Finally for Paul Piff, your conclusion suggests that individual levels of compassion is malleable quickly with little intervention. Have you been able to bring this knowledge to the curriculum developers of the public schools? This might be a way to start effectively addressing the problems we are confronting as a society.
Thanks!

Another question for Paul Puff… Do you know whether peoples’ perceptions of how a rich vs. a poor person would behave in a given circumstance are accurate/inadequate according to how the actually behave in those or similar circumstances?

Question for Paul Puff and the other researchers in his lab… how do you explain, or is there any research into why the members of the 1% bifurcate into two groups, one willing to use their own resources to benefit the social good of others and the other in which resources are hoarded and kept for themselves and within their families? It seems understanding this would help in so many ways…

I really enjoyed this segment, but I feel compelled to point out the experiment of the “rich” vs. “poor” Monopoly game players left me cold! I even listened to it several times to see if I had missed something, but am satisfied I did not. The problem is that the players were assigned to wealth categories without consideration to their actual, true-life economic status. However the results were explained as though the players were actually belonged to the economic class that they were assigned to, rather than (and more accurately, I believe) stating that the players behaved as they “believe” the rich/poor would behave in similar circumstances. It is a small, but important distinction, that actually suggests several topics for follow-on research that I would like to see pursued. How the rich and poor actually behave needs to be much further explore if we are to resolve the inequalities in our society. At the same time we should take care to not fuel the flames of the fire, less we allow it to turn into a wild, uncontrollable blaze.
Other than that, great Ted Talk in a great show! Thanks!

Really great ted talk!