IMO his piece is a clumsy setup for his point, which is political in nature, and buried near the end:

They show us, for example, that when social inequality drives up rates of crime by the poor, it’s overwhelmingly going to be the poor victimizing the poor. And that is so much the way of the world, we barely even notice.

This is code, intended to soften our defensive reaction to blacks plundering and murdering other blacks, as they do in the human wasteland Chicago has become. Sapolsky is claiming we are all that way. That means we should seek the solution in social progress and self-understanding (vote Hillary) rather than by taking strong action to protect ourselves (vote Trump).

The key is over in another piece (reproduced, not coincidentally, on Alternet), where Sapolsky writes:

Not everyone has an overactive amygdala, an underactive fusiform or an itchier trigger finger when seeing someone of another race. Who are the exceptions? Predictably, people brought up in more racially diverse settings, those with friends or romantic partners of another race.

And even for those who don't live multi-culti lives, the xenophobia isn't inevitable. It can be blunted by context. In Correll's work, if the person with the gun or cellphone is pictured in a neutral background, whites show a shooting bias toward blacks. Use a scary background in the picture instead and the bias disappears; subjects now show equally rapid-fire judgment about whom to shoot.

...In other words, simply thinking about someone as a person rather than a category makes that supposedly brain-based automatic xenophobia toward other races evaporate in an instant.

http://www.alternet.org/prejudice

In summary, Mr. Sapolsky is a progressive and an activist. He politicizes his research, and researches his politics -- sometimes artfully, so that he does not appear to be doing so.

An extensive literature shows that being a socioeconomic have-not is bad for your health. It increases the odds of major depression and the likelihood of antisocial or criminal behavior. An even bigger predictor of those bad outcomes is the noticeable magnitude of socioeconomic inequality . . . More than poverty, it’s poverty amid plenty that enrages us. . . . The patterns the air rage studies reveal...show us, for example, that when social inequality drives up rates of crime by the poor, it’s overwhelmingly going to be the poor victimizing the poor.

Well, we'll have to wait and see what happens if the magnitude of socioeconomic inequality continues to increase.

Work by researchers at UC Berkeley has shown that, on average, the wealthy are less “prosocial,” generous and honest than the rest of us. For example, one field study showed that wealthier people — as assessed by the cost of their cars — were less likely to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks than poorer folks.

I don't doubt that. I think wealthier people, in general, have a greater sense of entitlement, a sense which finds expression in numerous ways, like the crosswalk example.

Second, if coach passengers have to walk through first class to get to their seats, rather than entering mid-plane, it causes an even higher incidence of air rage

That's something that doesn't faze me. I may, on occasion, get a slight twinge of jealousy when walking through first class but it quickly passes. Sure, people in first class get wider, cushier seats and more goodies but we proles in coach get the same level of safety they do and, when I'm flying, that's the important thing. I'm so thankful to be able to fly places for a reasonable price, and with a near-100% guarantee of arriving alive, that I can't get bent out of shape over narrower seats and not being fawned over by flight attendants.

I suspect being a first class passenger is less about real wealth, and more about social status signaling.

It is a lot about people being pretentious and and spending foolishly to impress someone they don't even know. It is also about airline rewards miles which is a perk for mid level road warriors.

I have a cousin who is a multi millionaire. He won't get on a domestic flight that isn't Southwest.

If a story about air rage is going to be valuable, you need to be able to examine the actual social status, and education and wealth of the passengers. Being in first class isn't a proxy for much except having a free upgrade or being really really stupid about money.

I stopped reading after "hoi polloi". He also needs to define "rich" at the beginning to have any reasonable conclusion.

Thanks -- interesting analysis and comments.

Also, I have these conversations with an epidemiologist/biostatistician, and one of the things he frequently emphasizes are individual differences.

I suspect being a first class passenger is less about real wealth, and more about social status signaling. [...] It is a lot about people being pretentious and and spending foolishly to impress someone they don't even know. It is also about airline rewards miles which is a perk for mid level road warriors.~ Isab at July 12, 2016 3:04 AM

Having flown coach and first class both, if I had an opportunity to fly first class without having to forego a mortgage payment, I'd take it in a heartbeat - just for the legroom. No social status signaling, just an desire to not have the seat in front of me inches from my face for the entire flight and the ability to reach the bag below the seat in front of me without having to be a contortionist.

His work is seriously flawed. "one field study showed that wealthier people — as assessed by the cost of their cars ..." High cost cars don't denote actual wealth. They do denote people who want to display their wealth. Many (probably most) people driving very fancy new cars are living paycheck to paycheck. It is the same with first class in the air plane as others have noted. People who are interested in such displays of wealth are usually very poor at managing and retaining it.

They are less generous than the general population. After all, they have already spent all their money showing it off. They have nothing left to give.

