Piff et al. in their article, Having Less, Giving More: The Influence of Social Class on Prosocial Behavior , examine the influence of social class on prosocial behavior ( Piff et al., 2010) . In the first study, they tested how the social level of people predicts their generosity. They found, through the first experiment detailed in the paper, that lower class individuals would act in a more prosocial way than the upper class in a laboratory setting. They played dictator game which involved 115 participants between 18 to 29 years where 73 were females, 38 males, and four declined to state their gender. For participating in the study, each participant was compensated $10 per hour. Each person was told that they had been paired with an anonymous person in a different room and he or she should share his or her 10 points with the partner and their cash payout will depend on the points they have remaining. The researchers’ hypothesis was correct; lower class participants allocated a more substantial portion of their points to their partner than the upper-class participants ( Piff et al., 2010) . Religiosity, gender, and age were also tested, but they found that they played no role in influencing the results.
In the second study, the research team studied how social class influences a person's support for charitable donations. The study first found out that the subjective perceptions of social class shift an individual's sense of relative class rank. Secondly, they found out that lower social class participants supported the idea that a more significant percentage of people's annual salary should be spent on charitable donations. The study required a total of 88 participants where 66 were female, and 22 were male. However, four participants were excluded because they never followed the instructions while three correctly identified the hypothesis of the study ( Piff et al., 2010) . The 81 remaining participants took part in the survey where their judgment was assessed about how much of people's annual salary or family income should go to charity.
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The researchers used a ladder with ten rungs and told the participants to picture themselves on different levels of the ladder. Then they were asked to write not more than five sentences what they think about donating to the less fortunate from the class they were assigned. The participants were then told to indicate the percentage of their salary they would give to donation. The results confirmed the researchers’ hypothesis because those participants induced to experience a lower sense of social class rank felt like a higher percentage of their annual salary should be given to charitable donations ( Piff et al., 2010) . The study also confirmed that there is a link between lower social statuses and increased prosociality.
Furthermore, Piff and his team conducted a third study that aimed at finding the reason why lower-class individuals engage in more prosocial trust behavior. The study wanted to support the idea that lower social class people are more likely to endorse values that prioritize the well-being of other people over self-interest (egalitarianism) ( Piff et al., 2010) . It was a confirmatory study for the first and second studies. The study was conducted on 155 participants sampled nationally where 48 were men and 107 were women. After completing a form that was to be used to assess their age, ethnicity, social class, and their social values orientation, they took part in the trust game. The surveyors believed that a person only accepts to cooperate with people they can trust despite their vulnerability.
Just like in the first study, participants were instructed to give a portion of their points to their partners, and the points were tripled. Then the recipients decided on as many points as possible they would like to give back to the respective donors. In actual sense, there were no recipients, and this was supposed to complete the allocation portion of the trust game ( Piff et al., 2010) . The results obtained from the game confirmed the researchers’ hypothesis because most of the lower class individuals showed a higher tendency of egalitarianism by giving more points to their partners. It was more comfortable for the lower social status individuals to trust their partners compared to the high social status individuals.
The last study conducted by Piff and other researchers sought to find out the mechanisms that led to class-based differences in prosocial behavior. The study aimed to find out whether compassion could explain the differences in prosocial helping behavior among lower and upper social class people. The researchers predicted that lower class people were more likely to help those in need than their upper-class counterparts. A total of 91 participants, 33 male, and 58 female, between the ages of 18 and 40 years, took part in the study ( Piff et al., 2010) . The study involved watching a video clip; one of a child in poverty which was supposed to test their compassion-induction while another short video clip of two men quietly talking in a courtroom.
In the second phase of the experiment, participants were introduced to their partners that had delayed them by arriving late for the test. The participants were then told to choose four tasks out of the nine given by the experimenter and leave the rest to their partners. From the results obtained, those participants who watched the clip of a child in distress showed more tender feelings than their counterparts who watched a clip of the two men conversing in the courtroom that induced neutral feelings ( Piff et al., 2010) . Apart from the lower social class people helping their late partners by picking some of the hard tasks, the majority of the individuals who watched the video clip of poor child showed compassion by helping their partners compared to their counterparts.
Graham and Haidt focus on an unobvious but exciting phenomenon. In their article, Beyond Beliefs: Religions Bind Individuals into Moral Communities , they seek answers to why religious people are happier, why they are more charitable, and why most people in the world are religious ( Graham & Haidt, 2010) . The study also tries to find out the social function of religion in binding people into moral communities. Most religious people believe that God is essential and therefore, associate their relationship with God by observing good morals. To do this research, Graham and Haidt conducted a literature-based study to find out what philosophers, religious authors, and historians say about religion and social setting of the society.
At first, they decided to find the answers to the mystery that religious people are happier than non-religious people. Some social psychologists have argued that religion makes people believe that there is life after death, in fact, a better life free of the hardships experienced on earth. Religious people also think that God has control over their lives and therefore, the lack of self-control and self-regulation is the least of their worries ( Graham & Haidt, 2010) . Also, religious practices such as communal worship services bring people together and have been shown to shape their attitudes and behaviors positively.
