The poor are more rational than the rich when making decisions.

Imagine the following scenario. One weekday you go to an electronics store with the intention of buying a new printer. Once there, someone informs you that the price of the printer is 250 euros, and yet you know that in a store 20 minutes from where you are, you can get the same product for 50 euros less. Would it be worth the trip to save that money?

Probably, unless you have an emergency. However, what would happen if the printer cost 1,000 euros? Would it still seem like a good option to walk for 20 minutes to save 50 euros? It is possible that in this case you have more doubts.

Poor and rich: what differences are there in how they manage their economic resources?

Curiously, in the second case, people are more likely to underestimate the convenience of going to the other store, although the savings are exactly the same in both scenarios: 50 euros, an amount nothing negligible. Deciding to make the trip when the printer costs 250 euros but not doing it when it costs much more is a clear sign that

our decisions related to shopping and economy they do not attend only to rational criteria of cost-benefit. And interestingly, it seems that this is more evident in people who are in a better economic situation, while poor people do not fall into these kinds of traps as often ease.

A team of researchers has provided evidence of these differentiated tendencies by confronting rich and poor with a situation similar to that described in the printer example. To do this, they divided more than 2,500 participants into two groups: those whose incomes were above the national average and those whose incomes were below it.

The results, published in the journal Psychological ScienceThey are intriguing. While "wealthy" group members tended to be more likely to make the trip when the product was cheaper, this did not occur in the group of people with income below the half. The latter were equally likely to make the trip in both scenarios.

Why is this happening?

The researchers who led the study believe that this pattern is explained by the way in which rich and poor consider whether making the trip is worth it or not. People with high incomes would tend to approach the question starting from the price of the product, and how the discount can seem more or less insignificant depending on the total price to pay, their decision would depend on the amount they have to disburse. It is an example of heuristic: If the discount seems small compared to the price, it really isn't that important. Low-income people, however, would start by valuing the discount, not the price of the product, and go from there they would consider what they can buy with the amount saved: maybe some nice pants, or a dinner for two in a restaurant.

In short, the value that low-income people would place on the discount does not depend on the total price of the product, and for this reason it is a more robust and rational criterion. Possibly, these people are forced to decide on a daily basis according to a cost-benefit logic, while the population who is in a more comfortable economic situation can allow himself certain eccentricities when deciding what to buy and where do it.

From economics to way of thinking

Karl Marx argued that the conceptual categories with which we think have their origin in the different modes of production of each era. Similarly, studies like this show How the economic sphere influences the way of thinking. The dividing line between rich and poor is not only found in their material means of subsistence, but also in the different points of view they use to approach reality. In a way, being more or less likely to thrive financially could make things look very different.

This does not have to turn the most economically disadvantaged population into a privileged class, as they are more rational when making certain types of decisions. They probably follow a cost-benefit logic because the opposite can harm them much more than the rest of the people: it is a style of thinking based on the need for subsistence. Perhaps by understanding the pitfalls that separate the ways of thinking between the humblest popular layers and the privileged minorities, certain social problems can be better addressed.

Bibliographic references

• Shah, a. K., Shafir, E. and Mullainathan (2015). Scarcity Frames Value. Psychological Science, 26(4), pp. 402 - 412.