Quickie: Want to Date Rich? Your Partner May Not Satisfy You Emotionally
Why money and recognizing emotions may not mix
Some people think a rich partner will give them the relationship of their dreams — and they’ll ride off into the diamond-encrusted sunset together where they drink champagne, eat healthy helpings of caviar, and live in the lap of luxury for the rest of their lives.
“It’s all about the social context the person lives in….”
And you may be able to do all those things with a filthy rich partner. However, research suggests that one thing you may not be able to do is get emotional fulfillment. That’s because, according to a study in Psychological Science, members of the upper class are simply unable to read the emotions of others.
Researchers Michael W. Kraus, Stéphane Côté, and Dacher Keltner conducted an experiment where people with different education levels — a characteristic that was used as a proxy for social class — were asked to view photographs of faces and identify the emotions that people in the pictures displayed. The more education the study participant had, the less likely they were to correctly identify what emotions the facial expressions conveyed.