The second mystery tackled by Graham and Haidt in their article is the reasons why there is a robust relationship between religiosity and charity. It has been shown by various philosophers that religious people tend to give more to charity and volunteer for charitable causes than non-religious people. The first reason given by the two researchers is that religious people believe that they will be rewarded in heaven if they help those in need ( Graham & Haidt, 2010) . Therefore, most philosophers have argued that the tendency of religious people helping the needy is more of self-interest because they believe that it is a sign of good values that will be rewarded by their Supreme Being. Religion teaches about happiness and doing to others what you expect to be done unto you because we are all equal. Therefore, people who believe in a particular religion are moved more by the suffering from other people and tend to give more to charity than their non-religious counterparts ( Graham & Haidt, 2010) . Also, religious practices that bring people together teach them the act of sharing which is more related to charitable events.
Lastly, Graham and Haidt give reasons why most people in the world are religious. Today people use religion as a way of binding people together. Also, people who believe in God know that sins are punishable and therefore, they tend to stay on the right side of the religious teachings which strengthens the cohesiveness and integration of religious people ( Graham & Haidt, 2010) . Cooperation seen among religious people enable them to live longer and survive hardships of life.
Bartz et al. in their article, Social Effects of Oxytocin in Humans: Context and Person Matter, conducted a literature-based study on the effects of oxytocin on social cognition and prosociality to illustrate both person-dependent and context-dependent effects of oxytocin ( Bartz et al., 2011) . Therefore, their research was focused on cognitive and behavioral outcomes of oxytocin on a person. Previous findings by other researchers indicated that oxytocin improves social cognition. Therefore, Bartz and his colleagues were interested in knowing the amount or the circumstances in which oxytocin improve social cognition. In their first study, they found that oxytocin only enhanced performance for individuals faced with stressful situations. The second study showed that adolescents suffering from autism spectrum disorder (ASD) performed better with oxytocin when tackling easy tasks ( Bartz et al., 2011) . The third study showed that oxytocin improved the empathic accuracy of people especially individuals who do not have social problems.
Some studies are underway which indicate that oxytocin has the considerable potential of improving social functioning of individuals with psychiatric problems. Most studies have suggested that the effects of oxytocin depend on the nature of the person and other situational factors. However, Bartz and his research team explained the impact of oxytocin by basing on its ability to reduce social anxiety. Through experimental demonstrations, they showed that administration of exogenous oxytocin to human beings reduces anxiety which in turn improves social cognition and prosociality ( Bartz et al., 2011) .
In another study, they were able to indicate that oxytocin improves affiliative motivation by increasing trust behavior. Also, developing affiliation has an impact on enhancing an individual's perception and processing of socially relevant information which has a long-term effect on improving their social cognition. The last hypothesis that Bart uses to explain the relationship between oxytocin and social perception is referred to as perceptual selectivity. Through a study conducted using intranasal oxytocin, it was found out that oxytocin effect spread to the facial region especially the eyes thus improving social visual information ( Bartz et al., 2011) . From the three hypothesis, the perceptual selectivity of oxytocin in stimulating social salience is the only one that tries to explain the individual-specific and population-specific effects of oxytocin.
Position and Novel Research on Piff et al.'s Article
I found Piff et al.'s article to be a fascinating exploration of the influence of social class on the prosocial behavior of people in the society. I never thought that the social status of a person could determine their generosity, trust, and tendency to help others ( Piff et al., 2010) . This article explains how people with low social status and those with high social status differ in terms of their relationship to others. Since some people may be worried about revealing some of their personal information and beliefs especially in face-to-face interaction, my study, similar to Piff et al., would be conducted online ( Piff et al., 2010) . Rather than inducing people to different economic challenges which might not efficiently show their real-life situations, my study would involve participants from different countries. In this case, a questionnaire will be made that addresses all the aspects covered by Piff and his team. Then selected undergraduate students from tertiary institutions in developed and developing countries will answer the questions after giving a brief description of their economic background and the hardships if any that they have gone through in their life.
As opposed to Piff et al.’s approach that uses participants who have not faced the real conditions being tested in the study, my study will cover people who have experienced those conditions ( Piff et al., 2010) . Also, they will be willing to provide even personal information like their economic background because they will stay anonymous since there is no face-to-face interaction and their identity is not supposed to be included in the questionnaire. However, the primary shortcoming of this approach is that the researcher has no control on whether the participant will answer the survey questions alone or with the help of another person which makes the study to lose its relevance. Because the people answering the questionnaire might be of different economic status yet personal information provided is for one person. A future study can incorporate the online concept and compare the results with those of Piff and his team.
References
Bartz, J. A., Zaki, J., Bolger, N., & Ochsner, K. N. (2011). Social effects of oxytocin in humans: context and person matter. Trends in cognitive sciences , 15 (7), 301-309.
Graham, J., & Haidt, J. (2010). Beyond beliefs: Religions bind individuals into moral communities. Personality and Social Psychology Review , 14 (1), 140-150.
Piff, P. K., Kraus, M. W., Côté, S., Cheng, B. H., & Keltner, D. (2010). Having less, giving more: the influence of social class on prosocial behavior. Journal of personality and social psychology , 99 (5), 771-784.
