How to Tell If Someone Is Rich

You're at a party with new people you've never met. Want to know if any of them are rich? Here's a little trick to tell.

More than designer clothing or other outward signs of wealth, people's body language reveals more about the state of their checking account than anything else. Those of higher socioeconomic status are more rude when conversing with others, reports LiveScience.com of a study from the University of California, Berkeley.

The study: Led by psychologists Michael Kraus and Dacher Keltner, the team videotaped 100 undergraduate students, all of whom were strangers to one another, as they participated in one-on-one interviews. During one-minute slices of conversation, the researchers looked for certain gestures that would indicate a level of interest each had in the other person.

The results: Students whose parents had a higher socioeconomic status were more impolite than students from the other end of the socioeconomic scale. The rich kids doodled, fidgeted and even groomed themselves during the interview, giving distinct and hard-to-miss nonverbal cues of "I'm not interested." Meanwhile, the poor kids did just the opposite, showing more "I'm interested" nonverbal behavior, including nodding their heads, laughing and raising their eyebrows. They almost never fidgeted.

What does it mean? Blame it on our animalistic tendencies. The rich students' snooty gestures were a way of signaling "I'm fit, and I don't need you." Kraus told LiveScience.com, "In the animal world, conflict arises when you're battling for status. So it's adaptive for us to avoid those conflicts and tell us we know 'I'm higher status than you, so don't bother having a conflict with me.'" Those of lower socioeconomic status can't afford to brush off people since they have fewer resources and are more dependent on others.

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science.

--From the Editors at Netscape