How Does Wealth Change Behaviour? A Cognitive Psychology and Social Psychology Podcast Episode.

A lot of people wonder "how does wealth change behaviour?", and there are a lot of sayings that can be used to partially explain how wealth changes our behaviour. For example, some people think money changes everything, money can change our emotions and more. Therefore, in this cognitive psychology podcast episode, you'll learn about the psychology of money, how wealth changes our behaviour and how wealth decreases our empathy. If you enjoy learning about money, cognitive psychology and social psychology then this will be a great episode for you. 

Today's psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Cognitive Psychology: A Guide To Neuropsychology, Neuroscience and Cognitive Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.

Introduction To How Does Wealth Change Behaviour

At first, you might think that the topic of behaviour change after becoming wealthy isn't a real psychology topic, and it's best left to the gossip columns and tabloids. Yet people have always been interested in how wealth changes behaviour, because lavish lifestyles, having high-powered jobs and a lot of financial security must impact us in different ways. Exactly how being poor impacts our behaviour. 

This has led a lot of academics to realise that there's a complex interplay between human behaviour as well as money that leads to different behavioural outcomes. 

Also, I would note here that these behaviours aren't only cognitive and social in nature, but emotional and mental health is immensely shaped by money. Especially, when we consider the vast literature demonstrating the negative impact of poverty on mental health. As well as we typically find that people living in poverty have higher rates of mental health conditions compared to wealthier people.

In addition, the interest in "how the other half live" so to speak isn't just a modern phenomenon that's driven by our celebrity-obsessed culture. Even though I have to admit it seems these days anyone and everyone can be a celebrity if their bank account is large enough. Yet people have always been interested in the wealthy throughout history. From the royal courts of ancient monarchs to the robber barons of the industrial revolution to the aristocracy to the tech billionaires of the modern world. We've always been fascinated by them.

This interest comes from the realisation and finding that wealth has always been a powerful force that shapes our societal norms and behaviour. Since the rich have always had the power to influence our politics, our way of life and entire cultural movements, instead of only individuals. And this understanding is even more important today when we consider that the rich-poor divide is only growing, we have our first trillionaire and the number of people in poverty is only growing.

This means our ability to understand the rich is more important than ever.

On the whole, this is why we need to investigate the impact of wealth on people's decisions, attitudes, emotions and actions towards themselves and others. As well as understanding wealth has a wide range of implications for sociology, economics, even policy and, of course, psychology. Since wealth can impact power dynamics, success, behaviour and all levels of society.

How Does Wealth Impact Decision-Making?

The first cognitive process that wealth impacts is decision-making, because research shows that having significant wealth changes a person's decision-making processes. Especially, when it comes to risk behaviour. 

Personally, because I am not extremely wealthy I am rather risk-averse when it comes to investments and money. I prefer small investments, savings and to focus on smaller, more secure returns then stock market investments that are risky and are more likely to fail. This is how not having a lot of money impacts my choice. 

Equally, because I am not in poverty and I have an upper working class/ low middle class living at the moment. I can easily afford to save a lot of money at the moment. As well as I live with my parents, my bills and rent aren't too expensive and besides petrol once every two weeks, my outgoings aren't too high at this moment in time. Whereas a family living in poverty wouldn't have the money to save, they might be living paycheck to paycheck and they might barely be at or above the breadline. 

My point is all these different levels of income and wealth lead to different mindsets and attitudes towards money. 

Building upon this, wealth can lead to changes in risk behaviour and attitudes towards innovation. Since people with a lot of wealth typically are more comfortable taking risks that could lead to massive failures or massive successes. For example, billionaires are happier putting lots of money into a risky investment because they still have lots of wealth in their bank account. Whereas a person with no or moderate wealth might be more cautious before taking a risky investment. 

Personally, I just wouldn't do this at this moment in time. I cannot afford and I am not comfortable taking massive risks with my money. This is largely because I don't have a massive amount of wealth to fall back on. 

Nonetheless, something that is interesting about this is that high-risk behaviour can be very rewarding but it can be very destabilising too. For instance, a millionaire could put millions into a new dating app that promises to make the wealthy investors billions within three years. If it works, the wealthy investor is in for immense success. If it fails the millionaire has lost millions and might cause them to lose all their wealth. 

