Rich people really do ignore you when they walk by
(FOX NEWS) - Wealthy people appear to spend less time looking at other human beings, compared with how much time people in lower social classes look at others, according to a new study that used Google Glass headsets to track people's gazes.
The findings suggest that your social class influences how much other people grab your attention, the researchers said.
More research is needed to know why the wealthy may look less often at other people, the researchers noted. But one possible explanation may be that, for people in higher social classes, other human beings hold less "motivational relevance" -- a psychology term that means how worthy of one's attention something or someone is, based on how much reward or threat might be linked with that object or person, the researchers said.
Because the time people spend looking at something may be related to how much motivational relevance the object or person holds, the "findings make a compelling case that social classes differ in their judgments of other people's significance," the researchers wrote in their paper, published Oct. 3 in the journal Psychological Science.
In the study, the researchers asked 61 people to wear a Google Glass headset while walking around in New York City. Google Glass has a video camera near the right eye, and the device records video from the users' perspective. Participants were told to focus on whatever captured their attention.