And Three For Me...

Part of what makes me a run-of-the-mill blogger, I suspect, is that I'm not a particularly good researcher. And I'm bad at noting things of interest when I first encounter them. Oh, well.

I was making the point to an acquaintance that one aspect of American individualism that the United States should be happy to jettison is the a general lack of investment in each others' success. And this is where my poor research skills came into play. There was a study, in which people were asked which scenario would make them happier: If they made X dollars a year and their neighbor made Y dollars a year, where X was greater than Y, or of they made A dollars a years and their neighbor made B dollars a years, where A was greater than X, but B was greater than A. So we can imagine a scenario where the subject would make $80,000 a year while the hypothetical neighbor made $60,000 on one side, and the subject makes $100,000 a year while the neighbor makes $120,000 a year. According to the researchers (at least as I remember it), people tended to prefer the first scenario, where both parties are worse off, but the subject is comparatively wealthier than the neighbor.

Color me greedy, but I don't see the point in begrudging someone else making it big if I'm going to come along for at least part of the ride. (Actually, I don't see the point in begrudging someone else making it big at all, but that's beside the point here.) Preferring to be less well off just to hold someone else farther down seems spiteful to me. (Which it isn't really, and I know that.)

In a zero-sum game, it would make more sense to me. Come to mention it, I wonder if there is zero-sum thinking going on here, even though the scenario specifically disclaims that avenue. In any event, I think that the United States would do better for itself were its people (as a whole) more inclined to see benefits for themselves in other people succeeding. If for no other reason than people would be more cooperative.

But maybe that's the part that's too much to ask at this point. The United States has accomplished a number of truly remarkable things, all while being a highly individualistic society. And as much I think that a bit more social-mindedness would be a good thing, I don't want the current system to simply stop working, because I understand how disruptive that would be, and how many people would be injured by such a turn of events.

I suspect that this makes me part of the problem; that unwillingness to desire the pain of others, even if that pain would bring about something that I claim to want. Maybe it's simply that I'm okay with the way things are; it's more a matter of good-better than bad-good. I don't know. In any event, I'd like to track down that study again. Because I suspect that it's not as simple as my memory makes it out to be, and maybe that's why it persists.