The depiction of the rich and cold-hearted Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens classic “A Christmas Carol” is backed up with scientific evidence, according to researchers at the University of California at Berkeley.
The researchers found that people in lower socio-economic classes are more physiologically attuned to the suffering of others than their middle- and upper-class counterparts.
“It’s not that the upper-classes are coldhearted,” UC Berkeley social psychologist Jennifer Stellar, lead author of the study published the journal Emotion, explained. “They may just not be as adept at recognizing the cues and signals of suffering because they haven’t had to deal with as many obstacles in their lives.”
The study was based on three experiments conducted on more than 300 ethnically diverse young adults.
Participants from lower-classes reported feeling greater levels of compassion than their more affluent counterparts. But they reported feeling the same amount of joy, contentment, pride, love, amusement and awe.
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