Mohammad Atari Co-authors Study on How Different Cultures Judge Excessive Wealth : College of Natural Sciences : UMass Amherst

Eight individuals now hold as much wealth as the poorest half of the planet—a fact that raises an uncomfortable moral question: at what point is wealth deemed excessive? A new study co-authored by Mohammad Atari, assistant professor in the College of Natural Sciences’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, suggests the answer isn't universal, but culturally shaped.

Respondents in Russia, Switzerland, and Ireland expressed the strongest moral resistance to extreme wealth, while those in Peru, Argentina, and Mexico were the least likely to see it as objectionable. Overall, most cultures judged excessive wealth as only mildly wrong, revealing a global ambivalence that normalizes inequality rather than condemns it outright.

Atari explains the implications of this study with Philstar.com:

“'Our research investigates the moralization of inequality and the immorality of excessive wealth,' says co-writer Mohammad Atari of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst. 'The immorality of excessive wealth might vary substantially based on people’s moral intuitions, cultural background, socioeconomic status, and the structural economic systems they live in.'”
— Mohammad Atari to Philstar.com

Mohammad Atari Co-authors Study on How Different Cultures Judge Excessive Wealth

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