On the poor victimizing the poor, he also misses the point. Property crimes off all types are typically crimes of opportunity. There are the rich, middle, and poor parts of town most places. People travel in their local circles. People steal what they can easily see. You don't get on a bus or jump in a car and go to a riot. You walk down the street to one. By self segregating by wealth/income you actually reduce property crime. If you never see that cool shirt you won't go out of your way to find and steal it.

This is interesting to me. Yesterday my sister and I were talking about this very subject. Although we never committed criminal acts, her daughter and I both had hostile feelings when put in an atmosphere of wealth.

For me, it was when my father got a big promotion and we moved from an LA suburb to a ritzy neighborhood in Dallas. In California, my peers were a diverse group and we would usually just hang out or go to the beach. We could take the bus or if we have 4 hours to kill on a round trip, we could even ride our bikes. We had friends that took day trips to ski or went bowling or to the movies but there was always plenty of opportunities to be with friends that didn't cost anything.

When I moved to Dallas, things were different. I was invited to go skiing or to the country club but I couldn't afford to go. My peers went to the movies but I didn't feel like I could go even to the $2 show. All of the money I earned went to clothes because now I had to purchase a seasonal wardrobe and try to fit in. Kidd weren't really mean to me but did ask why I was wearing the wrong color of pats on winter (I only had three pairs.) Hanging out was all but impossible because it was the weather was so often hot or cold that people usually stayed indoors. My peers were always doing something that cost money. I felt totally excluded except in the dating world were my date would pay my way. Of course, that introduces another dynamic entirely. I was very angry with my parents who just viewed me as a spoiled brat.

After all they had moved us to a fabulous neighborhood. We lived next door to a multi-millionaire. We went to a good school - and now we wanted more and more crap.

My sister moved out before we moved to the fancy neighborhood. She cleaned housed and her husband did landscaping. They had very strong Christiam beliefs and briefed strongly in education. They sent third daughter to an exclusive private school on partial scholarship. Around junior high, students began to notice the socio-economic differences and began bragging about their second or third homes in France, etc. while my niece had all the things that my sister dreamed of such as singing lessons, piano lessons, and a place on the cheerleading team as well as designer clothes, my niece really resented her parents who were failures and an embarrassment.

It is hard to feel left-out. Even today I wish we had those things that brought us together but I'm not sure how to get it in this day and age. I remember my parents having painting parties when they moved in a new house. I remember pot-lucks ad people pooling money for fireworks. These things were not expensive but they don't seem to be in style.

Jen, I kinda sorta know what you mean. Starting with junior high, I got a scholarship to a ritzy private school. The school was filled with the scions of the old-money families in town, who had been playing and going to school together since they were in diapers. When I started there, I was the new kid. When I graduated, I was still the new kid. I didn't resent their wealth, though; wealthy was what I wanted to be someday. What I resented was the knowledge that, no matter how wealthy and successful I ever became, I would never be welcomed in their social circles because I wasn't of the right breeding.

I only have anecdotal evidence to support this, but I claim that poor-on-poor crime is not inevitable to the human condition. Rather, it is a 20th-century, and more specifically a Great Society, phenomenon. My parents and other relatives have told me about growing up in the Depression, when material poverty was far worse than it is anywhere in America today. They have never mentioned to me that crime or violence was a particular problem, any more than it was anywhere else. There were certainly people who were fabulously and conspicuously wealthy during the Depression (airline flying, which was horrendously expensive then, got its footing during that era), but there doesn't seem to have been that social air of resentment towards them; rather, people aspired to be like them.

It all goes back to the old saying that the route to wealth is to spend less than you make. I think welfare has punctured that, for the groups of people that take welfare. By and large they don't worry about spending because they assume that there will always be more where that came from. To be somewhat fair to them, welfare systems contain built-in disincentives against wise money management, e.g., food stamps are often issued on a use-it-or-lose-it basis, and increased income or an accumulation of savings is often a disqualifier.

How's about a blog comment from someone who reads Sapolsky extensively and read everything he's ever published?

"On the poor victimizing the poor, he also misses the point. Property crimes off all types are typically crimes of opportunity."

Wrong. Primates of all types (baboons, chimps, humans) display something called displaced aggression, meaning we tend to attack and pick on (especially true of crime) of groups or individuals that we view as below ourselves but within our social group... even when the opportunity to target someone of higher standing presents itself. You might be thinking of all those times in history the poor have mobbed themselves out to attack the rich, but that is extremely rare even in monkeys. We will overwhelmingly attack those within our own group as long as they are "below" us, it is why for example blacks attack blacks, and whites attack whites. Nasty bullying is an inescapable monkey trait apparently. The poorer you are the more likely you are to do it violently, even females.

Lastango apparently takes that info as liberal propaganda intended to sway you away from voting from one bland turd towards an orange turd. True while Sapolsky is a liberal if you ever read his book a Primates Memoir you will see how disgusted he eventually becomes when he has to live among black Africans, specifically the Masai. As the book goes on whatever liberal fantasy he had about oppressed human beings slowly starts getting killed off.....while recognizing that human beings do tend to get wired by their environment in a way we as Americans are too quick to dismiss.