This is why it's important to research because as a middle-class person I cannot imagine for the life of me why someone would risk millions on a bad investment. I value my money way too much for that, but some people take these risky investments without a second thought.

How Does Wealth Impact Entitlement? 

On the other hand, wealth isn't all about risk behaviour and investments, wealth can impact our sense of entitlement and this is one of my pet hates. I despise entitled people with an utter passion, because they are horrible to be around and talk to. 

A sense of entitlement is the psychological state where people believe they deserve special treatment because of their financial status. This is always something I've been flat out against because it is disgusting that people expect to be treated better, get special access or certain rules don't apply to them just because they're rich. 

Everyone is the same regardless of the size of their bank account. All laws, social norms and social rules should apply to everyone equally. 

On the whole, wealth can impact behaviour because as their wealth increases as does their sense of entitlement. 

How Does Wealth Change Social Behaviours?

Whenever we think of riches, wealth and people being famous, we tend to imagine that they have massive houses, multiple sports cars and they fly around on private jets. To be honest, this is how a lot of wealthy people live and these are examples of conspicuous consumption. In other words, buying all of these products, show off your riches at expensive and exclusive parties and so on is all about making sure your wealth is clearly visible, noticeable and everyone can see your rich.

In fact, this actually reminds me of an observation that a very wealthy American writer friend of mine mentioned once. Him and his wife who are millionaires, USA Today and New York Times bestsellers, dress in normal clothes, eat at normal places and yet they do live in a penthouse condo in Las Vegas. Anyway, they mentioned that people who are actually rich dress normally and don’t feel the need to look the part, but people who aren’t wealthy, feel the need to look the part.

It’s just something to bear in mind.

Anyway, when it comes to conspicuous consumption, it’s about signalling to everyone around you that you’re rich and you belong to an exclusive social group.

Nonetheless, this isn’t always the case because throughout history, there’s been a long-standing history of the wealthy giving to the poor and supporting charitable projects. For example, Bill Gates makes massive investments and global health programmes, my American friends they donate to local school reading programmes and more. It is this aspect of wealth that can have immensely positive impacts on society by supporting vital causes and addressing critical social and health issues.

Another way how wealth can impact behaviour is wealth can impact social relationships. Since whilst the financial security that wealth provides increases opportunities for shared experiences and reduces stress, it can create barriers to genuine connection. It isn’t rare for us to see on crime dramas, other types of programmes and in other entertainment that billionaires feel that everyone is only after their money, what doors they can open for them and no one actually cares about the billionaire as a person. This happens in real life so a lot of the social relationships that wealthy people experience can have ulterior motives and lack authenticity.

Finally for this section, wealth can impact social networks and communities because for wealthy people, their social world tends to revolve around exclusive networks and communities. For example, we often hear in the media and entertainment how a particular country club, golf club or racing club is only for the super-rich and they don’t want to be associated with anyone else. In behavioural terms, this means that these exclusive communities as well as networks provide opportunities for the rich to share information, connect with their peers and consolidate their influence. Yet the downside of these exclusive networks is that they can lead to social stratification and a concentration of power.

How Does Wealth Impact Empathy?

As someone who works with children and did their Masters in clinical psychology, one of the most concerning findings is how wealth relates to empathy. Since a wide range of research shows that as people increase their wealth, their ability to tune into the emotions of others decrease. This is even more true for people from different socio-economic backgrounds. 

As you can imagine, this is a massive problem because this "empathy gap" can have massively negative impacts on social cohesion and policymaking.

Personally, whilst I don't want to get into politics at the moment, I think this is a massive issue in the world. We have the richest, the top 1% and the ruling elite, whatever you want to call them. These wealthy people are the ones in power, they have no idea what it's like to be from a different socio-economic background and so their policies aren't effective at supporting others because they don't have the emotional attunement needed to understand others. This is why generally speaking it seems the government's decisions are designed to make them richer and keep us poorer. 

Thankfully, it's important to note that this empathy gap isn't inevitable or universal because there are lots of wealthy people who actively work on maintaining their connection to others, their empathy and they're aware of the potential issues of their privileged position. 

One example I know of is an American writer friend of mine. Him and his wife are in their 60s and 70s, they're millionaires and yet, they're brilliant people. They're very connected to others, they're always wanting to help those with less money and they are just some of the most normal rich people I've ever met. 

