The Rigged Game: How Privilege Changes Who We Are

October 16, 2025

Does Money Change You? The Science of a Rigged Game

The Winner of a Rigged Game

What happens to the human mind when given an unfair advantage?

The Experiment

Researchers set up a rigged game of Monopoly between two players.

• ✓ Starts with 2x money

• ✓ Rolls 2 dice (moves fast)

• ✓ Collects 2x salary Poor Player

• ✕ Starts with half money

• ✕ Rolls 1 die (moves slow)

• ✕ Normal salary

  The Change

  Within 15 minutes, the “Rich” players transformed physically and emotionally:

• • Moved pieces loudly, slamming the board.

• • Displayed dominant body language.

• • Ate more pretzels (sense of ownership).

  “I Earned This”

  When asked why they won, nobody mentioned the coin flip or the extra money. They talked about their “brilliant strategy.”

  “The mind instinctively finds ways to justify advantage… we believe we earned our success through merit.”

  The Cost

  This “internal attribution” of success triggers a cascade of effects:

  Empathy ↓ DecreasesCompassion drops as self-focus rises.

  Entitlement ↑ IncreasesA sense of deservingness leads to self-interest.

  Cheating ↑ IncreasesWillingness to break rules goes up.

  The Antidote

  The effects are highly malleable. Small “nudges” can pop the bubble.

  The Video Experiment

  Watching a 46-second video about childhood poverty made rich participants generous again.

  Reminders of Cooperation

  Simply reminding participants of the benefits of community reversed the entitlement.

  Imagine sitting down to play Monopoly. But this game is different. Before the first roll, a coin toss decides your fate.

  Your opponent is assigned to be the “poor” player. You are assigned to be the “rich” player.

  Your advantages are not subtle:

• You start with twice the money.

• You get twice the salary every time you pass Go.

• You get to roll two dice while your opponent only rolls one, so you circle the board (and collect more money) twice as fast.

  Both you and your opponent know the game is completely, comically unfair. You know your advantage is based on pure luck.

  So, how do you play?

The Winner of a Rigged Game

This is a real experiment conducted by researchers at UC Berkeley to answer a simple question: What does privilege do to a person’s mind?

As the 15-minute game unfolded, the “rich” players began to change.

• They moved their pieces more loudly, slamming them on the board.
• They displayed dominant body language and celebrated their “success” more openly.
• They even ate more pretzels from a nearby bowl, a behavior associated with a sense of deservingness.

  But the most shocking part came after the game.

  When the “rich” players were asked why they had won, they didn’t talk about the coin flip. They didn’t mention their 2x money or their extra die.

  Instead, they talked about their “brilliant” strategy for buying properties. They attributed the victory—a victory guaranteed by the rigged system—to their own individual skill and intelligence.

The Psychology of “I Earned This”

This experiment is a powerful, sped-up metaphor for a psychological process that happens every day.

Our brains are wired to rationalize our own good fortune. When we experience an advantage (whether it’s wealth, education, or connections), our minds instinctively find ways to justify it. We begin to believe we earned our success through our own merit, and by extension, that those with less must have earned their failure.

As research consistently shows, this “internal attribution” has a cascade of effects:

• Empathy and compassion go down.
• Feelings of entitlement and self-interest go up.
• A willingness to cheat or break rules increases.

  In other studies, wealthier participants were found to be more likely to lie in negotiations, take candy meant for children, and even break the law while driving (like not stopping for pedestrians at a crosswalk).

  It’s not that wealthy people are “bad.” It’s that the psychological experience of privilege actively changes how you see the world, making you prioritize your own interests and see your success as a purely solo act.

The Antidote to Entitlement

So, are we doomed to this behavior? The research says no. The good news is these psychological effects are highly malleable.

The researchers found that small “nudges” of empathy could completely reverse the effect.

• Simply reminding wealthy participants of the benefits of cooperation made them just as egalitarian as poorer participants.
• Watching a short 46-second video about childhood poverty made rich participants just as generous with their time to help a stranger as anyone else.

  This shows that the problem isn’t the people; it’s the psychological “bubble” that privilege creates. The solution is to consciously pop that bubble.

  You can do this by:

1. Acknowledging the “Game”: Actively remembering the role of luck, circumstance, and community in your own life.
2. Practicing Gratitude: Consciously giving thanks for the external factors that have helped you.
3. Seeking “Nudges”: Intentionally exposing yourself to stories and perspectives outside of your immediate circle.

   You don’t have to feel guilty about your success. But by remembering that no one truly wins a rigged game all by themselves, you can stay more connected, more empathetic, and more human.

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   Recognizing that the game is rigged is only the first step. To navigate this uneven terrain effectively, one must study the rules of influence found in Robert Greene: The Art of Power.