This piece is poorly written, odd for Sapolsky. His overall point is that human beings, when they perceive they have power, will be more openly nasty pieces of shit towards those below themselves.

I remember from his book that the middle class baboons tended to do it the least, whereas the rich monkeys and the poor monkeys tended to be the nastier pieces of shit. The rich monkeys rarely attacked their own babies, but the poor monkeys often would violently beat the shit out of/ignore their own kids. Something I would often see poor people do too....

You misunderstood what I wrote Ppen. Many crimes don't just happen. There is a lot of observation that precedes them. That is why when people riot they riot near home. When people mug they mug near home. When people rape they rape near home. There are very few that travel and hope to find a victim. People come across acceptable victims in their daily routine and act against them later. When city planners stratify a city by wealth (and most do through zoning codes) they shut down that vital observation period. Which then prevents the crimes before they happened. Historically when people have attacked the rich either the rich lived among the poor or the rich were extremely abusive, thus motivating people to hunt them out.

One comment on your observation, it isn't about how much people have. The actual material levels are irrelevant. It is how they are perceived. As you say, attacking those perceived to be 'below' themselves. Which correlates with Jen and Cousin Dave's experiences. No matter how much money Cousin Dave made he would always be 'below' due to 'breeding'. Jen had less material good and was happy when those around her had the same level of wealth. When she moved to a new environment and was no longer around the 50% and closer to the 10% she became unhappy. That she had more than she used to was irrelevant. The local wealth disparity is what matted. This is also why parents who support adult children financially, and even welfare, make their recipients unhappy. They are always on the bottom of the bell curve. They are always 'poor' now matter how much they have.

It is far happier to be the rich man in a poor neighborhood than the poor man in a rich neighborhood.

Ben, I think Ppen and I may have both misunderstood your first comment about "crimes of opportunity". I thought (and I had figured on saying something about it in a later comment) you meant that committing a crime was a spur-of-the-moment, out-of-the-blue decision. But I see now that that's not what you meant. What you meant was that the criminal-to-be will scout out looking for an opportunity to commit a crime, and then make a sort of a plan to do so in the near future. Like walking around the neighborhood and noting who usually leaves their bedroom windows open at night, or who usually comes home stinking drunk. The criminal notes that, and later takes advantage of it.

So the scouting-out has to be a low cost activity, which is why the criminal usually commits the crime in his own community or town. Of course, that's not always true. I think you mentioned the James Gang in a previous post, who traveled extensively in order to commit crimes. But they were self-sufficient and, for them, traveling in order to scout out a location was not a high-cost activity, and it had the advantage that they were committing the crimes far away from where they lived, which made it harder to catch them. But they were exceptions.

I think the idea that crime tends to happen close to home, as it were, is probably true.

Bankers are probably more likely to commit some kind of banking fraud than, say, steal a car, because they have the familiarity/opportunity.

If we are talking about the poor, well, if people don't have cars or disposable income to spend on gas, why/how would they get terribly far to commit a crime? Not that some MIGHT take the bus, catch a ride, walk, etc. But, it is far more convenient to do so near places you already go.

"What you meant was that the criminal-to-be will scout out looking for an opportunity to commit a crime, and then make a sort of a plan to do so in the near future."

Close but not right. People observe what is happening around them. Those with criminal tendencies will notice when there is an opportunity and act on their base drives. If they aren't already in the area to see that Sally Q leaves her car unlocked they don't 'case the joint' so to speak and Sally Q's stuff is safe. Most criminals don't actively scout or look for opportunities. They passively see an opportunity and act on it later. As Shannon says, criminals act in their immediate environment. Pretty much no one seeks a career in petty theft. Most criminals aren't that bright. The ones who are bright typically don't put much thought into it. They see an opportunity and they act. Intentionally traveling to rob or otherwise trying to throw the police off their trail is a very uncommon behavior.

Houston has no zoning laws (or within an epsilon of zero). It is not uncommon to have a 100 person ghetto apartment complex where the toilet is in the master bathroom right next to a McMansion. Is it any shock that one or two of those hundred people decide to jump a fence and grab what they want? If you have workmen come into your home they obviously notice what you have. And those workmen can even be completely honest, but people talk and what are the chances they have an unscrupulous friend or relative? Home invasions often follow home repairs.

Sorry to be so long winded but opportunity is a huge part of these things.

Yeah, I'm not sure what the point is. People having more than others makes the less wealthy get angry? I'd be curious to know how much airline anger has gone up in comparison to how many lesser wealthy people are able to fly? If this sentence makes sense. Is anger on planes proportional to the lowering of the average wealth of passenger? Are airline passengers of lower average wealth than in the past? Also, what about difference between airlines? Is there a difference in anger on say, cross country Delta flights versus regional Southwest flights?