On the flip side because the various charity work I've done over the years and the wide range of people I've met at university, there are some rich people who you talk to and you're just like "yeah, you've always had a silver spoon in your mouth, you have no idea what it's like to be poor or working class and talking to you is really awkward,"

How Does Wealth Impact Cultural Perceptions?

If you’ve been a listener of The Psychology World Podcast for a while, then you know that I flat out love culture, as seen in the podcast episode, How Do Different Cultures Perceive Learning Disabilities. I enjoy seeing how our culture, our social norms and our lifestyles impact our behaviour, and wealth is no different. The culture we live in can impact our attitudes towards the wealth and how we spend our wealth as a result.

On the most basic level, how a given culture portrays the rich impacts our understanding of what it means to be rich. For example, in the Western world, we imagine wealth and “richness” as the ability to buy a private island, have massive houses, not have a “proper” job, have multiple sports cars and be able to go to faraway countries for a holiday on a whim. And I would rather controversially add the ability to get away with crime and breaking the law is the meaning of being rich.

A very interesting way how wealth and culture impact our behaviour is how wealth impacts our personal ethics and values. This is critical to understand because some people would say that wealth corrupts, but other people argue that wealth amplifies existing personality traits.

Personally, and this doesn’t make me correct, I tend to believe wealth corrupts instead of amplifying personality traits. Since I believe no one is born wanting to harm others, screw over other socioeconomic groups and putting themselves ahead of others for their own personal gains. That is all taught by people, living in a capitalist culture and that I can see this attitude being bred in the exclusive communities and networks that I spoke about earlier. Therefore, I think wealth does corrupt the majority of people.

In reality, the true impact of wealth on ethics and personal values is likely to be in the middle. Somewhere in between amplifying their already existing personality traits and corrupting their personal ethics and values.

Another way how wealth and culture impact our behaviour is our attitudes towards expressions of wealth. For instance, in some cultures, like a lot of Western cultures, it is perfectly okay and even celebrated to have massive “flashy” expressions of wealth. It is okay in England and the United States to show off your expensive necklaces, your endless amounts of sports cars and talk about your various holiday homes (even I am personally against holiday homes because of what they do to local communities) and you will not be judged negatively for these expressions of wealth. That is just a part of Western culture.

On the other hand, there are cultures that do not appreciate loud, flashy expressions of wealth. In these cultures, they prize more modest and discrete expressions of wealth. Understanding these cultural differences are important because it can decrease conflict and misunderstandings when different cultures mix.

Thankfully, there seems to be a generational shift in how people perceive and use their wealth. For instance, younger wealthy people are tending to place a greater emphasis on using their wealth with social responsibility, sustainability as well as impact investing. In case you’re like me and had no idea what impact investing is, it is an investment strategy that seeks to generate positive environment and/ or social effects alongside financial returns.

Personally, I think this sounds flat out brilliant. Instead of wealth being used to screw over others, fund fossil fuels and harm communities in other cultures. Wealth can be used to transition towards green energy, create more green jobs in communities and help other people thrive instead of only the wealthy people benefiting.

How Can We Address The Challenges and Opportunities of Wealthy Behaviour?

As a teaching assistant at a special education needs school and as an aspiring educational psychologist, as I’ve been writing this podcast episode, I’ve been struggling to come up with ways to reflect and consider how I would bring this knowledge into the classroom. Also, I struggle to bring this knowledge into clinical practice as I’m a clinical psychology person first and foremost. I’m mentioning this fact because the wealthy do have a massive, massive impact on people and society as a whole, so we absolutely need to address the opportunities that wealth presents us with, but also the challenges.

Mainly, this is by promoting social responsibility amongst the wealthy as well as responsible wealth management.

One method of promoting social responsibility and wealth management is by awareness programmes and education. These programmes would help to encourage positive wealth behaviours and it helps wealthy people to understand the broader impact that they have on the world because of their decisions and actions. You could argue this helps to create a more socially conscious approach to wealth.

Personally, I would argue that these aren’t likely to be effective unless there is effective government will to punish the wealthy if they don’t do something right. For example, if we look at the United States, there is a billionaire who owns a social media platform (if there are multiple), they have to know the devastating impact that they’re having on US politics, the negative mental health impact of social media, a certain AI chatbot that creates nudified photos of people without permission and so on. Yet these billionaires don’t care because no one, no government, no organisation is actually prepared to hold them to account.

