关键词: 社会阶层, 财富分享行为, 权利感, 同情心

Abstract: With rising economic inequality around the world in recent decades, the public has shown great focus on the wealth sharing behavior among the rich, which may help reduce economic inequality. However, most recent evidence suggests that compared to those from low social class, people from high social class tend to share and give less others. How to explain this phenomenon? Are there any interventions which would be effective to encourage and promote wealth sharing behavior of high social class people? Based on the perspective of social psychology, in this review, we suggested that high social class have a high sense of entitlement and low compassion in interpersonal communication, which makes people to engage in less wealth sharing behavior, prioritizing self-interest over the interests of others. Supporting this argument, studies have shown that relative to low social class counterparts, high social class individuals reported higher sense of entitlement and lower score of compassion, which led them to donate proportionally less of their income to charity and give less in dictator games. But how to improve wealth sharing behavior among high social class? We suggest two levels of factors: individual and social levels factors, could be used. At the individual level, (1) meeting agentic goals, such as viewing a charitable message that focused on the pursuit of personal goals rather than the pursuit of shared goals, (2) matching motivational needs, such as reputation or good psychological experience, and (3) inducing a lower sense of entitlement by correcting attributions of the poor or inspiring compassion by watching videos of poor children, will help to increase wealth sharing of high social class. At the social level, evidence shows that economic inequality weakens generosity among the high social class, suggesting that the policy to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor may encourage high social class people to promote the well-being of the lower classe. Besides, cultivating other-oriented culture in community may also help to encourage wealth sharing behavior of high social class. Before closing, we should briefly outline some potential avenues for future research. First, it is necessary to pay more attention to the classifications and measurements of social class (e.g., to focus on the middle class group and to clarify the distinct facets, such as income, education, and occupation, of social class), so as to systematically and deeply explore the relationship between social class and wealth sharing behavior. Second, we should explore the deep psychological mechanisms that may influence wealth sharing behavior of high social class, such as the individual's self-oriented psychological tendencies. Third, we should explore the long-term incentive mechanisms (i.e., emotional benefits of sharing behavior) that could improve and promote wealth sharing behavior of high social class. Finally, we should focus on social issues (i.e., poverty, wealth and income inequality) in China, and apply the existing research evidence and conclusions that could help to solve our real social problems.

Key words: social class, wealth sharing behavior, entitlement, compassion