wealthy people’s voting patterns make sense: more democratic socialist parties offer more social services, tax cuts to lower classes and provide more equitable opportunities. Meanwhile, wealthier people, who more often than not vote Conservative, prefer to favour parties that believe in trickle down economics, tax cuts to the wealthy and less social services to the poor. It makes sense: people vote in an ethically egoistic manner. It is still interesting to note the correlation between wealth and lack of sympathy to others.

Librarian Visit:

A lovely librarian by the name of Stav Vitoratos helped give me the tools to narrow down my research. With Dawson’s increasingly digital library, once you know how to sign into ebscohost or jstor, there isn’t much for the librarian to do. Nonetheless, Stav still showed me the ropes, taught me how to use Google Scholar (which I had never used before) and introduced me to a neat trick or two. Most noteworthy was the ability to put your keyword followed by an asterisks, which helps you to not limit your search based on the tense of pluralization of your word. All in all, my expectations for the librarian visit weren’t exceptional, but the results definitely out performed them.