Anyway, on the other hand, you might argue that there needs to be questions raised about how do we balance the individual rights of the wealthy to decide what to do with their money and what society expects of them. Since whilst the majority of people would want more responsible behaviour from the wealthy, we have to consider the limits of social pressure as well as the role of personal choice in a free society.

Granted, I did an entire undergraduate module on why free will doesn’t exist, so I have a few issues with the paragraph above but that is the general consensus on the topic.

On the whole, from impact investing to philanthropy, there is a lot of brilliant potential for wealthy people to change the world for the better and address global challenges and push humanity forward. If only they have their hearts in the right place, they are grounded in their empathy and understanding of other social groups and arguably, they are held to account.

Social Psychology Conclusion

I have to admit that this psychology podcast episode has been a lot of fun, because we've seen how wealth changes attitudes, empathy and behaviour. And in a few weird ways, we can apply this knowledge in the real world to help make it a better place for everyone regardless of wealth. 

On the whole, we've seen how wealth is a complex process that impacts a wide range of human behaviours with far-reaching consequences for society as well as the wealthy themselves. By understanding how wealth impacts our behaviours, we can promote positive wealth behaviour by encouraging the wealthy to show social responsibility and sustainability. This helps us all to create a world that is empathetic, socially responsible and increase economic justice. In turn, this helps us to decrease the negative impacts of wealth. 

Personally, I still think that this is true even when some would argue wealth itself isn't good or bad. The impact of wealth always depends on how the individual uses it. We still need to strive to create a world where wealth is used for positive change.

In the future, wealth-based behaviour research could investigate topics like the long-term approaches to different forms of wealth management, how technology could democratise some of the benefits normally associated with wealth, as well as the neurological effects of wealth. Some of these sound really interesting to me and I would enjoy learning more about the neurological impacts of wealth. 

Nonetheless, at the end of the day, this podcast episode wasn't about seeing or treating wealthy people as completely different from you and me. Even though, the wealthy have significantly more money in their bank account compared to me. This episode was actually about our shared humanity because regardless of your wealth, we all face the same challenges because we're all human. We all struggle to find meaning, leave a positive legacy on the world, build relationships and more. Therefore, some people argue that understanding the wealthy is less about understanding the impact of bank balances, and it's more about understanding ourselves.

I really hope you enjoyed today’s social psychology podcast episode.

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Cognitive Psychology and Social Psychology References and Further Reading

Andreoni, J., & Vesterlund, L. (2001). Which is the fair sex? Gender differences in altruism. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116(1), 293-312.

Buldova, K., & Chernyak, D. (2024). The psychology of poverty and wealth.

Carr, P. (2023). ‘How the other half lives’?: Taking a critical approach to the social psychology of economic inequality and extreme wealth. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 17(5), e12743.

Cote, S., House, J., & Willer, R. (2015). High economic inequality leads higher-income individuals to be less generous. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(52), 15838-15843.

Davidai, S. (2022). How do people make sense of wealth and poverty?. Current opinion in psychology, 43, 42-47.

Housel, M. (2020). The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness. Harriman House Limited.

https://neurolaunch.com/rich-behavior/

Kasser, T., & Ryan, R. M. (1993). A dark side of the American dream: Correlates of financial success as a central life aspiration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(2), 410.

Kraus, M. W., Piff, P. K., Mendoza-Denton, R., Rheinschmidt, M. L., & Keltner, D. (2012). Social class, solipsism, and contextualism: how the rich are different from the poor. Psychological Review, 119(3), 546.

Norton, M. I., & Ariely, D. (2011). Building a better America—One wealth quintile at a time. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(1), 9-12.

Piff, P. K., Stancato, D. M., Côté, S., Mendoza-Denton, R., & Keltner, D. (2012). Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(11), 4086-4091.

Piketty, T., & Saez, E. (2014). Inequality in the long run. Science, 344(6186), 838-843.

Rourke, N. J. (2025). The Entrepreneur Mindset Blueprint: Master the Psychology of Success, Build Resilience, and Think Like a Millionaire to Grow Wealth and Win in Business. Benjamin Bautista.

Shariff, A. F., Wiwad, D., & Aknin, L. B. (2016). Income mobility breeds tolerance for income inequality: Cross-national and experimental evidence. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(3), 373-380.

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